Whipped Cream Difficulties

Not everyone in the military who dies is killed in combat. Accidents take more than their fare share of brave people. And those folks are just as worthy of remembrance on Memorial Day as the ones who died in action against the enemy.

I’ve had this in my back pocket for a while. It is a little early to post this, but not too early, and it seems appropriate for today.

Some time back, I got a wild hair and went chasing down the military’s “sole survivor” policy. I think the Sullivan brothers led me to that, which in turn led me to the Melbourne–Evans collision. I had never heard of the Melbourne–Evans collision, and was quite shocked to find out that there was a major US Navy disaster I was unfamiliar with.

In 1969, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was conducting an exercise, Sea Spirit, in the South China Sea. Two of the ships involved were the US Havy destroyer USS Frank E. Evans and the Royal Australian Navy light aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne.

At night on June 2nd and 3rd, the Melbourne was doing anti-submarine exercises. Evans was one of the escort ships assigned to the Melbourne. Melbourne was going to launch an anti-submarine aircraft, and ordered Evans to assume the “plane guard” position. There had been one near collision with another US ship (USS Everett F. Larson) a few days before, and the Melbourne’s commanding officer had warned all of his escort ships to be careful. He also increased the minimum separation between the carrier and escorts to 3,000 yards.

In spite of this, the Evans turned towards the Melbourne. Melbourne sent messages to the ship warning the Evans that it was on a collision course. Evans acknowledged the messages, but didn’t take any action. Melbourne’s captain ordered a hard turn to port: at about this time, Evans turned hard to starboard to avoid the collision. This put Evans right in the path of Melbourne, and at 3:15 AM, the two ships collided. Evans was cut in two. (Wikipedia has a good animation of the two ship’s paths.)

The bow section of the Evans sunk rapidly, while the stern stayed afloat. 74 crew members of the Evans died. It is believed that most of them were trapped in the bow and couldn’t get out before it sank. The crew of the Melbourne behaved, in my opinion, quite heroically. All of the survivors of the Evans were located in 12 minutes and rescued within a half-hour, and the Melbourne’s crew did their best to make them comfortable.

When 74 sailors are killed at sea, you can expect an investigation. The commander of the Evans, Albert S. McLemore, was asleep when the collision happened, though he had given orders that he should be awakened if needed. Of the two men who were standing watch, one had failed his qualification exam for standing watch, and the other one was on his first trip to sea.

The US Navy and the Royal Australian Navy conducted a joint board of inquiry. The results were, and are, controversial:

Presiding over the board was USN Rear Admiral Jerome King, a posting that was controversial as he was the commanding officer of both the forces involved in Sea Spirit and the fleet unit to which Evans normally belonged, and was seen during the inquiry to be biased against Captain Stevenson and other RAN personnel. King’s attitude, performance, and conflict of interest were criticised by the Australians present at the inquiry and the press, and his handling of the inquiry was seen as detrimental to Australia–United States relations.

It seems like the collision was pretty much 100% the fault of the Evans, but nobody wanted to place all of the blame on the US Navy.

Despite admissions by members of the USN, given privately to personnel in other navies, that the incident was entirely the fault of Evans, significant attempts were made to reduce the US destroyer’s culpability and place at least partial blame for the incident on Melbourne. At the beginning of the inquiry, King banned one of the RAN legal advisers from attending, even as an observer. He regularly intervened for American witnesses but failed to do so on similar matters for the Australians. Testimony on the collision and the subsequent rescue operation was to be given separately, and although requests by American personnel to give both sets of testimony at the same time in order to return to their duties were regularly granted, the same request made by Stevenson was denied by King. Testimony of members of the RAN had to be given under oath, and witnesses faced intense questioning from King, despite the same conditions not applying to USN personnel. There was also a heavy focus on the adequacy of Melbourne’s navigational lighting. Mentions of the near miss with Larson were interrupted with the instruction that those details could be recounted at a later time, but the matter was never raised by the board.
The unanimous decision of the board was that although Evans was partially at fault for the collision, Melbourne had contributed by not taking evasive action sooner, even though doing this would have been a direct contravention of international sea regulations, which stated that in the lead-up to a collision the larger ship was required to maintain course and speed. The report was inconsistent in several areas with the evidence given at the inquiry, including the falsity that Melbourne’s navigational lights took significant time to come to full brilliance. Several facts were also edited out of the transcripts of the inquiry.

Commander McLemore was court-martialed, and found guilty of “dereliction of duty and negligently hazarding his ship”. The two watch standers were also court-martialed, pled guilty, and were convicted of “dereliction of duty and negligence”.

As a result of the inquiry, the commanding officer of the Melboure, Captain John Phillip Stevenson, was also court-martialed. He was chaged with negligence for “for failing to explicitly instruct Evans to change course to avoid collision and for failing to set Melbourne’s engines to full astern”.

Evidence presented during the hearing showed that going full astern would have made no difference to the collision, and on the matter of the failing-to-instruct charge the presiding Judge Advocate concluded that reasonable warning had been given to the destroyer and asked, “What was [Stevenson] supposed to do—turn his guns on them?”. Of the evidence and testimony given at the court-martial, nothing suggested that Stevenson had done anything wrong; instead it was claimed that he had done everything reasonable to avoid collision, and had done it correctly.

There are two theories on why Captain Stevenson was even court-martialed in the first place. One is that it was an attempt to appease the US Navy, “which had court-martialled three officers from Evans and had threatened to prevent US ships from operating as part of Australian-led forces if no action was taken against Stevenson”. The other is that the court-martial was intended to clear Stevenson.

Stevenson’s defence submitted that there was “no case to answer”, resulting in the dropping of both charges, and the verdict of “Honourably Acquitted”.

However, Stevenson’s next posting after the verdict was “chief of staff to a minor flag officer”, which was seen by him (and, I gather, pretty much everyone else in the RAN) as a demotion.

Following the events—publicly considered to be another scapegoating of a commanding officer of Melbourne…Stevenson requested retirement, as he no longer wished to serve under people he no longer respected. This retirement was initially denied, but was later permitted.

The US Navy made a training film about the incident, “I Relieve You, Sir”.

Unlike other naval casualties during the Vietnam War, the names of the 74 Evans crew killed are not inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Despite operating in Vietnamese waters immediately before deployment to Sea Spirit, and being scheduled to return to activities supporting the war effort after the exercise, it was determined that as Sea Spirit was not directly linked with US operations in Vietnam, and the exercise took place outside the geographical limit for the conflict as defined by the outer edge of Market Time operations, the crew was ineligible for inclusion on ‘The Wall’. Exceptions to the geographic limit rule have been made for other personnel killed as part of the conflict but not in Vietnam itself; for example those involved in operations in Laos, and those dying in transit to or from Vietnam. However, an act of Congress specifically permitting the inclusion of their names on the memorial is required: legislation to have those killed in the Melbourne–Evans collision has been introduced on several occasions, but has so far failed to gather sufficient support.

Three of the men killed on the Evans were brothers: Radarman 3rd Class Gregory Sage and Seaman Recruits Gary Sage and Kelly Sage. They were the first members of the same family allowed to serve on the same ship since WWII. There are memorials in Niobara, Nebraska (their home town) and Gurnee, Illinois. “The names of her 74 crew killed are inscribed under a flagpole at Long Beach Shoreline Marina.”

The stern of the Evans never sunk. It was towed to Subic Bay, stripped for parts, and used for target practice.

In December 2012, Stevenson announced that his son had received a letter from the Australian Minister for Defence, Stephen Smith, saying that he was “not treated fairly” by the government of the day and by the RAN. It also said, “Your father was a distinguished naval officer who served his country with honour in peace and war … Should your father have continued his naval career, the Chief of Navy advises me that he would undoubtedly have been competitive for flag rank.” Stevenson also said that he was supported throughout his ordeal by his wife, who had died just five months before the letter arrived.

One of the most unusual aspects of this story, to me, is: this isn’t the first time HMAS Melbourne collided with another ship. She collided with the destroyer HMAS Voyager on February 10, 1964, under what sounds like similar circumstances: Voyager was supposed to be plane guard, but turned into Melbourne’s path and was cut in two. 82 men died in that collision. And, similarly, the captain of the Melbourne at the time was initially railroaded.

The USS Frank E. Evans Association.

The Lost 74.