Fire Aboard an LST

When I got into the photo mapping outfit at Clark AB in FEB 59 I was ask if I would like to go on the LST or stay at Clark. The guys at Clark did the heavy maintenance & if both H-19's were out on the two ships they just played poker & drank beer all day. So not being a poker player I chose going on the LST where the action was.

When we were putting a site on the hill or taking it off the hill the pilot would fly by himself & have minimum fuel on board. About every other trip the pilot would point to the fuel trailer & we would start the pump engine, pick up the hose & proceed to put a few gallons of fuel in the chopper, the pilot would watch the fuel gages & tell us when to stop.

This used to be done by hand pump from 55 gallon drums but that was to slow & cumbersome so a fuel tanker was gotten from the salvage yard at Clark. Now fuel could be pumped from the drums by hand pump into the tanker until it was full, about 1000 gallons & then pumped into the chopper, not bad.

Here's a picture of the tanker that I got off the photo mapping site. (See H-19 Photo)

We worked in shorts & jump boots when the weather was hot, which was most of the time. Here's a picture of me standing fire guard on engine start.


Well on 11 AUG 59 in the SULU sea Philippine Islands we were putting a site on the hill & refueling just about every trip. Jim " Tex " Barrett & I were the two chopper mechanics on LST # 230. When the pilot would want fuel I would start the pump engine & drag the hose to the chopper & do the refueling while Tex would operate the fuel tanker. The throttle was a long piece of safety wire that you had to hold to control the pump engine RPM. On this day the pump started to leak fuel & I jokingly told Tex that some day that pumps going to catch fire & when it does I'm jumping over board.

Well the next time that Dick Bourne came in & pointed to the fuel truck, I started the pump engine, picked up the hose nozzle & walked to the chopper when all hell broke loose. Tex was hollering GET OFF THE DECK GET OFF THE DECK. I turned around & holy shucks that fuel tanker was blazing from the rear. Tex jumped back & let loose of the safety wire throttle & it went wide open, spraying burning fuel everywhere

All Dick Bourne had to do to save himself was just fly to the beach & shut down the chopper. He said later that all he could see was flames & just a windshield between them & him. He cut the mixture on the chopper engine & pulled the rotor brake on & jumped out of the chopper. I threw the fuel hose away from the H-19 & grabbed the 15lb fire extinguisher & ran to the fuel tanker expecting everyone else to do the same thing. When I got to the tanker I thought holy moly this is hot & I looked around & I was the only person on the deck.This scared me because a 15lb extinguisher isn't going to do much to this fire.

About that time I became aware that the ships fire alarm was going off & all of a sudden there were japanese crewmen comming out of every hatch & they all had extinguishers. After the fire was out I started to shake like a leaf. All of the other GI's had run back to the fan tail of the ship & everyone was shaking. We had about 10 55 gallon fuel drums tied down around the fuel tanker so if it would have blown, running back to the fan tail of the ship would not have helped.

I'm not sure where we got our next fuel tanker from, either from Clark or Naha but it was an operational tanker. It was a cleaned up JP-4 tanker. When we would pull into Naha port in Okinawa we called the POL section at Naha AB & they would come down to the port & change filters, do any maintenance then top off the fuel tanker. Ahh life was good, no more hand pumping & best of all no more fires. Here's a picture of me on the new tanker.
(Bill Crawford)(H-19 Photo by Earl J. Mahoney, Remaining Pictures are Bill Crawford's)