Trial by ordeal. Fire on the Forrestal

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Naval aviation played a crucial role in the Vietnam War. Aircraft carriers floating 185 kilometers southeast of Cam Ranh Bay have what the sailors called Dixie Station, flew ground support and interdiction missions in South Vietnam. A few hundred miles to the north at Yankee Station, as many as five carriers at a time targeted North Vietnam. A 140 kilometers offshore, Yankee Station seemed eerily removed from the war despite the fact that pilots returned bloodied and battered or did not return at all. The war was somehow distant, out of mind, over the horizon. Yankee Station was base for all US Naval aircraft taking part in Operation Rolling Thunder. That concentrated bombing of North Vietnam lasted more than three years, from March 1965 to November 1968.