The Biggest Threat to a U.S. Navy Aircraft Carrier: Catching on Fire

"Several crewmen noticed that the exhaust from the huffer was gusting onto one of the Phantom’s rocket pods only two feet away. At that distance, the heat would have amounted to more than 320 degrees while Fahrenheit the huffer was idling. The crew were not trained to know the cook-off temperature of the weapons they were handling, but several mentioned their concern to a nearby ordnance chief and other personnel. However, they were either preoccupied with fusing bombs in time for launch, or he couldn’t hear what was being said over the noise of nearby jet engines. Despite four different surviving crewmen admitting afterwards that they were aware of the unsafe positioning of the huffer, nobody acted on the situation in time.

The Zuni rocket employed a Composition B warhead, composed of 60 percent RDX and 40 percent TNT mixed with wax that was prone to cooking off when exposed to roughly 350 degrees of heat. M65 bombs made of Composition B had inflicted the lion’s share of the damage in the Forrestal fire, and the navy was then in the process of converting to more stable Composition H6 munitions".