Vietnam War: Off the coast of North Vietnam the USS Forrestal catches on fire in the worst U.S. naval disaster since World War II, killing 134.

North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was a country in Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1976, with sovereignty fully recognized in 1954. A member of the communist Eastern Bloc, it opposed the French-supported State of Vietnam and later the Western-allied Republic of Vietnam. The DRV invaded Saigon in 1975 and ceased to exist the following year when it merged with the south to become the current Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

USS Forrestal (CVA-59), was a supercarrier named after the first United States Secretary of Defense James Forrestal. Commissioned in 1955, she was the United States' first completed supercarrier, and was the lead ship of her class. The other carriers of her class were USS Saratoga, USS Ranger and USS Independence. She surpassed the World War II Japanese carrier Shinano as the largest carrier yet built, and was the first designed to support jet aircraft.

On 29 July 1967, a fire broke out on board the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, which was engaged in combat in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War. The fire was caused by an electrical surge which caused a Zuni rocket with safety pin missing on an F-4B Phantom to fire, striking and rupturing an external fuel tank of an A-4 Skyhawk. The tank's flammable jet fuel spilled across the flight deck, ignited, and triggered a chain reaction of explosions that killed 134 sailors and injured 161. The ship survived, but with damage exceeding US$72 million, not including the damage to aircraft. Future United States Senator John McCain and future four-star admiral and U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Ronald J. Zlatoper were among the survivors. Another on-board officer, Lieutenant Tom Treanore, later returned to the ship as her commander, and ultimately retired as an admiral.