Shanks, Donald Wilfred, BM3

Heavy, incapacitating smoke was rapidly drawn into the ship's ventilation system, while fireballs from exploding ordnance ignited secondary fires among fully fueled aircraft in Hangar Bay 1. The combination of toxic smoke and scattered secondary fires blocked passageways and caused numerous casualties. The Air Wing's officers were particularly vulnerable, since many of them occupied quarters in the immediate vicinity of the fires and were unable to escape to the hangar bays or flight deck.

For some, the only escape route was downward into the lowest decks of the ship - but they found that the unending stream of salt water being sprayed above them drained downwards with them. In one instance, a ship's company officer who was a qualified diver donned scuba gear and swam down a vertical trunk to rescue a seaman trapped in a 7th-deck pump room. By the time the fires were controlled and extinguished, dozens of ORISKANY's Air Wing and crew were dead and hundreds more injured.