THEIR NAMES AREN'T ON THE WALL....

[rooter]

Patrick Corcoran's name was not there.

While creating the memorial, volunteers relied on Defense Department casualty lists to find local kids killed in Southeast Asia. However, those lists of more than 58,000 Americans did not include the 74 sailors who died on the USS Frank E. Evans when it collided at 3:14 a.m. June 3, 1969, with an aircraft carrier off the coast of Vietnam. The smaller ship was torn in two, its bow sinking, in three minutes, into the South China Sea.

The headlines of that war's only shipwreck were jolting. Three brothers from a small town in Nebraska were killed. A Navy chief would survive, only to learn that his son had not. Seaman Corcoran was asleep in his rack, along with 31 shipmates. Only six in that compartment would survive. Of the 74 dead, only one body was recovered.

Dubbed among the "workhorses" of the Navy, the 25-year-old Evans had already served during World War II and the Korean War. In 1969, it was supporting U.S. forces from off the coast of Vietnam. That May, Corcoran and his shipmates spent 10 days in the hellish heat and humidity, loading hundreds of 50-pound shells to fire in support of Marines on the ground.

When Pat Corcoran graduated from Father Judge High School in 1968, the draft was breathing down his neck. Hundreds of Philly kids had already come home in boxes. The Navy, it was said, was the safest bet.

So the kid who used to deliver pizzas and newspapers enlisted, eventually boarding the Evans, which had already collected four battle stars for actions during Vietnam. Within weeks, Patrick Corcoran was dead, a casualty of the Vietnam War - though some disagreed.

[rooter]

Aftermath

A training film, I Relieve You, Sir, was developed by the USN for junior watchkeeping officers.[4] Based around the events of the collision, the film demonstrates the responsibility junior watchkeeping officers hold, and the potential consequences of failing to do their job.

Unlike other naval casualties during the Vietnam War, the names of the 74 Evans crew killed are not inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.[41] Despite operating in Vietnamese waters immediately before deployment to Exercise Sea Spirit, and being scheduled to return to activities supporting the war effort after the exercise, it was determined that as Sea Spirit was not directly linked with U.S. operations in Vietnam, and the exercise took place outside the geographical limit for the conflict as defined by the outer edge of Market Time operations, the crew was ineligible for inclusion on 'The Wall'.[41] Vietnam veterans have argued that inclusion on the monument should not be determined by geographic location, and exceptions to this rule have previously been made for soldiers killed as part of the conflict but not in Vietnam itself; for example those involved in operations in Laos, and those dying in transit to or from Vietnam.[41] These exceptions would also apply to those killed in the Melbourne-Evans collision, but an act of Congress specifically permitting the inclusion of their names on the memorial is required.[41] Legislation to this end has been introduced on several occasions, but has so far failed to gather sufficient support.[41]

A memorial to the collision is located in Niobrara, Nebraska.[6] The memorial specifically commemorates the three Sage brothers, all of whom were aboard Evans and were killed in the collision.[6] They were the first group of siblings permitted to serve on the same ship since World War II, a result of the policy introduced when the five Sullivan brothers were killed following the sinking of USS Juneau.[6] Collision survivors and family members of Evans crewmembers have held annual reunions to memoralize the accident. Australian sailors who served on the Melbourne often attend.[42]