Aircraft Carrier Smashes Into Navy Destroyer – Slices It In 2 Pieces

Just after 3 a.m. on June 3, 1969, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne sliced clean through the American destroyer USS Frank E. Evans, killing 74 sailors in minutes.

Story Snapshot

The collision happened during SEATO exercise Sea Spirit in the South China Sea, about 650 miles southwest of Manila.
Evans was moving into a new position behind Melbourne when it crossed directly into the carrier’s path.
Melbourne’s bow tore through the destroyer’s hull, cutting it into two pieces.
The forward section sank within minutes; a joint U.S.-Australian inquiry later split blame between both crews.

A Night Exercise Turns Deadly In The South China Sea

The USS Frank E. Evans was steaming in the dark, taking part in a routine allied naval drill alongside ships from the United States, Australia, Britain, and New Zealand. Around 3 a.m., the destroyer began shifting from a position ahead of HMAS Melbourne to one about 1,000 yards behind the carrier. Instead, Evans crossed straight into Melbourne’s path, and the two ships were suddenly on a collision course with almost no time to react.

Melbourne’s bow struck the Evans amidships with tremendous force, near a section just behind the destroyer’s forward funnel. The impact cut the smaller ship clean in half. The bow section flooded almost instantly and sank in less than two minutes, dragging dozens of sleeping and off-duty sailors down with it before they had any chance to escape.

Seventy-Four Sailors Lost In Minutes

The stern section of Evans stayed afloat long enough for surviving crew to be pulled from the water, but the forward half was gone almost immediately. Seventy-four American sailors died that night, and only one body was ever recovered. Among the dead were three brothers from the same family, a tragedy that later helped push the Navy to reconsider how it assigns siblings to the same ship.

The scale of the loss placed the Evans disaster among the deadliest peacetime accidents in modern U.S. Navy history. It happened not in combat, but during a training exercise meant to sharpen allied coordination in the Pacific. That irony became part of why the incident drew such intense scrutiny once investigators reached Subic Bay in the Philippines.

Investigators Split Blame Between Both Crews

A joint U.S. Navy and Royal Australian Navy Board of Investigation convened at Subic Bay, hearing roughly 100 hours of testimony from 79 witnesses. The board’s unanimous finding held that Evans bore partial fault for cutting into Melbourne’s path. But it also faulted Melbourne for not taking evasive action sooner, even though maritime rules technically required the larger vessel to hold its course and speed.

That dual finding reflects a pattern seen again and again in naval collisions before and since. A junior watch team makes an initial error, then investigators widen the lens to bridge discipline and command judgment on the larger ship. It happened after the Melbourne’s earlier 1964 collision with HMAS Voyager, and it echoed decades later in the Navy’s own reviews of the Fitzgerald and John S. McCain collisions.

Courts-Martial Followed, But Questions Lingered For Decades

Commander Albert McLemore, the captain of the Evans, was found guilty of negligence and dereliction of duty at a general court-martial in September 1969 and received a reprimand. Two junior officers who had been on watch during the collision were also formally warned over their handling of the ship’s movements.

On the night of June 3, 1969, one American family lost three sons in a single moment. Brothers Gary, Gregory, and Kelly Sage were serving together aboard the destroyer USS Frank E. Evans when it collided with the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne and was cut in two.

— Juicec06 (@juicec16) August 18, 2026

On the Australian side, the fallout ran even longer. Captain John Stevenson of the Melbourne was blamed for years despite the inquiry’s mixed findings, a burden the Australian government did not formally address until issuing an apology in 2012. Two separate Royal Commissions eventually examined the case, the only time in Australian history that has happened for a single incident.

More than five decades later, the Frank E. Evans collision still stands as a stark reminder of how quickly routine maneuvers at sea can turn catastrophic. It also shows why the Navy keeps studying old disasters. The same warnings about watch-team discipline and bridge communication that came out of Subic Bay in 1969 still shape how the fleet trains its officers today.