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With the Belknap's communications gear knocked out, Captain Walter R. Shafer had to shout commands from the bridge to his crew. Some of his men were forward, and the rest were aft around the helicopter pad. Because of the fierce blaze amidships, they were cut off from each other, and for a while the men in each group were afraid they were the sole survivors. On the forward deck, rescue crews carried wounded and burned men to a comparatively safe area in front of the missile housing, where they lay on the deck in a cold, drizzling rain.
For 2½ hours the Ricketts and Belknap fought successfully to keep the flames away from the missile housing and the ship's magazine. Chief Warrant Officer William Dockendorff, who led a team of firefighters on the Belknap, found that he had more volunteers than he could use. Tugging hoses, the men advanced on the fires, retreated momentarily when shells went off, then resumed the attack. Says one seaman who watched the battle: "That was either a bunch of brave guys or a bunch of fools."
When the fires died down, the Belknap's casualties were swung aboard the Ricketts in stretchers. Some of the men were so badly burned that they lost strips of skin during the transfer.
At daybreak the Belknap was a smoldering hulk in the water, her superstructure a jumble of twisted steel and aluminum; the damage was so extensive that she may have to be scrapped. The Kennedy, which had quickly extinguished her fire, suffered only minor damage to her flight deck and soon was again launching planes. One man was killed on the Kennedy, and six on the Belknap. Forty-seven members of the Belknap's crew were injured, 21 severely. Casualties would have been far higher if the crews of the Belknap and the Ricketts had not fought so heroically through the night.
There were starkly conflicting versions of the courses steered by the Kennedy and the Belknap, leading to the disaster that all sailors fear — a collision at sea. The Navy began an investigation to determine who or what was at fault when the carrier and the cruiser started a maneuver that should have been so simple but ended so tragically.