Code Name: Phoenix

The sun changed from brilliant white to deep orange in the cloudless Asian sky as it slowly sank into the placid water of the Tonkin Gulf. It was late October, 1969 and Lt. Chuck Brown was thinking of home as he gazed across the busy deck of the U.S.S. Independence. The huge carrier steamed through the calm waters on her mission off the Vietnam coast. On the horizon, small destroyers surrounded the Indy like ducks with their mother. Despite the calm, picturesque scene, death and destruction lay less than a hundred miles to the west.