Niobrara is a very small town in Nebraska–so small it doesn't have a cinema, and the locals could not have flocked to see Saving Private Ryan. But Niobrara has a memorial outside its library dedicated to the three Sage brothers, who were the first family group allowed to serve together on a U.S. warship after World War II. Radarman 3rd Class Gregory Sage and Seaman Recruits Gary Sage and Kelly Sage died together, along with 71 shipmates, on USS Frank E. Evans when the Australian aircraft carrier Melbourne literally cut their destroyer in two at 3 o'clock on the morning of June 3, 1969, in the South China Sea. Most of Evans' 272-man crew were asleep at the time of the collision. Jolted awake by the impact, the Americans began a struggle to save their lives, if not their ship. The Australians soon joined in the desperate struggle.
Few Australians are aware of the collision that claimed 74 American lives during Operation Sea Spirit exercises at the height of the Vietnam War and led–in the face of tragedy–to a bond between sailors on either side of the Pacific. Now living in the United States, the retired skipper of the Australian carrier recalled the few awful minutes that changed the lives of hundreds of men. 'It's still very vivid, still bad memories, still a very traumatic occasion,' said John Stevenson.
A court-martial and the inquiry that followed found Captain Stevenson not at fault, yet his career was doomed from the moment his crew readied Evans to take up plane guard/rescue position, as Melbourne prepared for night-flying operations. Earlier in the exercise, Melbourne had had a near miss that was fresh in Stevenson's memory on June 3. 'A couple of nights before one of the other [American] destroyers took a run at us,' Stevenson recalled, but that time Melbourne had managed to get out of the destroyer's path.
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