Explosion Reported as Firefighters Battle Blaze on Navy Ship (USS Bonhomme Richard)

nbcsandiego.com ^ | 7/12/2020

[rlmorel]

That makes sense...

[EVO X]

The damage control training I got in boot camp certainly left an impression on me.

I did a 6 year Navy tour and finished it on an aircraft carrier. This was before women were allowed in combat positions. I have to wonder if there just wasn't enough "manpower" around to put out the initial fire when it could have been contained. Dragging firefighting equipment through knee knockers requires muscle and determination...

[Spktyr]

Forgot to mention - it is still possible for modern non-steel hulled vessels to literally burn to the waterline, of course, and some steel-hulled civilian vessels/boats have managed it too. In the latter case, it’s because the very thin steel hull has its internal supports burned away/melted and then the hull collapses. Amusingly, the most notable and numerous example of the latter are party barges which literally burn down to the actual waterline on lakes with dreary regularity. :P

[al baby]

Funny i have spent time on a destroyer lmao

[Spktyr]

Reportedly the source of ignition was an large onboard explosion of so far unknown origin while the ship was being refitted for F-35B operations. Might not have mattered - we’ll have to see.

[EVO X]

One of the early reports I’ve read attributed the fire to a welding accident. I haven’t seen any updates to this possibility.

[hattend]

BLM in uniform?

[Tijeras_Slim]

Hadn’t checked out Drachinifel. But the dude is a hoot! His descriptions of the voyage of the 2nd Russian Pacific fleet is hilarious, and I’m now about to watch the Battle of Tushima.

Thanks for the tip.

[deks]

Official Twitter account of Naval Surface Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet

https://twitter.com/surfacewarriors?lang=en

[A Navy Vet]

Thanks for your service and I apologize. I’m just getting tired of everything being a conspiracy plot. Yes, conspiracies happen and so does just plain ole shit happens.

[rlmorel]

Ha! That was the one that actually made me laugh aloud!

And...it was interesting and educational, too!

When I lived in Japan, they had the IJN Mikasa, a dreadnaught of that age, sunk in cement outside the base. It certainly fired my imagination...:)

Thanks for that info-I wracked my brain for about a half hour trying to think of which episode it was!

[rlmorel]

Thanks for serving...I have often thought about the concept of carrying another man up a ladder in the middle of a fire, and I am sure (especially with adrenaline flowing) I could manage it.

There are a few women I have known in my life who I think could manage it, but on a bell curve of women that is the female sailor population and not cherry-picked women who work out madly every day...I don’t think that is going to happen.

But...that social engineering battle has been fought and lost, and here we are.

[miserare]

And out of the ashes will emerge a new Bonhomme Richard.

Or so I hope.

The name has a great legacy in American Naval History.

Captained by John Paul Jones, she beat the crap out of the Brits way back when.

Jones, when asked by the Brit if he wanted to surrender, said, “Hell, no. I have just begun to fight.”

The original ship was named for Ben Franklin...or for his pseudonym, Poor Richard.

JPJones’ sarcophagus is a must-see at Annapolis.

Also the Museum of Sailing Ships, most excellent models of our early Navy’s best ships.

[miserare]

Excellent!

[hillarys cankles]

So if a ship is in port with just a duty section on watch if the going gets tough you evacuate?
As a young sailor we were taught that you fight to save the ship. Either that isn’t taught anymore or the rules are different if you are in port. I understand the fire started in the well deck. My old ship also had a well deck that ran nearly the length of the entire ship. We had a salt water wash down system that would drench the entire well deck. You could also ballast and flood the well deck. If it started in the turnaround which is a level up so vehicles could go up to the hangars we had sprinklers lining the walls. If the fire spread to the ship couldn’t they have isolated and re-evaluated? Whatever was needed to save the ship. The timeline as presented so far seems to have the crew evacuating really quick. So if this had happened at sea what would the command have done with no where to go but overboard? As an ex boiler tech who was on the fire response squad that would react to fires in any of our main spaces I have so many questions.

[csvset]

You bring up many good points. I served on carriers but I have been aboard some older LHAs. I was thinking sprinkler systems too. Command posture, attitude, etc probably has more to do with thus than anything else.

I tranferred from the Coral Sea to the America.

Difference was night and day. America had trash blowing down the hangar bay while in the yards The Coral Sea by comparison was spotless.

Reading about the recent Navy collisions, I would weigh heavily on poor training, poor leadership and willing to bet a poor damage control culture on the ship.

With that being said, the trend even when I was in was to have the shipyard to do as much work pierside as possible. So yardbirds probably still had stuff torn up. They did say equipment was hampering efforts. We’ll see.

[rlmorel]

Glad you liked it-if you are interested, here is another poem written by a Navy Chaplain right after the crushing defeat of the US Navy in the battle of Savo island in the early hours of August 9, 1942.

A horrible...horrible bloody defeat for us. Nearly a thousand men killed and four heavy cruisers sunk in 50 minutes of battle. (Three were sunk, one still floated but was later sunk)

He had a dream shortly after the battle, in which his ship (The USS Astoria) was sunk. This is what he wrote:

Iron Bottom Bay
by Walter A. Mahler, chaplain, USS Astoria

I stood on a wide and desolate shore
And the night was dismal and cold.
I watched the weary rise,
And the moon was a riband of gold.

Far off I heard the trumpet sound,
Calling the quick and the dead,
The long and rumbling roll of drums,
And the moon was a riband of red.

Dead sailors rose from out of the deep,
Nor looked not left or right,
But shoreward marched upon the sea,
And the moon was a riband of white.

A hundred ghosts stood on the shore
At the turn of the midnight flood,
They beckoned me with spectral hands,
And the moon was a riband of blood.

Slowly I walked to the waters edge,
And never once looked back
Till the waters swirled about my feet,
And the moon was a riband of black.

I woke alone on a desolate shore
From a dream not sound or sweet,
For there in the sands in the moonlight
Were the marks of phantom feet.

[va22030]

If it were BLM or Antifa, would they tell us? Probably not

most of the generals and trumps defense sec are BLM/Antifa. so are most of the corporations.

[PIF]

NEW Update

Two Decks Are Thought To Separate Fire On USS Bonhomme Richard From 1M Gallons Of Fuel (Updated)
The Navy says it is throwing everything it has at fighting the blaze on the stricken amphibious assault ship as it enters into its 28th hour.
By Tyler Rogoway July 13, 2020

[PIF]

Rear Admiral Philip Sobeck addressed reporters
here are the main takeaways from the press conference:

It is thought that two decks separate the fire from the ship’s fuel reserves. The Admiral says the Navy is doing everything they can to make sure it doesn’t migrate there.

No welding was reported in the area of the fire when it broke out.

At least significant parts of the automated halon firefighting systems were offline at the time of the fire. Enhanced pier-side fire watch readiness posture was supposedly in place.

415 Bambi Buckets of water have been dropped on the ship by three MH-60S Seahawks from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron Three (HSC-3) based out of nearby Naval Air Station North Island.

160 people were on the ship when the fire began.

400 sailors are now involved with fighting the fire aboard the ship.

The area where the fire started, which was the lower vehicle storage area, was filled with cardboard, rags, drywall, and other combustible material.

The fire is producing temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees.

Extreme heat in and under the island and in the bow.

There is a list that they are trying to correct via dewatering as part of a larger balancing act of keeping the ship stable while also fighting the fire

Five remain hospitalized and in stable condition out of 57 that have been treated at the hospital.

There is burn damage throughout the skin of the ship.

Due to the ship undergoing maintenance, there is debris scattered throughout the passageways of the ship making it challenging to safely fight the fire.

There are no plans to let the ship burn down to the waterline.

The Admiral is not aware of the fire being in the ship’s critical engineering spaces.

Crews are keeping a close eye on the environmental air quality and so far it has been within EPA limits.