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That SINKEX should have silenced critics of carriers as being easy to sink. She took extended hits during the process and yes she finally had to have pre-set charges to sink her. Those charges were likely where a ship would not expect to take massive multiple hits. There had also would have been as I understand it many key WT hatches which would have had to have been {intentionally} blown out as well for her to sink.

Yup, but they were also trying all sorts of different kinds of ordinance out on her. Once they got the data they needed ... well, there's a nice pic of the wreath they laid out on the water after she went down (since all pictures of the sink-ex are classified).

I think that the Forrestal came pretty close to sinking during her 1967 fire. Not because of any actual damage that was ultimately sustained, but because the fire came within a couple bulkheads of reaching her O2 plant. Had the fires actually reached it and it cooked off it would have taken the rear 1/3 of the ship with it.

There is one declassified picture of the SINKEX that was made public. It shows the flightdeck underwater at probably 20 ft I'm guessing.

I'll tell you what. When I was on the ship we carried nukes. They as such didn't worry me. Two other things were a far more likely accident waiting to happen. One was like you mentioned the LOX Plant the second would have been a steam break. The LOX Plant had the biggest potential for a mass causality explosion. If you had any sense it would put the fear of GOD in you. To work in there you had to have your stuff together.

My division had The LOX Plants, Elevators and conveyors, Air Conditioning & Refrigeration, Machine Shop, Ships Services like heat and galley equipment, and the Boat Shop where the liberty launches and emergency generator engines were maintained. I stayed out of 02N2. I worked AC&R mostly and part time as a pushed into service engineman on boat crew and a couple T.A.D. stints to the ships fire department which was it's own division.

I don't know if all carriers went to a full time Fire Department in 1980 but we did. It started out in the yards but was made permanent. It made good sense to pool the firefighters rather than put all the Hull Techs and Gunner Mates at risk. The Fire Dept also had to do fire station and hatch maintenance ship wide.