USS George Washington Investigation Complete, Senior Leadership Relieved

NAVAL STATION NORTH ISLAND, Calif. (NNS) -- Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet, Adm. Robert F. Willard, issued a final endorsement to the investigation of a fire that occurred aboard USS George Washington (CVN 73) on May 22. As directed by Adm. Willard, Commander, Naval Air Forces Pacific, Vice Adm. Thomas J. Kilcline, Jr., relieved the Commanding Officer of USS George Washington (CVN 73), Capt. David C. Dykhoff, today due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command and his failure to meet mission requirements and readiness standards.

As directed, Kilcline also relieved the George Washington Executive Officer, Capt. David M. Dober, for substandard performance.

Capt. J.R. Haley, previously assigned as Deputy Chief of Staff to Commander, U.S. Pacific Command, has taken command of Washington. Haley commanded the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) from June 2005 to January 2008.

Capt. Karl O. Thomas, who has been serving as Executive Officer of USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) since July 2007, has been reassigned as George Washington's executive officer.

The Chief of Naval Operations directed the Manual of Judge Advocate General investigation headed by the Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet. The investigation determined that the likely cause of the fire was unauthorized smoking that ignited flammable liquids and other combustible material improperly stored in an adjacent space. The fire and the subsequent magnitude of the fire were the result of a series of human acts that could have been prevented. Specifically, the storage of 90 gallons of refrigerant compressor oil in an unauthorized space contributed to the intensity of the fire.

The fire, which occurred in an unmanned Auxiliary Boiler Exhaust and Supply space, took approximately 12 hours to extinguish due to the location and geometry of adjacent spaces and ventilation systems that created a chimney effect. Thirty-seven Sailors were treated for minor injuries incurred during fire fighting efforts, with one Sailor requiring treatment for first and second degree burns. Approximately 80 out of over 3,800 total spaces aboard the carrier were damaged by the fire.

The estimated cost of repairs to George Washington as a direct result of the shipboard fire is approximately $70 million. This includes cost for material and labor cost from the public and private sector ship repair activities.

Repairs to George Washington are nearly complete and she will depart San Diego, Calif., on Aug. 21, with an arrival in Yokosuka, Japan expected in late September. George Washington's turnover with the U.S. Navy's last conventionally-powered aircraft carrier, USS Kitty Hawk (CV 63), will begin upon Kitty Hawk's arrival in San Diego on Aug. 7.

UA smoking and improper hazmat storage. Bad combo.

Unauthorized smoking aboard carriers is a problem. For one, most carriers I've served on (including the GW) only have only two "smoke pits" for E-6 and below. You've got 5000+ sailors and probably 1/4 of them smoke (if not more). That's not a lot of room. For another, they're always "securing" the smoke pits. Secured during field day, unreps, GQ, other various drills, whenever the PO in charge of that space feels like it, and often for no apparent reason at all, etc. This adds up to a lot of disgruntled smokers!

If I never hear the words, "Smoke pit secured, shipmate!" coming from the mouth of some E-3 MA after I just spent 6+ hours on the roof during flight-ops, I'll be a happy man. But since I know I'll be carrier-bound again during the remainder of my career, chances are likely I'll be dealing with secured smoke pits.

Add to this the thousands of spaces where people can sneak a cigarette. I'd often walk down a p-way and smell cigarette smoke coming from one unauthorized space or another. I've also seen sailors go to Mast and lose a rank over smoking in an unauthorized space. Now it is obvious why this transgression is not taken lightly. $70 mil. Ouch!

I wonder if the navy will use this mishap to ban smoking on ships? It's gonna come sooner or later.

I was on the Ike and they had one smoking area, the sponson on the port side, hangar bay three. The previous three carriers I'd served on, smoking was allowed in most work spaces and berthing lounges.

Every now and then UA smoking would pop up at Captain's mast. Usually someone smoking in a fan room.

I retired 10 years ago, but Hazmat on the Ike was controlled with an iron fist. If a workcenter was delinquent in returning Hazmat, they'd block the whole Department from obtaining any. As much as that was a pita , it was a vast improvement over how it used to be, workcenters their own supply of hazmat, often stored haphazardly.

Heck, I was on the JFK in the Seventies, and...I never recall UA smoking as being a problem?? Odd...I was probably oblivious to it, since I didn’t smoke.

I will say...I developed a lifelong aversion to tobacco in the Navy. Smoking itself was no big deal to me, I even liked the smell and to watch people do it, sometimes.

What bothered me was the tobacco juice and the cigarette butts.

First, there were the times I did kitchen duty...my job for about a month was cleaning up outside the Enlisted Mess. And the worst part of that was cleaning up where the damned line of sailors waited to go in. The place would be nearly carpeted with cigarette butts in varying stages of decomposition. Some would be fresh, but...many would be slobbery lumps of paper, filter and tobacco shreds, matted with mud.

I picked those frikking things out of the mud with my bare hands and gritted my teeth.

But even worse was the tobacco juice. I drank some by accident one time when a guy was spitting in a styrofoam cup and set it on the table i was drinking from. I didn’t watch myself, and it was memorably disgusting. But that only happened once.

What I did a lot of, and it made me want to scream, was pulling duty to clean the flight deck...which meant sticking your frickking fingers in padeyes containing little puddles of spit. The guys chewing would aim a stream, in pure boredom, just to see if they could get it in the padeye. I recall they were very good at it. And there I was, on my hands and knees, sticking my bare fingers in there to pull out little bits of junk...FOD.

To this day, I feel a twinge of anger when I see someone let loose a stream, and never picked up smoking.

On the more humorous side...I had a mechanic I worked with named Patterson, a Third Class Aviation Machinists mate from Missisisippi who said he was a preacher (at age 19 or 20) and was an absolute crazy funny guy on liberty. And he chewed incessantly, often big gobs in his cheek. That’s how I remember him...those goggles and his cheek bulged all the way out on one side...)

He and I were up on the flight deck looking down at the elevator which was lowered, and they were moving a plane onto it.

We were completely bored, or I guess as bored as you can ever get on a flight deck.

Patterson leans over, as casual as can be, and spits down. He adjusts perfectly for drop and windage, and the Yellowshirt down below watching the wing suddenly has a brown streak down his back. Pattern looks over and sees me watching him in disbelief, yells “WATCH THIS RL...” and then proceeds to spit another stream on the same guy that goes parallel to the other one. He starts laughing, he thinks that is the funniest thing, then I started laughing too. I wasn’t used to that kind of thing (being from Massachusetts) and to me I just couldn’t believe hit. But he was just...crazy. Some of the stories that he told, and were told about him were hysterical. The things he would do, not fighting, just clownish and sometimes perverse.

I was on the Ike and they had one smoking area, the sponson on the port side, hangar bay three. The previous three carriers I'd served on, smoking was allowed in most work spaces and berthing lounges.

I did work-ups and a full (nearly 8 month) cruise on Mighty Ike in '06-'07. During JTFX and COMPTUEX there was a single "all-hands" smoke pit STBD hanger bay 1. After GQ drills there'd be smokers lined up all the way to hanger bay 3 to get in the smoke pit. We'd joke about all the wasted man-hours from people waiting in line. Once we got underway for cruise they opened up an E-5/E-6 smoke pit in hanger bay 2 and an E-7+ smoke pit in hanger bay 3. This eased things up a bit.

That hasn't changed a bit. Getting hazmat was like buying drugs. It got to be where it was "who you knew" in order to get what your workcenter needed. It was a constant challenge and endlessly frustrating. Naturally, we'd figure out ways to circumvent the proper channels and we'd have to find places to stash the hazmat that we needed to do our job but weren't allowed to obtain through more reasonable methods.

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