Posted on 07/13/2020 2:26:03 PM PDT by NRx
More than 400 sailors are working to put out the massive fire that continues to rage aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego and Navy officials are unclear how long the blaze might continue to burn.
The fire has brought down the amphibious assault ship's forward mast and caused other damage to the ship's superstructure that rises above its flight deck.
"There is a tremendous amount of heat underneath and that's where it's -- it's flashing up -- also forward, closer to the bow again there's a heat source and we're trying to get to that as well," Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, the commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3 said at a news conference Monday in San Diego.
More than 400 sailors are working to put out the massive fire that continues to rage aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego and Navy officials are unclear how long the blaze might continue to burn.
The fire has brought down the amphibious assault ship's forward mast and caused other damage to the ship's superstructure that rises above its flight deck.
"There is a tremendous amount of heat underneath and that's where it's -- it's flashing up -- also forward, closer to the bow again there's a heat source and we're trying to get to that as well," Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck, the commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3 said at a news conference Monday in San Diego.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
I kind of doubt it at this point.
Parts are beginning to collapse.
Isn’t it sort of silly to give a 400 million dollar bill to some blue collar idiot? It’s not like you’re going to get a nickel out of him.
It listed and capsised at the dock, because of the volume of firefighting water that had been pumped in.
My heart is hoping your wrong. But my head is telling me your right. Time to call a priest and give her the last rites.
Modern ships are basically designed as one hit wonders. They are supposed to avoid being hit. If that fails... :-(
One hit wonders ... In the Year 2525
Same thing could happen to the BHR but only if it capsized, not settled straight down.
I think that ship is already headed to the scrapyard. She’s a gutted hulk now.
Exactly! how are these ships supposed to survive attack? I remember a couple of years ago when a similar event happened with another super new, super modern ship, its bow started burning and they could not stop it.
How come they are using aluminum or other metals for the ship? What about steel?. The older aircraft carriers had a 3" steel deck. Just like the movie 'Battleship' I would rather fight with a museum ship retrofitted with new cannons rather than some of the new BS ship designs.
I was a Damage Control PO2 on a Tender back in the late ‘60’s...We had a small fire in the Bake Shop...I came in with a CO2 extinguisher and started to heu the flames in the oven when a LTJG got in front of me to look at the fire...I asked, “Sir!!! Please move!!!!”
He turned and looked at me, then turned back to the fire...
I asked him once again and he just ignored me....So I cut loose with the CO2....He screamed and jumped almost hit his head on the overhead...
Everyone just outside the Bake Shop was laughing their asses off!!!!
He screamed he was gonna write me up....That’s when a couple of CPO’s calmed him down and said he’d better leave well enough alone...
I never heard any more about it...
South Dakota’s damage was not that bad. Now, West Virginia, on the other hand, took something like 8 torpedoes at Pearl Harbor. She came out the yard at Bremerton looking like an entirely different vessel. But despite the damage, she still had not been gutted by fire.
I think in this case, it’s more like the damage to the USS Franklin. The Franklin didn’t sink and made it back to New York under her own power, but she was written off.
To my understanding, every sailor is a firefighter. Wasn’t the USS Forrestal a wake-up call for the US Navy in regards to it’s firefighting abilities??? Or is the new female pregnant Navy not up to the task any longer. God help us if we go to war!( Just a burned out former Gyrene venting)
My depth of experience heartens back to a dumpster fire I lit when I was 18.
The dumpster was full of different sizes of glass and a bunch of blueprints.
I worked at the glass company and accidentally lit it.
The fire was stuck between layers. When the fire dept came, they used poles to break the glass and quickly knock down the fire.
Obviously can’t do that on a ship.
West Virginia, on the other hand, took something like 8 torpedoes at Pearl Harbor.
Thresher was lost doing a test dive after a yard period due to a seawater pipe failing under the scram breakers and procedures at the time. Before subsafe and level 1 quality control QC was developed. Scorpion was lost depending on which story you believe, off the Azores Islands. One says battery well explosion and one a hot runner commander trying to make Captain. The Russians had other plans. The families of Scorpion’s crew were waiting at the pier for her to pull in. It never arrived. I knew people who served on Thresher, none on the Scorpion. A shame about the Bonhomme Richard at in any case.
Your post spoke to me. Mirrored what Ive been thinking since this started.
I served on a ship that had a well deck that almost ran the entire length of the ship. If the fire started in the well deck or the turnaround we had multiple systems that would have drenched any fire. I watched the deck division activate the welldeck salt water system that would wash down the entire welldeck including the turnaround. What about balasting down and flooding the welldeck? I e got so many questions. Especially how the fire moved unchecked into the living spaces. Did they not use the watertight doors to isolate the fire?
It’s a gator it’s designed to get in fairly shallow water to launch Marines from its wet deep V bay. The entire ship is easier to burn than a normal carrier because it can’t be completely sealed off due to the design. It has a large open area that extends up from water line in the rear to hangar deck (01 level) and can’t be closed off.
It’ll be put out when it starts melting and sinks into the harbor. Then the fires will go out. Read up on the French ship Normandie that burned at her pier in New York harbor.
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I thought of that, too. The Normandie was being converted to a troop ship at the time of the fire. At least some sources have said the fire was arson, set by the Mafia, to get Lucky Luciano out of prison. FWIW there were no other similar incidents on the NYC docks during the war and the Mafia fully cooperated with the war effort.
My son was an ABH (higher trained firefighter for a carrier than DC) in the Navy that served 10 years on a Carrier. Spoke to him about it and his take is that the fire got into the JP5 (jet fuel) and is travelling the lines (which run throughout the ship). I also understand that the ship was being refitted, which means a skeleton crew onboard, plus it started on the weekend when there was a skeleton of the skeleton. I would not cast a lot of shade on the DC crew because if this is what I described, then it would have been a bear even if fully staffed.
Thanks, so I’ve read. Home schooling is great. Wouldn’t have read about any of that in PS.
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