Posted on 07/12/2020 11:27:54 AM PDT by bitt
An explosion erupted as a roaring blaze was reported on a military assault ship at Naval Base San Diego Sunday morning, according to authorities.
Plumes of smoke arose from USS Bonhomme Richard as firefighters battled the three-alarm blaze on the 3400 block on Senn St. The vessel is an amphibious assault ship homeported in San Diego, according to Krishna Jackson of Naval Base San Diego.
The ship had undergone a regular maintenance cycle before the fire was reported, Jackson said. Crew members typically are aboard the ship on weekends, but there are fewer than on weekdays.
Several sailors are being treated for injuries, according to the San Diego Fire Department. The extent of their injuries is unclear and authorities did not say how many sailors were injured.
It is unclear what sparked the fire.
Update:
At least 57 injured after fire erupts aboard Navy ship in San Diego; crews still battling blaze
Steve Kuzj
Posted: Jul 13, 2020 / 03:45 AM PDT / Updated: Jul 13, 2020 / 07:49 AM PDT
Thanks for the link. She’ll be scrapped. Sad ending to a proud ship.
Glad you liked it. I have always been interested in this aspect of seagoing vessels.
From when I was a kid living in Subic Bay, and they towed in the aft end of the USS Frank Evans which had been sliced in two by the Australian carrier Melbourne, to my experience watching Damage Control teams in operation aboard a carrier (USS JFK, which seemed to have an inordinate need for damage control) I have respect and admiration for sailors who specialize in that, never mind the non-specialists who are often called on out of necessity.
Also, my squadron (VA-46) was somehow widely viewed as being responsible for the Forrestal fire, even though our part was having the misfortune of having a plane parked directly in the path of a Zuni rocket.
When I was in, years after that, they still talked about it in my squadron in the first person as if they had been there, though none had.
But it made me plenty interested in it, to be sure.
Another fantastic book that discusses this apsect of damage control aboard a warship is “Shattered Sword”, which discusses the Battle of Midway from the Japanese point of view.
Reading that, you realize the Japanese historically made consistently poor decisions in ship design with respect to damage control, and did an even worse job of developing damage control techniques around them, and it all came to a head in spectacular fashion with the sinking of the Japanese carriers that day.
This is not to denigrate the Japanese sailors who were gutsy, capable, and dedicated, but they had piss poor damage control procedures that should have been drawn up in such a way to minimize those deficiencies, but weren’t.
You almost have to feel sorry for them.
But in a discussion about a related subject, what was astonishing to me is how much damage a warship could take before it succumbed and slipped beneath the waves. Like humans. It is amazing the amount of damage a human body can incur and still remain alive...likewise with ships.
Actually, our damage control prowess dates from US representatives looking at the interned German fleet after WW1 following seeing “inferior” German ships take tons of damage at Jutland but yet still kept floating and fighting. They noticed that the Germans had planned their vessels with damage control first and foremost - the USN took that idea and ran with it.
The most recent accidental firing that I’m aware of came in 1992, BTW. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/10/03/navy-blames-accident-on-crew-error/0e236205-516e-485d-a769-e899bea606fe/
What’s that old saying about great artists steal from everyone else...:)
Also, Drachinifel has a great video on the differences between US and IJN damage control. Turns out that some IJN vessels, like Shokaku, had commanders that did understand good damage control, and their ships did have basic DC elements incorporated, but their biggest problem was their personnel and doctrine. Shokaku, for example, survived several battles with the kind of damage that killed its sisters simply because the then-new CO took one look at the IJN DC doctrine for his ship, said “screw that,” tossed the manual and went to an equivalent of US DC crew doctrine instead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC6LN3U5ELk
I have taken a liking to Drachinifel’s work and learned a lot from it that I didn’t know. I will check out that video link you included-thank you!
As an aside, I really have come to enjoy his rather flat or droll sense of sarcasm and humor...I forget what he said, but it made me grin and chuckle to myself as I watched!
(It may have been when he was discussing comparative cruiser design issues between countries)
Thanks! I haven’t watched it in years. I just remembered that the name was mentioned. I didn’t like him either but glad to know.
Another very good post. Thanks for your service.
I am finishing a great book and you might have read it:
“The Admirals” Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy and King — The Five Star Admirals Who Won The War At Sea.
Ship has a starboard list now. Lots of helos dropping water plus latter trucks pouring water.
Thanks. Did you see a video?
Watching kfmb cbs8 from San Diego they are showing video
I wrote these as part of the comments section discussion of his USS Franklin video, I think they rather apply here at this point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tJh-XkVyYA
***
As someone else commented upthread a bit, the Japanese used specialized highly trained damage control parties - but DC was limited to these parties. The US had those, but they also trained every crewman in at least basic DC procedures - if nothing else, “This is a fire hose. You find hoses in places marked like this. You deploy the hose like this. You turn the hose on like this. Now you do it until I’m sure you know it.” “This is a hatch. You keep these closed. If fire or smoke is coming through them, you close and lock them and the next one after it. You don’t leave them open.” Even simple things like that, when literally every man Jack aboard knows them at a minimum and to the same standards, no matter what their specialty is, you end up with, well, the astonishingly resilient and independent DC exhibited by the US Navy in the war. DC that was so good that basically if the Japanese didn’t sink your ship outright, there was a greater than even chance that the ship would at least stay floating long enough for the survivors to get off in an orderly fashion but shockingly often would be able to be towed or limp back to port. Assuming random Japanese submarines didn’t put torpedoes into your ship on the way back as insult to injury.
***
Prior to and during WW2, all US sailors were trained in very rudimentary damage control. (I wasn’t kidding about “this is a fire hose, this is a hatch” - but even that was more than the Japanese reportedly got.) Sometime after WW2, the Navy decided this was no longer necessary and went to the Japanese model of specialist DC teams. After ForestFire, they went back to the WW2 standard of “every man will know damage control rudiments” and added to it.
The weird thing is that there’s more than a little evidence that the WW2 US standard for DC was learned from post WW1 investigations of the surprising survivability of ostensibly inferior German warships against the Royal Navy at Dogger Bank and Jutland. The US Navy realized that good DC and designing for survivability/with DC in mind on the German model could be extended and improved in ways the German Navy didn’t consider or had rejected to make their ships survive when the armor failed, the ship was on fire and the sea was pouring in. They took the idea and ran far far away with it; by the time of WW2, the German Navy would not (and did not) have recognized the end result of the ideas they’d set in motion.
Look into the story of USS Laffey (DD-724) - the only reason that thing stayed on top of the water long enough for help to get to what was left of the ship was because of US DC and to a lesser degree a design optimized for US DC. Judging by the number of US ships of all classes that somehow made it back to port after being pounded into what any other navy would have considered scrap (many of which were technically ‘inferior’ to counterparts, but somehow ended up surviving things that destroyed their counterparts), I think the title of the USN as Best Damage Control, WW2 is quite intact. While the RN was probably second best, it was not a close second.
Thanks. I’ll look for it.
I have listened to that one three or four times...:)
Near the end of the book, he talked about a poem written by Captain Gordon Beecher, USN which I looked up and love:
By Nimitz-and Halsey-and Me
***************************
Patty McCoy-an American boy-
Left his home in the Lone Star State
He set out to sea in a shiny DD
And he wound up in Task Force Three Eight
He cruised for a while with a satisfied smile,
Then he took his pencil in hand,
And here’s what he wrote in a well-censored note
To the folks back in State-side land:
Me-and Halsey and Nimitz
Have sure got the Japs on the run
We’re drivin’ em wacky in old Nagasaki,
We’re settin’ the damn Rising Sun.
Kyushu and Kobe and Kure
Are wonderful ruins to see.
We’ve got em like gophers a-seekin a hole.
The way that they burrow is good for the soul
And everything out here is under control
By Nimitz-and Halsey-and me.
Me-and Halsey-and Nimitz
Are havin’ a wonderful time
What we ain’t uprootin’
By bombing and shootin’
Would fit on the face of a dime.
They say they’re a face-savin’ nation,
And that may be as true as can be,
They’re taking a pushin’ all over the place.
We give ‘em the Arsenic minus Old Lace.
They’re gettin’ a kicking but not in the face
From Nimitz and Halsey-and me.
Me-and Halsey and Nimitz
Are anchored in Tokyo Bay.
The place is just drippin’ American shippin’
They stretch for a helluva way.
We hear that the fighting is finished,
And that is the way it should be.
Remember Pearl Harbor-they started it then.
We’re warnin’ ‘em never to start it again.
For we have a country with millions of men
Like Nimitz-and Halsey-and me.
Yes, that’s a great poem.
Here’s a link to a live stream from San Diego:.
Great post!
I didn’t know they had discontinued basic damage control training for all sailors, and only instituted it after the Forrestal fire...that certainly seems penny-wise and pound-foolish!
The damage control training I got in boot camp certainly left an impression on me. I recall one of the things they did (to impress upon us the necessity of making sure men were manned and holding the hose before turning on the water) was to take a fire hose, and with nobody holding it, turned it on. Watching that big brass nozzle fly around smashing on the ground and whipping through the air, well...even for young men whose minds were on getting liberty and chasing tail, that vision found its way in, and I doubt any of us could not imagine what that would do to you or your shipmates if it did that in a narrow passageway!
In the years since then, that remains one of my most vivid memories of Boot Camp, watching that uncommanded fire hose whip around in that bright sunshine.
By the way, I heard someone say that ship was going to burn to the waterline...I never heard of such a thing in a modern steel warship (not aluminum)
I wouldn’t think that would be possible...
That sounds like a bit of hyperbole. But being unable to follow it, I don’t know.
It doesn’t happen like it did in the Age Of Sail, where ships hulls were made of wood, at least not usually - but it still sort of happens. What is usually meant by that phrase for a modern steel ship is that the entire ship is scoured by fire to the point where nothing inside the hull or superstructure is left untouched or usable and only the parts below the waterline (and not even all of those) are even vaguely surviving as the water on the hull provides some relief from radiated heating. The basic hull and superstructure are still there (usually) but everything inside is gone - and due to heating the hull may no longer be safe to reuse.
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