This was not a Coast Guard fire. In fact it was not a normal Navy fire.
Blaze continues to rage on USS Bonhomme Richard nearly 24 hours after the fire; nearly 60 injured
- Thread starter Nitt1300
- Start date
As a four time graduate of USN Firefighting School in various locations, the Class A fires (bedding, clothing, paper, all kinds of consumables) were tough because they could smolder and reflash. They also produce a lot of smoke and its hard to find the source or sources of the fire.
Your point on fire watches is spot on. As I recall, if there was welding/cutting going on in a space, there were up to six different potential fire watches: above, below, all four adjacent walls. With reduced manning and holiday routine, there probably weren't enough people around to maintain an adequate fire watch. So the job falls to the most junior person - probably a roving fire watch.
And then there's the whole coordination thing. So you've got a Chief Yeoman standing OOD watch on the quarterdeck, Yard Worker A comes up to him/her with a piece of paper and says we've been authorized to start TIG welding an isolated fuel line in the hangar deck. Chief looks at the paper, sees it was signed off by the DCA/EO three days ago and says go ahead. Ship's company/DCA/EO tries to coordinate with the yard worker's boss (who may be federal employees or outside contractors).
Burning rubber smell tells me there's all kinds of USMC vehicles and aircraft tires burning. Hopefully the ammo was offloaded.
I also wonder if the fire hit one or more pyrotechnic lockers.
Finally, you wonder about an Oriskany-type event. This was an accident during OPS in the GOT where a sailor accidentally lit off a flare and then panicked and threw it back into the locker and dogged down the door. BOOM. Ensuing fire killed around 50 and injured over a hundred. Untrained personnel can make a nominally bad situation into a disaster.
Whatever the causes, I wouldn't be looking for promotions for the CO/XO/EO/DCA anytime soon. Another bad mark for the USN.
Excellent post @Rick76. Sorry I forgot that you are also a USN Veteran.
I had the opportunity to go TAD to the Repair Locker Leader school at Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Super outstanding course - IIRC it was two weeks, maybe three. We learned fire theory, every single piece of equipment and how to use it, and them fought fires on the pad and did patching, plugging, shoring, dewatering, you name it.
DC was an immense advantage for us over the Japanese in WWII. We could take withering hits to ships and stay in the fight, while if you got a decent fire going on an IJN carrier, they were goners. By all rights, FORRESTAL should have been a total loss - thanks to the effort and sacrifice of the crew, she got back under her own power. Learn or Burn, baby.
I did firefighting school at Philly too. Did a week of firefighting at Treasure Island. Also Norfolk and Newport (including the DC simulator Buttercup).
Fond memories of the Buttercup where you learned to patch pipes, bulkheads, drains, etc in freezing cold water up to your chest. Worst of all was the vertical pipe with a valve wheel attached that was about three feet off the deck right in the middle of the space. So as you stumbled around with a 15 degree list in freezing cold water up to your chest, you invariably ran into the submerged vertical pipe and the valve wheel got you right in the nuts. The instructors loved it.
Fond memories of the Buttercup where you learned to patch pipes, bulkheads, drains, etc in freezing cold water up to your chest. Worst of all was the vertical pipe with a valve wheel attached that was about three feet off the deck right in the middle of the space. So as you stumbled around with a 15 degree list in freezing cold water up to your chest, you invariably ran into the submerged vertical pipe and the valve wheel got you right in the nuts. The instructors loved it.
I had a buddy who was on the Forrestal when she burned. It wasn't pretty.
Post Script on Damage Control Training in the Buttercup.
When the instructors gave you a really tough problem (with all kinds of leaks and bomb holes open and torrents of water gushing in), the smaller women in the training class had trouble keep their heads above water. However, with water soaked shirts and freezing water, there were some other bennies to keep you interested. Of course, that same freezing cold water gave the women the chance to rag us about "shrinkage". All in a days work in the USN.
Haze Gray and Underway. (Except these days I think it should be Haze Gray, Overextended and Undertrained).
When the instructors gave you a really tough problem (with all kinds of leaks and bomb holes open and torrents of water gushing in), the smaller women in the training class had trouble keep their heads above water. However, with water soaked shirts and freezing water, there were some other bennies to keep you interested. Of course, that same freezing cold water gave the women the chance to rag us about "shrinkage". All in a days work in the USN.
Haze Gray and Underway. (Except these days I think it should be Haze Gray, Overextended and Undertrained).
@Nit1300 and @Rick76 - Nit you were a QM and Rick I don't know what your rate was - from an enlisted man's perspective on training -
IMO the best possible training you could get was underway actually DOING stuff. Everything from shooting small arms to running small boats to security alerts to throwing Oscar overboard and letting the rescue swimmer go get him to going to GQ. You know, NAVY STUFF.
There's nothing to stop the OOD from getting the bridge team into the action. I didn't need anybody's say-so to do a loss of steering drill or a jammed rudder drill. And I learned little things like Morse and how to read flashing light or do my own weather observations. I would shoot sun lines or stars with the QM and compare my fix with QM1's or the XO's and see how close I got. People are happy to help you if you show some interest in them and their jobs.
It has to start at the top though. The CO used to drive us nuts by constantly doing gun shoots (5", CIWS and .50-cal right after reville). But the CO and XO and SWO all were behind underway hands on training - that filtered down to the bridge watches and to the other department heads.
Like the automated Nav system on the BURKE-class which I know nothing whatsoever about. Obviously the watch standers need to know everything about it and how to shift control between stations and emergency procedures and all that. So nobody knows. BMC, maybe he just came from a gator and never saw it before. That's fine - but you gotta learn. If you have some new important gizmo that the CO/XO/Ops Boss or whoever doesn't know how to use it to the max, then the Captain has to pick up the phone and call the Squadron and have them send over LT or OSC or ET1 or whoever the hell and teach them. And you don't let him leave until the right people now know ALL about it. What's the Commodore going to say? No?
Then SWO and First Looie and BMC get some coffee and write a procedure. Then you train on the procedure and do drills on it every time you are underway. After a couple weeks, now everybody knows how to use the gizmo.
Anyway my point (minus the sea stories) is the ship should be at it's absolute PEAK state of training and readiness on the cruise coming home from deployment. What were you doing for the last six months?
Very curious to see what you guys think.
"In the Naval Service, men are in training for a lifetime to fight, perhaps for only a single day. Oh - but what a day"!
- Josephus K. Daniels
Secretary of the Navy
IMO the best possible training you could get was underway actually DOING stuff. Everything from shooting small arms to running small boats to security alerts to throwing Oscar overboard and letting the rescue swimmer go get him to going to GQ. You know, NAVY STUFF.
There's nothing to stop the OOD from getting the bridge team into the action. I didn't need anybody's say-so to do a loss of steering drill or a jammed rudder drill. And I learned little things like Morse and how to read flashing light or do my own weather observations. I would shoot sun lines or stars with the QM and compare my fix with QM1's or the XO's and see how close I got. People are happy to help you if you show some interest in them and their jobs.
It has to start at the top though. The CO used to drive us nuts by constantly doing gun shoots (5", CIWS and .50-cal right after reville). But the CO and XO and SWO all were behind underway hands on training - that filtered down to the bridge watches and to the other department heads.
Like the automated Nav system on the BURKE-class which I know nothing whatsoever about. Obviously the watch standers need to know everything about it and how to shift control between stations and emergency procedures and all that. So nobody knows. BMC, maybe he just came from a gator and never saw it before. That's fine - but you gotta learn. If you have some new important gizmo that the CO/XO/Ops Boss or whoever doesn't know how to use it to the max, then the Captain has to pick up the phone and call the Squadron and have them send over LT or OSC or ET1 or whoever the hell and teach them. And you don't let him leave until the right people now know ALL about it. What's the Commodore going to say? No?
Then SWO and First Looie and BMC get some coffee and write a procedure. Then you train on the procedure and do drills on it every time you are underway. After a couple weeks, now everybody knows how to use the gizmo.
Anyway my point (minus the sea stories) is the ship should be at it's absolute PEAK state of training and readiness on the cruise coming home from deployment. What were you doing for the last six months?
Very curious to see what you guys think.
"In the Naval Service, men are in training for a lifetime to fight, perhaps for only a single day. Oh - but what a day"!
- Josephus K. Daniels
Secretary of the Navy
@Fox Chapel Lion
I don't know how to compare my experience with what today's sailors do (honestly I don't really know what today's sailors do), but I agree- DOING it has no substitute. I was lucky to have a navigator who was willing to teach, so I had a ton of OJT from him. We were also always short handed, which gave me the opportunity to stand QMOW watches underway before I went to QM school in Orlando. I served under three Captains, all were old school mustangs- tough but fair- and drilling us all the time. I also got to know and respect a couple of our Chiefs- those dudes knew EVERYTHING and if you were smart enough to listen to them it made life easier while you got smarter. My only regret is we never had a QMC, I bet I could have learned a lot more from one.
I don't know how to compare my experience with what today's sailors do (honestly I don't really know what today's sailors do), but I agree- DOING it has no substitute. I was lucky to have a navigator who was willing to teach, so I had a ton of OJT from him. We were also always short handed, which gave me the opportunity to stand QMOW watches underway before I went to QM school in Orlando. I served under three Captains, all were old school mustangs- tough but fair- and drilling us all the time. I also got to know and respect a couple of our Chiefs- those dudes knew EVERYTHING and if you were smart enough to listen to them it made life easier while you got smarter. My only regret is we never had a QMC, I bet I could have learned a lot more from one.
Couldn't agree with you more, Fox. Train. Train. Train. And then cross train. And then train some more.
I was in O Gang. When I got to my ship (a large gator with a four striper CO on his way to a carrier command), there wasn't much of a training program. We were going into harm's way and according to the Watch Quarter and Station Bill, I was supposed to be one of the Assault Boat Officers, the Landing Officer, Shore Party Officer, etc. I never received any small arms training after OCS until the night before I was supposed to take a bunch of Marines into Quang Tri on one of our LCM-8 boats. At least they took us to the flight deck and showed us how to use a submachine gun (didn't let us fire, it though). We would have been dead meat if the VC or NVA attacked us.
Eventually, a couple other JOs and myself went to the OPS boss and proposed a more formalized training program, which was implemented.
I've been emailing back and forth with some of my old shipmates about the recent spate of mishaps and readiness of Navy JOs these days. When I graduated from OCS, my classmates and I could step on just about any Navy ship and be a conning officer after 19 weeks of intensive Navy training. NROTC guys needed a little REFTRA since they hadn't done any serious shipboard training since their junior year middie cruises. So they generally went to a three week OOD school to refresh. USNA guys hardly ever went directly to sea - they all went nuke power or flight school.
By the 1980's, OCS/NROTC/USNA had replaced so much basic seamanship and watch officer standing with touchie feelie courses that they had to implement a 26 week Surface Warfare Officer School (SWOS) to reteach what JO's should know when they step on a ship.
From what I understand, by the early 2000's, even SWOS had become touchie feelie so that SWOS grads were coming on ships unprepared. My friend's son is a Navy pilot. He says the Navy is more political than ever today.
Parents across America send their boys and girls to the USN and eventually to ships with the understanding that the officers won't put their kids' lives in danger. I'm not sure the USN fulfills its end of the bargain. Even in my day, when certain officers were on the bridge, I slept right next to my life jacket.
I was in O Gang. When I got to my ship (a large gator with a four striper CO on his way to a carrier command), there wasn't much of a training program. We were going into harm's way and according to the Watch Quarter and Station Bill, I was supposed to be one of the Assault Boat Officers, the Landing Officer, Shore Party Officer, etc. I never received any small arms training after OCS until the night before I was supposed to take a bunch of Marines into Quang Tri on one of our LCM-8 boats. At least they took us to the flight deck and showed us how to use a submachine gun (didn't let us fire, it though). We would have been dead meat if the VC or NVA attacked us.
Eventually, a couple other JOs and myself went to the OPS boss and proposed a more formalized training program, which was implemented.
I've been emailing back and forth with some of my old shipmates about the recent spate of mishaps and readiness of Navy JOs these days. When I graduated from OCS, my classmates and I could step on just about any Navy ship and be a conning officer after 19 weeks of intensive Navy training. NROTC guys needed a little REFTRA since they hadn't done any serious shipboard training since their junior year middie cruises. So they generally went to a three week OOD school to refresh. USNA guys hardly ever went directly to sea - they all went nuke power or flight school.
By the 1980's, OCS/NROTC/USNA had replaced so much basic seamanship and watch officer standing with touchie feelie courses that they had to implement a 26 week Surface Warfare Officer School (SWOS) to reteach what JO's should know when they step on a ship.
From what I understand, by the early 2000's, even SWOS had become touchie feelie so that SWOS grads were coming on ships unprepared. My friend's son is a Navy pilot. He says the Navy is more political than ever today.
Parents across America send their boys and girls to the USN and eventually to ships with the understanding that the officers won't put their kids' lives in danger. I'm not sure the USN fulfills its end of the bargain. Even in my day, when certain officers were on the bridge, I slept right next to my life jacket.
@Nit1300 and @Rick76 thanks a bunch for your thoughts especially since we all served 8-10 years apart so we each saw different things on different ships.
I'll try to make my final point on this with one more sea story. We had a Change of Command and my last Captain came on board. We were in 4-section watches which was very nice indeed.
For the first two weeks the Captain was in the pilot house CONSTANTLY looking over your shoulder and asking all kinds of questions. It was like having my SWO Board again every damn watch. Highly annoying.
Then a new watchbill comes out and we're back in three sections. Two LT's including me and a JG. The fourth guy just disappeared.
Only later did I figure out that CAPT L was as far from a micromanager as it was possible to be. He just needed to find out who were his guys and who weren't. You never saw him again unless you needed him - he was off doing Captain things. It was actually better being in three sections and now when you take the watch, we're not way out of station and everything is not all hosed up.
Nobody starts off knowing nothing, but you gotta learn and you gotta have at least a bit of motivation. Listen to your watch team - these petty officers (let alone the Chiefs) have done more watches and passed more advancement exams and know more about their jobs than you do. These guys have gone thru REFTRA in Gitmo which I never did. Let them help you. The Officer is supposed to be the decision maker - but to make solid decisions you need to have quality information, which comes from the OS's in Combat, the QM's, Signalmen, lookouts etc. Little things like making sure the lookout has water, coffee, foul weather gear - help the BMOW take care of his guys. Then everything is so much better and the watch runs tight.
Finally I think Surface Warfare for junior officers is just hitting qualifications with unrealistic timeframes. I believe the initial tour now is 24 months each on two different ship types. And you better get your water wings on the first ship. That is just not enough time. Maybe on the old KNOX-class (wonderful ships) which was comparatively simple. But not a CG or a BURKE-class, there's just too much to learn. To see an ENS with a SWO qual to me is insane. Dude gets commissioned, goes to SWOS which for me was about 16 weeks, couple weeks leave, follow on school for Comms or engineering or whatever . . . how do you get sufficient experience and see enough and do enough to POSSIBLY be a competent Fleet OOD in a year or a little over? It's button pushing and the result is a shallow-water-only SWO. It took me two years once I came aboard after my schools, but by then I did enough UNREPS and target angles and restricted vis and plane guard and flight quarters and anchoring and close CPA's and all the usual so I more or less had a clue.
Otherwise, welcome aboard USS FITZGERALD. I relieve you Sir.
EXTREMELY informative and educational posts guys, thank you!
Unlike oh so many of yours!
They are doing this in 220 AND 221EXTREMELY informative and educational posts guys, thank you!
I heard the admiral say that there was no ordnance on the ship, so they probably really lucked out.
I had an inport fire one night after taps when I was CDO. A sailor had stored his seabag in an overhead in the carpenter shop. Unfortunately, either he put it right next to an exposed light bulb or it shifted there. It started to smoke and filled the whole shop with smoke. An alert sounding and security watch noticed it and the duty fire party put it out. A serious fire in the carpenter shop could have gotten out of control in a hurry. Dodged the bullet on that one.
I had an inport fire one night after taps when I was CDO. A sailor had stored his seabag in an overhead in the carpenter shop. Unfortunately, either he put it right next to an exposed light bulb or it shifted there. It started to smoke and filled the whole shop with smoke. An alert sounding and security watch noticed it and the duty fire party put it out. A serious fire in the carpenter shop could have gotten out of control in a hurry. Dodged the bullet on that one.
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Paraphrase of a fantastic line from Mr. Mom / apropos when you, as an observer, have no clue what people are talking aboutCT - I have no clue what you meant!
damage report- not good
US Navy’s top officer reveals grim new details of the damage to Bonhomme Richard
WASHINGTON — A series of explosions and a 1,200-degree inferno damaged 11 of the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard’s 14 decks, according to a summary of the damage by the U.S. Navy’s top officer, which was obtained by Defense News.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday, in a letter to the service’s admirals and master chiefs, said the fire caused “extensive damage” to the ship.
“There is fire and water damage, to varying degrees, on 11 of 14 decks,” Gilday wrote. “With the flight deck as a reference, I walked sections of the ship 5 levels below and had the opportunity to examine the superstructure.
“The island is nearly gutted, as are sections of some of the decks below; some perhaps, nearly encompassing the 844 ft length and 106 ft beam of the ship ([Naval Sea System Command’s] detailed assessment is ongoing). Sections of the flight deck are warped/bulging.”
The Bonhomme Richard fire deals a blow to the Navy’s designs in the Indo-Pacific
The letter does not address one of the key questions in the wake of the fire: What will become of the ship? The Navy has a long history of reviving its damaged ships as it did with the destroyers Fitzgerald and McCain, and Congress is usually willing to float the money. But it’s unclear if the Navy will want to invest what will likely be hundreds of millions of dollars into a 22-year-old ship. After a 2012 fire onboard the attack submarine Miami, the Navy determined the roughly $700 million price tag was too steep to justify.
The fire on the Bonhomme Richard broke out the morning of July 12 while it was pierside in San Diego, California, undergoing maintenance. The blaze was aided by wind and explosions, Gilday wrote.
“While response from the crew and federal firefighters was rapid, preliminary reports indicate there were two main factors that contributed to the intensity, scope, and speed of the fire,” Gilday wrote. “First was wind that fueled the fire as the vehicle storage area leads to the well deck, which opens to the air at the stern gate. The second were the explosions, one in particular, reportedly heard about 13 miles away.
“The explosions, some were intense, and the uncertainty of their location and timing, led to a situation, that might have been under control late Sunday night, but expanded into a mass conflagration, spreading quickly up elevator shafts, engine exhaust stacks, and through berthing and other compartments where combustible material was present.”
In the letter, Gilday praised the work of Bonhomme Richard’s crew, as well as the hundreds of sailors who rushed to the scene, many without orders to do so. Several dozen sailors and civilian firefighters were hospitalized, most with smoke inhalation and heat injuries.
“There were Sailors from across the San Diego waterfront who responded to this fire — hundreds of them; many without receiving direction to do so,” Gilday wrote. “Every single fire team was led by BONHOMME RICHARD Sailors — no question, this was THEIR ship and they would walk point on every firefighting mission. Most had to be ordered … and re-ordered … to go home at some point and get some rest.
“I also met with the air crews of HSC-3; the aerial bucket brigade who dropped nearly 700K gallons of water on the blaze, day and night, from their helos. Their efforts were critical in helping get the fire under control; and they used their IR [infrared] capability to locate hot spots and vector fire teams to the source. Awe inspiring teamwork.”
Gilday closed the letter by pledging to learn from the fire and to draw on the positives from the situation.
“We will thoroughly look into and learn from the fire on BONHOMME RICHARD,” he wrote. “We will be committed to doing that together. I have no doubt about that.
“As we look hard into recent events — and revisit and assess what we’ve learned from previous incidents, I am relying on you to reinforce those aspects of our culture demonstrated on BONHOMME RICHARD and across the Navy right now. Focus on the positive attributes — that will overcome the negatives we want to avoid.”
US Navy’s top officer reveals grim new details of the damage to Bonhomme Richard
WASHINGTON — A series of explosions and a 1,200-degree inferno damaged 11 of the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard’s 14 decks, according to a summary of the damage by the U.S. Navy’s top officer, which was obtained by Defense News.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday, in a letter to the service’s admirals and master chiefs, said the fire caused “extensive damage” to the ship.
“There is fire and water damage, to varying degrees, on 11 of 14 decks,” Gilday wrote. “With the flight deck as a reference, I walked sections of the ship 5 levels below and had the opportunity to examine the superstructure.
“The island is nearly gutted, as are sections of some of the decks below; some perhaps, nearly encompassing the 844 ft length and 106 ft beam of the ship ([Naval Sea System Command’s] detailed assessment is ongoing). Sections of the flight deck are warped/bulging.”
The Bonhomme Richard fire deals a blow to the Navy’s designs in the Indo-Pacific
The letter does not address one of the key questions in the wake of the fire: What will become of the ship? The Navy has a long history of reviving its damaged ships as it did with the destroyers Fitzgerald and McCain, and Congress is usually willing to float the money. But it’s unclear if the Navy will want to invest what will likely be hundreds of millions of dollars into a 22-year-old ship. After a 2012 fire onboard the attack submarine Miami, the Navy determined the roughly $700 million price tag was too steep to justify.
The fire on the Bonhomme Richard broke out the morning of July 12 while it was pierside in San Diego, California, undergoing maintenance. The blaze was aided by wind and explosions, Gilday wrote.
“While response from the crew and federal firefighters was rapid, preliminary reports indicate there were two main factors that contributed to the intensity, scope, and speed of the fire,” Gilday wrote. “First was wind that fueled the fire as the vehicle storage area leads to the well deck, which opens to the air at the stern gate. The second were the explosions, one in particular, reportedly heard about 13 miles away.
“The explosions, some were intense, and the uncertainty of their location and timing, led to a situation, that might have been under control late Sunday night, but expanded into a mass conflagration, spreading quickly up elevator shafts, engine exhaust stacks, and through berthing and other compartments where combustible material was present.”
In the letter, Gilday praised the work of Bonhomme Richard’s crew, as well as the hundreds of sailors who rushed to the scene, many without orders to do so. Several dozen sailors and civilian firefighters were hospitalized, most with smoke inhalation and heat injuries.
“There were Sailors from across the San Diego waterfront who responded to this fire — hundreds of them; many without receiving direction to do so,” Gilday wrote. “Every single fire team was led by BONHOMME RICHARD Sailors — no question, this was THEIR ship and they would walk point on every firefighting mission. Most had to be ordered … and re-ordered … to go home at some point and get some rest.
“I also met with the air crews of HSC-3; the aerial bucket brigade who dropped nearly 700K gallons of water on the blaze, day and night, from their helos. Their efforts were critical in helping get the fire under control; and they used their IR [infrared] capability to locate hot spots and vector fire teams to the source. Awe inspiring teamwork.”
Gilday closed the letter by pledging to learn from the fire and to draw on the positives from the situation.
“We will thoroughly look into and learn from the fire on BONHOMME RICHARD,” he wrote. “We will be committed to doing that together. I have no doubt about that.
“As we look hard into recent events — and revisit and assess what we’ve learned from previous incidents, I am relying on you to reinforce those aspects of our culture demonstrated on BONHOMME RICHARD and across the Navy right now. Focus on the positive attributes — that will overcome the negatives we want to avoid.”
So now it has been determined the fire was arson. Do not name a suspect yet but a sailor has been questioned but not detained or charged.
www.navytimes.com
Arson suspected in Bonhomme Richard fire, defense official says
Arson is suspected as the cause of a July 12 fire that left extensive damage to the USS Bonhomme Richard docked off San Diego, and a U.S. Navy sailor was being questioned as a potential suspect, a senior defense official said Wednesday.
www.navytimes.com
Good posts during underway replenishment aboard the USS Hancock in the tonken gulf there was a collision and then an overcorrect and hawser was snapping and fuel lines etc were breaking .One of our crusaders was dumped on top of the deck of the tanker.I remember seeing red tagged rockets on the crusader.When the hawser snapped it sounded like gunfire.One of the deckhands was hit by some and suffered broken legs. The deck of the tanker was immediately covered in fog foam.
UNREPs were scary damn times. A hundred things can wrong in a hearbeat. In the GOT, we unrepped every two or three days. It became almost routine.
Check out this link: http://navy.memorieshop.com/Kawishiwi/Hancock.html
Is this the incident you were referring to?
I was on the helm for UNREPS- you could feel the difference being alongside a much bigger ship and it wasn't a time to lose concentration
Yes that's the one and just to add after steering was my general quarters position.Being an electrician I had a headset on and really hated being there.The noise from the Rams was the worst and there were so many hatches above us if we were hit we were never getting out of there.I also remember having a mid watch on one of the switchboards and just getting to bed when they sounded GQ.Ran down with shoes and skivies on and that was about it.Reporting for duty lol.
We were steaming back to SOCAL after attending the Portland (Oregon) Rose Fesival in company with a squadron of destroyers. Since we had a lot of fuel on board, we unrepped the cans. Just as we were finishing up our last unrep, we lost fires in one of our boilers and had to do the emergency breakaway.
Never did a real emergency breakaway, but practiced a few. I did do a 90 degree to port turn with the JFK to port of a fleet oiler and us to starboard of the oiler- all three ships still connected - that was interesting.
UPDATED: Navy Will Scrap USS Bonhomme Richard
By: Megan Eckstein
November 30, 2020 3:00 PM • Updated: November 30, 2020 4:07 PM
By: Megan Eckstein
November 30, 2020 3:00 PM • Updated: November 30, 2020 4:07 PM
Just reading over some of the previous posts about hawsers parting reminded me of the time on my ship when we were putting our LCM-8 boats into the water and one of the small lines parted and came back and hit one of the sailors in the face. It split his tongue and he had to get stitches. Since he had a split tongue, the sailors nicknamed him "Snake". You just can't beat military humor.
The same thing happened to my son’s tongue, but in his case, it happened when a drunk fraternity brother “accidentally “ hit him in the mouth with a beer can.
Navy decommissions ship destroyed by fire
The U.S. Navy on Wednesday decommissioned the USS Bonhomme Richard docked off San Diego nine months after flames engulfed it in one of the worst U.S. warship fires outside of combat in recent memory.
The Navy has arrested a sailor for arson for the fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard. Hopefully they aren't looking to scapegoat the sailor in a similar manner to the sailor they framed who was killed in the USS Iowa turret explosion all those years ago. What did it take, 10, 15 years to own up to that?
www.yahoo.com
Sailor Who ‘Hated’ Navy Torched $1.2B Assault Ship: Warrant
NCISA 20-year-old sailor with a grudge against the U.S. Navy and a failed attempt at becoming a Navy SEAL under his belt is accused of setting an amphibious assault ship ablaze and singlehandedly costing the Navy $30 million in damage.According to an NCIS search warrant affidavit obtained by The...
