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Bonhomme Richard, fate uncertain, would be one of largest ships Navy has lost
- tandr 6y agoCurious - why they did not pump out all the fuel from the ship? 3500t of fuel can a lot of ecological damage, be that spilled or burned.
- everybodyknows 6y ago1,000,000 gallons of fuel oil reportedly on the ship. And munitions.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoLast time I checked, the fire was controlled to be away from munitions and fuel. The stuff burning is pretty much anything that isn't metal scattered around the ship.
- cyberlurker 6y agoI'm obviously ignorant on this, but I would have expected anything short of munitions or fuel would not have caused this much damage on something as advanced as an aircraft carrier. The article mentioned that having fewer crew members made it harder to handle, but having 160 crew on board with fire and smoke detectors doesn't seem like it should have resulted in this. I hope to one day read the report on how this happened, I clearly have a lot to learn.
- peapicker 6y agoAccording to what I’ve read, the halon fire suppression was down for maintenance when the fire started.
- Element_ 6y agoApparently the fire suppression systems were locked out to facilitate the work and the doors/hatches had temporary cabling/hoses/vents running through them which prevented the crew from quickly locking down areas and control the spread.
- wil421 6y agoHave you ever been on a massive ship? 844 feet long and only 160 crew. How many rooms do you think the boat has? The ship is almost of the size of a Manhattan city block. Imagine a small skyscraper incased in a steel hull.
- modwest 6y agoIf the fire was in control it wouldn’t still be burning. This isn’t a forest fire where controlled burns can keep smoldering for days. If the fire was in control it wouldn’t still be burning. edit: Downvote all you want but if the fire was in control it wouldn’t still be burning.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago> McGrath described military shipyards in general as places “where an almost insane devotion to safety, good housekeeping and procedural compliance is required. It’s hard to imagine one or more of those things not being involved in the cause or spread of the fire.” It seems like the culture of safety and competence of the US Pacific Fleet is not what it was. Another example is the USS John McCain colliding with a freighter[0]. Then there was the whole Fat Leonard corruption scandal[1]. Maybe these are just anecdata and a side effect of greater attention. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_S._McCain_and_Alnic_MC_collision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_John_S._McCain_and_Alnic_M... 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Leonard_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Leonard_scandal
- steve76 6y agoWhether China did it or not, they're still getting the blame. Hypersonic missiles. Ballistic lasers. Cyber weapons. And other things that will make your skin crawl.
- galacticaactual 6y agoThe BHR is old as it is. I don't see it ever leaving port again after this.
- sterwill 6y agoMultiple news sources have called the ship "old" at 23 years, and more succeptable to fires because of its age. I mean, we knew about fire back in 1995 when the thing was designed (I was alive back then, and I knew about fire). I don't know anything about shipbuilding, but isn't the US Navy full of much older ships that aren't considered fire hazards? Is there something special about this one? It had a halon system (that didn't work).
- modwest 6y agoThe halon system was switched off because it was in maintenance.
- sterwill 6y agoI understand that, but why is a 23-year old ship considered old? USS Nimitz is nearing 50 years old. Wikipedia [1] lists a bunch of ships built in the 70s and 80s. USS Bonhomme Richard appears to be newer than half the ships there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_ships_of_the_United_States_Navy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_ships_of_the_U...
- modwest 6y agoIt’s not. Commenters on HN know jack shit about this topic but love commenting like they have any idea. It’s the thing HN is most known-for: non-experts speaking out of their ass with top-tier confidence. Edit: it’s not even halfway through its projected lifecycle.
- avs733 6y agohey now...most of us speak out our ass with top-tier confidence about things we ARE experts in. Don't limit us.
- 737min 6y agoDo we know if this was possibly not an accident, but a hostile act by one of our adversaries? Taking one of the 8 USNavy’d mini-carriers without a fight is certainly something China dreams about...
- khuey 6y agoThe USS Miami was destroyed in port by a fire set by a disgruntled maintenance worker. There are options other than accidents and acts of war.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y agoNo, that's a rather preposterous idea. What exactly would China gain from this that would be worth the possible blowback? The CCP's #1 priority is stability to enable continued economic development. That's why they advance their more adversarial goals via sustained incremental efforts. They view democracies as vulnerable as they so often change leadership, whereas they can sustain very long term goals. Life tends to be more banal than James Bond. The simple explanation here is that something went wrong and sparked a fire during maintenance work, likely welding, and because the ship was in dock with a bazillion service lines running through the hatches, the fire was able to spread to find fuel trivially. Based on a comment I read from one of the DC folks fighting the fire, they don't know the origin, but they do know it got into the fuel lines, which caused a minor explosion. The odds are pretty high they're just gonna have to let the fuel burn off.
- modwest 6y agoWhen I was deployed aboard Naval vessels in 2000 a hole was blown in the side of a ship in our group, the USS Cole. My real life includes attacks on US naval vessels that kill people and destroy equipment.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y agoOf course I know about the Cole. But this was not a bomb. There's a pretty clear difference in frequency of ships bombed in port vs ones that simply catch fire. The whole point of terrorism is to create a public spectacle and take credit for it. And of course, now we've shifted the goal posts yet again from "It was China!" to "It was terrorist!" with none of this changes in belief motivated by new information or evidence.
- davmar 6y agoanybody else having a hard time caring about this? we spend so much on the military and in the meantime threaten to defund schools that don't open. in fact, if i'm honest, there's a part of me that enjoys seeing this burn. not that i want any humans to be hurt at all, don't get me wrong, but can't we change our priorities?
- perl4ever 6y agoI don't understand. You have an issue with "spending so much", but you have a hard time caring about an event that's going to have a large cost?
- simlevesque 6y agoHe thinks we overvalue these things in our society and he does not view this as a huge loss. I'm sure he grasps that they will just buy a new one.
- pm90 6y agoMilitary funding is just something we will have to live with, regardless of any kind of social movement. The military is one the few institutions that enjoys Bipartisan support, there is also ample evidence that military funding keeps the American economy humming. Accidents such as this will always happen, regardless of the best safeguards in place; it is the cost of maintaining a large naval force. At the cost of defunding schools? Most certainly not. The US has enough to fund schools and the military; the lack of federal funding is purely political on the part of the current administration.
- dylan604 6y agoCongress: You have enough aircraft carriers. Navy: oh, really? ... Navy: Can we have funding for a replacement carrier?
- gorgoiler 6y agoIt is a cruel irony of Earth that our atmosphere is made up of such an odd mixture. It’s odd to think that air itself is outright dangerous. Four fifths of the fluid in which we live and breath ranges from inert to noble. The remaining fifth is one of the most dangerous, angry, reactive, poisonous gasses we know: Oxygen. It is crucial to life and yet at the same time is quite capable of partially or completely destroying everything we hold dear. Our tools, belongings, us, our homes, warships, forests, crops and savannahs. It needn’t even burn with a flame: most things will decay in its presence with or without spectacle. If one encountered a planet where almost everything was made of gelatinous gasoline, whose principle inhabitants were a form of highly evolved sentient matchstick that kept striking boards as pets, one might think them a little risk averse. Then of course you’d realize that life and society on this planet have evolved in such a way because they are neither unfortunate or insane enough to live on a world that’s blanketed in O₂. On a visit to this planet you explain to their ambassador about the atmosphere on your home world. She doesn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or faint in horror. The knowledge terrifies her and she takes deep methane breaths while stroking her phosphorous hands on tibbles-the-striking-board, trying to calm down. You decide it’s best not to further disturb her with stories of plate tectonics and the major cities, nuclear reactors, etc your people have built on fault lines, at sea level.
- rckoepke 6y ago> One fifth is the most dangerous, angry, reactive, poisonous gas we know. Obviously you're utilizing hyperbole here, but I'm assuming you're referring to oxygen's oxidative potential (really "standard reduction potential"), but other gases have significantly higher reduction potentials than oxygen. Fluorine and Chlorine cause bigger, hotter fires at conditions that would generally be considered "non-flammable" if oxygen were involved instead. They also corrode/rust things faster than oxygen does. Charts like [0] are misleading because they list the standard reduction potential of the monoatomic forms, which isn't realistic when most of these form diatomic gases (e.g. Cl2, O2, etc). Both fluorine and chlorine gases are more oxidative than oxygen. Chlorine has electron affinity of -2.4 eV and while O2 is -0.4 eV. 0: https://www.angelo.edu/faculty/kboudrea/periodic/trends_electronegativity.htm https://www.angelo.edu/faculty/kboudrea/periodic/trends_elec...
- scarier 6y agoFires on a ship can spread scarily fast, which is one reason sailors devote so much time underway to cleaning--I've heard anecdotal stories of at least one lethal fire spreading through a ship's ventilation system due to the amount of combustible stuff it sucked up. In port, a ship may be particularly vulnerable to this sort of thing, partially because fire boundaries that are normally closed while underway may be open to facilitate maintenance. Here's a diagram showing a rough LHD cross-section near the bottom of the page: https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/lhd-1.htm https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/lhd-1.htm The fire here broke out in the lower V, close to one of the ship's magazines but pretty far from a lot of the bulk fuel (although there are a number of fuel pipes in and around the area in order to facilitate fueling assault craft and ground vehicles, which may be contributing to the fire with residual fuel). Fortunately, even if there is a magazine in close proximity to the fire, it's likely well-protected, and unlikely to be full of ordnance. Furthermore, ordnance approved for shipboard operation has special thermal coating to reduce the likelihood of cook-off, which may be enough to protect it against the indirect heat of a fire on the other side of a bulkhead.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y agoI've read some comments by someone that's been on scene since the start as one of the DC teams. No ordinance is in the magazines. It's standard procedure to unloaded it at a pier specially designed for that task before extended port stays. The fire has definitely reach the fuel lines you mention, and they're sustaining the fire. The team my commenter was a part of was one of the first to try to push inside. They made it about 25 feet in. The floor was so hot their team leaders boots melted. The writer said he had to stand on a pile of hose to avoid the same problem. The heat pushed them back out after less than half an hour. His opinion was that there was little choice but to just let the fuel burn off.
- yingw787 6y agoI think this would be the first U.S. capital ship lost since WWII. It's also interesting that China, Russia, and now the U.S. have all lost carriers while undergoing construction / maintenaince in just the past few years: https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/12/europe/russian-carrier-fire-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/12/europe/russian-carrier-fire-i... https://www.forbes.com/sites/hisutton/2020/04/11/brand-new-chinese-aircraft-carrier-catches-fire/#44ab06cf7f4d https://www.forbes.com/sites/hisutton/2020/04/11/brand-new-c... Something to bond over, I guess. Dangerous work, and I hope everybody stays safe, better a carrier burns in peacetime than a life lost.
- vonmoltke 6y agoNeither of those was stricken.
- curionav 6y agoOne month ago, the French Navy lost the nuclear submarine "La Perle" meanwhile the ship was being maintained. The similarities with the "Bonhomme Richard" accident are striking.
- boomboomsubban 6y agoThis is just a guess, but I assume both are suffering crew shortages as a result of the pandemic, resulting in the excess trash that fueled the fire.
- stormdennis 6y agoAccording to Wikipedia, the Richard refers to"Poor Richard's almanac" a publication of Benjamin Franklin, who was US ambassador to France when John Paul Jones named the original Bonhomme Richard in his honour.
- walrus01 6y agoI'm surprised this article doesn't mention at all the Los Angeles class nuclear attack sub that was deliberately set on fire by a dockyard worker. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Miami_(SSN-755) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Miami_(SSN-755)
- ornxka 6y ago>Fury admitted to setting the 23 May fire by igniting some rags on the top bunk of a bunk room. He claimed to have started the fire to get out of work early.[10][11][12][13] On 15 March 2013 Fury was sentenced to over 17 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $400 million in restitution.[14] Wow, uh, that's a lot of money. Is this the poorest individual (by assets sans debts) in America? I can't imagine anyone being able to acquire personal debt on that scale by any other means.