Carrier Fire 'Entirely Preventable'

[SlightlyCatholic]

October 07, 2008
Virginian-Pilot

The May fire aboard the carrier George Washington that injured 37 Sailors, caused $70 million in damage and delayed the ship's forward deployment to Japan was "entirely preventable," according to the Pacific Fleet Commander in a final report.

Adm. Robert Willard faulted the ship's leadership for improperly handling the conditions that led to the fire. And he blamed inadequate firefighting training for the amount of time it took to locate and extinguish the fire.

Willard also aimed higher and questioned naval leaders in Hawaii, San Diego and Norfolk about "possible shortcomings" while the ship was undergoing training and about deficiencies that "appear to be systemic and may call for an overhaul" of carrier manning and training processes.

The George Washington left Norfolk for its new home port in Yokosuka, Japan, in April. On May 22, a fire began in one of the carrier's unmanned auxiliary boiler exhaust and supply uptake spaces. The blaze grew quickly, fed by large amounts of improperly stored hazardous materials.

It took the ship's leaders nearly eight hours to track down the source of the blaze, by which time the fire had spread across eight stories. Near its origin, the fire caused significant damage to the ship's structure, equipment and electrical cabling.

The crew fought the fire for 12 hours. Had it not been for training and equipment shortfalls, Willard wrote, the damage could have been much less.

The blaze was blamed on unauthorized smoking near flammable refrigerant oil that shouldn't have been there.

The ship's chief engineer had previously noticed the 300 gallons of oil, ordered its disposal and told his superiors, including the ship's executive officer, of the find, according to the report. Ninety gallons of the oil was improperly placed in the uptake space where the fire started and, the report continued, "senior leadership had allowed shipboard inspection processes to lapse to a point that HAZMAT could be improperly stowed within the ship with little likelihood of discovery."

The ship's commanding officer, Capt. David Dykhoff, and its executive officer, Capt. David Dober, were replaced. The report also recommended administrative and disciplinary actions for an additional two dozen officers and enlisted Sailors in the ship's HAZMAT, engineering and firefighting units.

The ship was diverted to San Diego for three months of repairs before continuing to Japan in late August to replace the carrier Kitty Hawk, which is to be decommissioned.

On a broader scale, the report called for a review of the entire carrier certification process and recommended that Fleet Forces, Naval Air Forces and Pacific Fleet commands increase outside inspections and demand more direct oversight from their type and strike group commanders regarding ship performance measures.

http://www.military.com/news/article/carrier-fire-entirely-preventable.html

[wukong]

In the Air Force we always try for bigger and better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teHsjwXTrcU

It was no 2Lt with a map that caused this.

The AF made a movie concerning the cause of this disaster titled, "How to stage a disaster." I have a VHS copy. If someone can convert it to digital, it would make a great Youtube.

[SlightlyCatholic]

That's pretty crazy...were you there when it happened?

[Javelin66]

I had a next door neighbor who was a Navy Warrant Officer specializing in damage control, firefighting, etc. He told me an interesting story about a fire on a carrier in port in Norfolk.

The alarms were going off, but they couldn't find the fire despite searching for hours. He isolated the area the fire was in and shut down the air circulation to those spaces, and the fire finally went out. After a detailed search they found that the fire had been caused by improper storage of incompatible chemicals in a locker. They had shifted during a training cruise, mixed, and started a chemical fire.

As the ships fire marshal (my term, I am not sure what his actual duty title was), Gene (my neighbor) had previouisly found the locker in routine inspections warned the OIC of that space several times. Finally he cited him in writing to the exec, but no one corrected the deficiency.

This particular space had something to do with the reactors, and the Reactor Officer was eventually relieved over it. Although no one died or was seriously injured, it caused a great deal of damage, exposed sailors to toxic chemicals , and cost several people their careers. And you wonder why I joined the Army.

[wukong]

That's pretty crazy...were you there when it happened?

No, This occurred in 1965 to the best of my knowledge. I'm a young guy unlike Hairy and was still wearing jammies with booties. I didn't get to SEA until 1972.

At Bien Hoa AB the aircraft were fully armed, fueled and parked wing to wing. What little revetting there consisted of stacked 500 and 1000 lb GP bombs and ammunition carts. These disasters always come back to poor leadership and short cuts with HAZMAT.

[dukesix]

The Navy has suffered a similar, if not a more horrific fate. On July 29th, 1967, the USS Forrestal (CV-59) caught fire after a 'zuni' rocket left it's pod underneath a parked F-4 Phantom. This was later attributed to a 'electronic anomaly'. The rocket hit a A-4 Skyhawk, that was preparing for launch. A 'snowball' effect of fuel, rockets, and bombs then ensued, causing a conflagration that would make a movie studio jealous. The heroic and tenacious crew of the Forrestal, combined with their extraordinary fire fighting abilities, prevented the carrier from blowing up completely and sinking to the bottom. But not before 134 sailors were killed, and 161 injured. Then LCDR John McCain was also close by, and had to literally leap for his life off his A-4 Skyhawk. From that point on, the Forrestal was often known as "'The Forest Fire'.

Dukesix

USS FORRESTAL (CVA-59)
When placed in commission on 01 October 1955, USS FORRESTAL was the first of the "super-carriers" and the largest warship ever constructed. She displaced almost 80,000 tons and was 1,076 feet long and 129 feet in beam at the waterline. When her air wing was embarked she had a complement of over 5,000 sailors and Marines, and her "main battery" consisted of 80 to 100 aircraft of various types. She was a formidable weapon of war.
FORRESTAL was home-ported on the East Coast and spent the first twelve years of her commissioned life serving with the 2nd and 6th Fleets. She departed Norfolk (Virginia) on 6 June 1967 for her first deployment to Vietnam with Carrier Air Wing 17 and about 80 aircraft embarked:

Attack Squadrons 46 and 106 with 24 A-4E SKYHAWK light bombers
Attack Squadron 65 with 12 A-6A INTRUDER all-weather bombers
Fighter Squadrons 11 and 74 with 24 F-4B PHANTOM fighter-bombers
Heavy Reconnaissance Squadron 11 (RVAH-11) with 6 RA-5C VIGILANTE recon aircraft
Airborne Early Warning Squadron 123 (VAW-123) with four HAWKEYE airborne control aircraft
Det 59, Heavy Attack Squadron 10 (VAH-10) with four KA-3B SKYWARRIOR tankers
Det 59, Helicopter Squadron 2 (HC-2), with several UH-2A SEASPRITE utility and ASW helicopters
A VAP-61 detachment of RA-3B SKYWARRIOR intelligence collection aircraft
FORRESTAL arrived on Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin on 25 July and immediately began combat operations. The first four days were routine; the fifth day, 29 July, was not.
The ship was preparing to launch a major strike and many fully fueled and armed aircraft were parked about the deck. At 10:52 AM a 5" ZUNI rocket accidentally fired from an F-4 Phantom parked on the starboard side of the ship and pointed inboard. The rocket impacted an armed A-4 Skyhawk (piloted by then-LCDR, now Senator, John McCain) parked on the port side.

The rocket's impact dislodged and ruptured the Skyhawk's 400-gallon external fuel tank and ignited the jet fuel which poured out. A 1000-pound bomb also fell to the deck, into the spreading pool of flaming jet fuel. Within 90 seconds the bomb "cooked off" and detonated. That explosion resulted in a chain reaction as the closely-packed aircraft were first engulfed in and then contributed to a massive fire with repeated high-order bomb detonations. The ship's "plat" cameras, mounted on the island and embedded in the deck itself, provided ample video coverage of the initial accident and the subsequent catastrophe.

The first responders were Repair Party 8, led by Chief Petty Officer Gerald Farrier, who can be seen in the plat tapes running toward McCain's Skyhawk immediately after the rocket strike. The fuel tank had already ruptured and burning fuel was spreading around the aircraft. Chief Farrier had, as his weapon against this blaze, a hand-held fire extinguisher. He had not yet reached the Skyhawk when the first detonation occurred . . . he simply disappeared in the blast. A number of air- and deck crew were trapped in the inferno; many died there, while others were able to escape to the deck-edge catwalks.

Outside the rapidly spreading fire, the flight deck crew immediately began an effort to contain the blaze. The on-deck firefighting crews rallied after the first explosion and attacked the fire, only to disappear in the second, and larger, round of explosions. The plat tapes show the decimated firefighters recruiting help from anyone in the vicinity, and these make-shift crews once again pressed into the growing inferno. The third round of detonations cleared the deck of men and fire-fighting gear, but within a minute more crewmen from the forward deck and below-deck areas had reconstituted fire-fighting teams and were working their way aft.


Over a dozen 1,000 and 500 pound bombs detonated within the first few minutes of the fire, punching holes through the 3" armor plating of the flight deck. Flaming fuel poured through those holes, into the working and berthing spaces on the O-3 level, then down into the aft hangar bay. Numerous smaller explosions occurred as lesser weapons, ranging from the Skyhawk's cannon ammunition to 5" rocket warheads, detonated.

Although it was 13 hours and more before the last fire was extinguished, FORRESTAL's crew did put it out ... but at the cost of 135 dead and hundreds more injured. FORRESTAL left Yankee Station under her own power, steaming to Subic Bay for temporary repairs before returning to Norfolk on 15 September 1967.

After shipyard repairs, USS FORRESTAL continued to serve, making many more deployments with the 2nd and 6th Fleets ... but she never again deployed to Vietnam. FORRESTAL was decomissioned on 11 September 1993 after 38 years of active service.