Navy Question....

[AJMD429]

How come they can’t put out the fire on the USS Bonhomme...?

An article on OANN said “it might burn down to the water-line..."

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One would think a military ship might be a bit more fireproof.....???

Plus, it’s not like they’re out in the middle of the ocean without any resources. They’re in the middle of a shipyard...!

[Ray]

Deleted.

[Sixgun]

That's mind boggling....sure wouldn't have worked too good during ww2........you would think the military has everything figured out so what's that mean.....if a foreign enemy hits a ship with a single incendiary artillery round the ship has to be abandoned?

There's got to be more to it.---6

[Ray]

Deleted.

[TraderVic]

Also, that class of ship carries aircraft, so you have a large amount of petroleum and lubricants......besides the ordnance.
Ships are most vulnerable to catch fire when in a repair status because of the kind of work being done.
The ship was not in dry dock, but did have a reduced crew because it was being repaired and updated.

[Sixgun]

That's mind boggling....sure wouldn't have worked too good during ww2........you would think the military has everything figured out so what's that mean.....if a foreign enemy hits a ship with a single incendiary artillery round the ship has to be abandoned?

There's got to be more to it.---6

WW II era ship's lagging was rock wool sheathed in asbestos cloth and plastered with parging containing asbestos fibers. Lot less to burn back then. You've heard of asbestos ? Darned good stuff if you did not have to breath the dust.

Putting it out before it really gets started and compartmentation is the answer. That class of ship (or any of the gator freighters) has large open spaces that hinders confining and smothering a blaze.

A weekend duty section damage control party is only one quarter or one third of the crew and is not quite enough for conflagrations, infernos and explosions. By the time the civilian bomberos arrived, it was really hot.

And yes.....there is more to this than we know.....I suspect contraband and unsecured ordnance (boom-booms) cached by some numbskulled jarheads.

Thanks Ray. Learn something new everyday......even if it does not concern me, I like to know......must have been hell for those ww2 vets on the ships, and well, anywhere for that matter.---6

[piller]

If it gets hot enough, steel certainly does burn. Have any of you ever watched someone use a cutting torch on quarter inch steel and after getting it going they shut off the acetylene and just keep on cutting? I have. It takes a lot of heat to start, but once it starts, it burns really hot. Then there is probably some magnesium in there somewhere. Aluminum burns, too. Once the metal catches on fire, it is difficult to put out. You must do something to remove all the oxygen suddenly and then cool it rapidly.
Boots and Coots might be able to figure it out because they learned from Red. No one was better than Red at putting out the impossible fires.

[Blaine]

World Trade Center....

[Ray]

Deleted.

[Larkbill]

I knew one of my blackshoe shipmates would have the answers. Thanks for your insights.

Many years since I was even a lowly airdale (my Dad, a WWII Signalman, refused to call me a sailor) so I remember little of what went on on The Boat. (sorry, old habits)

So is this a new Bonnie Dick or the old one converted? I was on the old one in Jacksonville once to retrieve gear for a friend in one of our squadrons.

Makes me almost sick to see Navy folks in harms way like this.

[AJMD429]

It makes sense - fuel, lubricants, then plastics and rubber, and finally magnesium and aluminum, then steel....

Too bad they couldn't just temporarily sink the ship then raise it, although from what I've seen the magnesium would still burn, and there might be quite a bit of that around.

Still, like someone posted above - it seems like one lucky incendiary hit during combat, and the whole aircraft carrier would be lost....

[Bruce Scott]

'Significant progress' made against fire on Navy ship in San Diego

" . . . possible the fire could be extinguished in the next 24 hours."

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/14/us/b ... index.html

[jeepnik]

Smothering by compartmentalizing the fire works. Even in large spaces there is only so much oxygen. I've done it, and I wasn't in the Navy. Here's the deal, in WW II it wasn't unknown to close crew members in a space to kill the fire. And the crew members. Do that today and between the bad press, criminal prosecution and civil suits it would be the end of every officer involved.

[Bruce Scott]

4-day blaze on USS Bonhomme Richard extinguished, Navy says

The fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard in San Diego Harbor has been extinguished, ending one of the worst infernos to rip through a U.S. warship outside of combat in recent years, the Navy announced Thursday.

“All known fires have been extinguished aboard USS Bonhomme Richard,” Rear Adm. Philip E. Sobeck said in a statement.


https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-new ... navy-says/

[Malamute]

The reason it spread so badly and was so hard to put out is the onboard fire suppression system was down for repairs. It has halon gas suppression system, it was shut down for work, like the rest of the ship.

its also possible that due to the major overhaul work being done, that the doors that were either normally shut, or could be to isolate the fire, couldnt. Hoses, cords and various things used for work may have interfered.

https://www.google.com/search?ei=Qw8RX6 ... CAw&uact=5

[piller]

Halon gas works well for fire suppression. Sounds as if it was just a combination of several things out of the ordinary all at once which made the fire so bad.

[Rusty]

I see that, I have a friend that works in a large computer center. They use halon for their fire suppression system. He told me that every new employee is told what to do in case of a fire... GET OUT! The Halon replaces the oxygen and will kill the fire or anyone left behind.

[earlmck]

I knew one of my blackshoe shipmates would have the answers. Thanks for your insights.

So is this a new Bonnie Dick or the old one converted? I was on the old one in Jacksonville once to retrieve gear for a friend in one of our squadrons.

This Bonhomme is the newer one, a smaller critter than the old one that you'd have been on which was a full-sized attack carrier, CVA 31 that saw action in waters off Viet Nam. I'm assuming here you didn't get to visit the really old one that Captain Jones skippered.

[jeepnik]

I see that, I have a friend that works in a large computer center. They use halon for their fire suppression system. He told me that every new employee is told what to do in case of a fire... GET OUT! The Halon replaces the oxygen and will kill the fire or anyone left behind.

Halogenated agents do displace some of the oxygen. But they also interrupt the chemical chain reaction that takes place in a fire. That is why they will work in open areas. If you hit a fire in the open it will knock it down much faster than you can imagine.

The problem with them is that they have no cooling effect. If oxygen gets back to very hot material it may be above the auto ignition point and start to burn again.

In WWII most ships used plain old sea water and maybe mechanical foam. Both work well enough but create a mess, especially with electrical equipment.

Once AFFF(Aqueous Film Forming Foam, thank you 3M) came out the military started moving to it it worked better but was still messy and water was really hard on the newer more sensitive electronics. The USAF was still using both mechanical and AFFF in the early 70’s but it was fast disappearing.

Halogenated agents have been around a long time. Some may remember carbontetrachloride. But there was also chlorobromomethane. Both worked but were really hard on humans that breathed it. They are highly corrosive and can burn your eyes severely.

Also in the early to mid 70’s newer halogenated agents came out. They were named Halon with a number suffix that denoted its chemical composition. Much less corrosive thus better for electronics. Leaving little residue.

Thise early halons have been improved upon in the last 40 to 50 years.

As mentioned the fire took hold due to open hatches and the suppression system being down. But the Navy must have changed it’s policies sense I worked at a shipyard. If the systems were down a full complement of DC people were on board. And the entire system was usually not shut down. Just the effected spaces.

As you can see the fire burned through the deck. Once that happens on any structure it’s self ventilated and the burn through acts just like a chimney. At this point you need th go old school and use copious amounts of water to put the fire out and keep it out by cooling materials below their auto ignition temperature.

There’s a lot more it to this but you get the idea.

[TraderVic]

When each of my two ships went into drydock, prior to each occurrence the crew had to off load all ordnance, which was not pleasant. One drydock was in Sasebo, Japan and another drydock was in Subic Bay, P.I. This was in the early 70's, damage control drills were run around the clock 24/7 and it was relentless, to the point it upset everyone off, but there was a reason. Because of the nature of the repairs, a ship was more likely to catch fire while taking on repairs than any other time.
I remember two LPH's that I would see in Subic Bay. They were the old small carriers that carried helos and something like 1000 marines. One was the Iwo Jima and I've forgotten the name of the other one. During my two tours over there I took hundreds of slides with my 35mm camera and I know I have a few of these old ships.
Interesting info on the newer fire suppression systems mentioned above. It will be interesting to hear more about the Bonomme Richard after they're done investigating what happened and cleaning up the mess.

[Larkbill]

I knew one of my blackshoe shipmates would have the answers. Thanks for your insights.

So is this a new Bonnie Dick or the old one converted? I was on the old one in Jacksonville once to retrieve gear for a friend in one of our squadrons.

This Bonhomme is the newer one, a smaller critter than the old one that you'd have been on which was a full-sized attack carrier, CVA 31 that saw action in waters off Viet Nam. I'm assuming here you didn't get to visit the really old one that Captain Jones skippered.

Well, my grandkids think I could have, but I was on CVA 31 in 1973 so it was all steel. Good to see they have recycled the historic name again.

[piller]

Now I understand why they had not yet begun to fight the fire.

[earlmck]

Now I understand why they had not yet begun to fight the fire.