Submarine vet here. We take fires especially seriously onboard (for obvious reasons) and one of the first things we are trained on in our firefighting quals is "if you're not sure it's a fire, it is." Don't be afraid to call the casualty away if you have your doubts, because people being angry at you for "crying wolf" is better than losing the ship and potentially lives. Even if people are mad at you it will subside quickly, we understand that this is what we all were trained for and will praise you for being aware of your surroundings.
Yea, I've heard so many accounts from royal navy sailors. They take fire very very seriously! They have mock fire drills, hauling out fire hoses every single day, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day! Everybody is trained in firefighting, extensively drilled into them. First thing you do upon discovering a fire or smoke is, Shout "fire fire fire!", the next person near you starts yelling "fire fire fire" upon hearing you, this carries on until the yelling reaches someone to sound the general alarm (this takes a matter of seconds). this is broadcast across entire ship. From this point the ships firefighting teams are dispatched. People can stop yelling fire fire fire once the general alarm is raised. Smoke barriers are deployed, people with breathing apparatus are deployed, sealing doors and hatches, ensuring the smoke doesn't spread. Hoses are depolyed and support parties start turning up. later followed up by the containment parties. This goes on and on, people swapping out until the fire is out. Minor fires drill every day, Major fire drills about once a week. They take their job very very seriously. How on earth this incident on the Bonhomme Richard managed to get to the stage it got to is well beyond me.
I’m just a civilian, but I live in wildfire country, and basically have the same rule-of-thumb. It’s amazing how fast a small fire can turn into a conflagration that takes out whole towns, sometimes faster than they can be evacuated.
I am a retired USCG CPO with nine years of sea duty on their frigate sized ships. The CO is always, always, always solely responsible for everything involving his ship. This incident isn't the first time a command has placed blame on a junior enlisted sailor, in this instance an E-2. The deplorable incompetence up the chain of command resulted in billions of taxpayer dollars being wasted. Training videos alone don't prevent catastrophic failures.
It boggles my mind that the CO of LHD-6, nor the local FedFire commander, weren't running fire suppression drills regularly during the ship's overhaul.
To continue. Especially in this case as they had already lost a boat in similar circumstances. Aboard the Richard it seems that even the most basic first alarm mechanism (see smoke yell fire) wasn't dinned in.
The sailor that was found not guilty was also found not to have enough evidence to recommend the case go to a court martial to start with. The Commanding Officer of the ship insisted the case go to trial anyway. The entire case against the sailor was based on someone seeing him near the passageway that led to the ramp where the fire was 45 minutes after the fire was reported. Even the person who saw him wasn't sure where the sailor was coming from or going. He was just in the area. The CO of the ship was allowed to remain in his position until the ship was officially decommissioned and then he retired. He was found derelict in many ways but his punishment was a letter being placed in his record. I guess it would be more difficult to get a promotion during retirement.
I am assuming the issues with threads and radios were not a factor. I know when I was a Federal FF they had adapters to connect to the system, and did walk troughs to familiarize the ship layout and fire fighting systems. Communication to the attacking crew should have been done as it would have saved them more time that was already wasted.
The Navy times article about this was if anything, more brutal. The ship's motto even was not safe from ridicule, as "We have Yet to begin to fight" describes the captain's attitude towards his ship being on fire. The conclusion of the article pointed out that there was a fire on board the Bonhomme's sister ship, the USS Essex the very same day, the entire reason we are talking about the USS Bonhomme Richard and not the Essex is that the Sailors aboard the Essex were not idiots. And indeed once they had done their job, they tried to save the Bonhomme as well. Well done, crew of the Essex!
I would be pissed if I were from the Essex and a part of the FFE team, especially primary. "Guys, we know you're tired as shit from overheating and fighting with a pressurized hose, but Bonhomme can't get their shit together! Get over there, and relieve them!"
The US Navy never apologized to the accused. Sub Brief has really good videos that go more in depth about the different reports, events, and agents involved in this case.
An excellent summary of how this went down, and a sober analysis of just how institutional and command failures can cause far more damage than enemy action. Also, good on you for not buying into the Navy's and BATFE's scapegoating of enlisted seamen. The seaman the judge advised against prosecuting at the end of September, as an aside, had a court martial (prosecution) ordered against him by the base admiral notwithstanding the judge's findings.
This was the most sickening problem. While yes, the sailor accused was considered a troublemaker, he was presumed guilty the whole time. They knew it was a problem with the leadership, but they didn't want to accept that responsibility. It sounded like most of the issues with the sailor were a failure of his NCOs and officers to mold him into a better sailor. I suppose this goes to show why you don't want to stick out in the military.
And just like with the USS Iowa turret explosion fallout, the more things change, the more the Navy seems to stay the same. After what happened with the Iowa and how the Navy came down on this guy so quickly as a suspect, I was seeing the same parallels instantly. Lo-and-behold they were extremely similar situations. Only, this time with the Bonhomme Richard, thank god no one was killed. That said, there was still a huge accident and immediately instead of trying to find out what actually happened and why the Navy and government tried to immediately find out who they could blame and try to make it look like the Navy wasn't at fault for anything. If you look at the investigation, it was a laughingstock. The ATF investigator found what he claimed to be a possible ignition site/source and... stopped looking for other potential ignition sources. Like, he saw that and just said, "Nope, we don't have to look any further for any other evidence. This is it." Despite the place where the fire originated on having tons of other things like lithium batteries, cardboard, machinery and vehicles that could spark, etc. That's... not how you do an investigation. The eyewitness account? Changed over time. Other suspects, including the guy that was searching about steel melting and stuff and they wrote him off because he was researching about dragons? Just discounted. They had their guy, no need to look at anyone or anything else! It wasn't an investigation. It was a witch hunt. One which the sole objective was to find someone to pin the blame on that would make the Navy look less incompetent. Only, in the end, it made the Navy look *_even more_* incompetent and even more pathetic in terms of leadership than it already did. ...Seriously, would it have been so terrible for the Navy to come out and say, "leadership was lacking and failed at all levels and negligence and complacency let this happen and the responsibility lies with us to prevent to from happening again"? I mean, sure, losing a $4 billion dollar amphibious assault ship because "whoopsie, it was clusterfcuk and we didn't do our jobs correctly" is a bitter thing to have to come to terms with... But it's better than having it happen and just trying to pin the blame on someone innocent and ignore the actual problem - which is what the Navy did this time. Again. They say the first step to dealing with a problem is admitting there is one int he first place. In that case, the Navy failed once again as well.
@@stormycatmink "It sounded like most of the issues with the sailor were a failure of his NCOs and officers to mold him into a better sailor." Looking at how many people were disciplined in the aftermath of the Bonhomme Richard and what their failures were... honestly, the sailor in question was the least of the Navy's problems. The guy was not happy with the Navy and was "disgruntled," sure... But from all indications he was also actually doing his job. Which is more than could be said for most of the crew in leadership positions on the Bonhomme. Also, I wish I knew where I saw it (swore it was in a SubBrief video on the incident, but I don't see it), but the conditions during that maintenance period were absolute dogshit. Basically months on end of being in the ship, oftentimes in extreme heat with little or no ventilation doing the same tedious work day-after-day-after-day with no end in sight. Not saying that this guy was disgruntled because of that or it caused someone to start a fire, but... when you put sailors in that environment for that long and you start throwing around accusation of "being disgruntled," I would be more concerned with who *_WASN'T_* disgruntled. Like somehow that means something in this case.
@matchesburn To be fair to the Navy, there were two investigations. Despite the Navy's efforts to sabotage and restrict it, the command investigation was brutal and appropriately self-reflective... and then essentially buried in favor of NCIS/BATFE's witch hunt. It's worth noting, too, that this base's NCIS division was just coming off another scandal right when this happened. The "disgruntled" sailor was a BUDS washout who was doing literally everything in his power to get a second shot, because apparently BUDS has a 3-strike policy. I'm not in the Navy, so that might be wrong, but that certainly appears to be what the seaman in question believed. "I'm busting my butt to qualify, even going for extra certifications like rescue diver training," doesn't line up with, "I hate the Navy and am going to burn my PoD down."
A Wasp Class ship only cost a cool $1.98 Billion when adjusted for the 2020 Dollar. The cost to repair had a high end estimate of $3.8 Billion which is where this channel is getting its misleading figure. Why fix it when you can order 2 new ones for the estimated repair costs of 1?
If you are civilian, insist on touring vessels in your area, and discussing best attack methods with their crews. If you are already on vessels, please be the one that makes a point to invite the local civilian departments. Our maritime academy was able to save our training ship from a contractor caused fire. Our students did the work. We also made sure to pair every civilian firefighter from the nearby city each with their own student as a guide. The local department later coordinated future training with our school on our ship, when they realized how different the shipboard environment and tactics were.
I can tell you with personal experience there was not any lessons learned. We have a naval base and college in my mutual aid area and the information about how to respond to the naval base is still very limited. Even the federal firefighters on base do not have a hard and fast SOP about how to approach shipboard fires. Officers on board still believe that a fire on ship is best handled in their own damage control with the their own people. With that being said, having my own fire companies operate on a naval ship is suicide as we have 0 training on how to navigate a ship.
@@hihfty military bases with ships the size of a city should be obligated to put on training for all of the departments near them that could respond. Guess 4 billion dollars of damage isn't a big enough lesson. We will just have to wait till someone dies as a result, as usual in the fire service.
@@Zaiderr Absolutely!!! Unconscionable that even without guidance CO should involve local firefighters in a consolidated plan - chain of commands, necessary staged equipment, emergency response call-tree, etc. How come I can think,of this and more and Navy didn’t do it?
The "greatest military in the world"; 2022 Defense Budget = $737b. 2022 Navy budget is nearly as much as China's entire defense budget, and Russia's total is far less than this. This is what happens when you let imperialist mafia coke addicts and child predators run everything and let them build bases around the world to assert their will. Somehow, you end up with a baffling mess which can't function. I can't imagine why...
It's the fault of the Top Brass and the lack of implementation of basic fire standards. It's a good thing we're lowering our recruitment standards to fill our open slots...
As a former officer in a different navy, I watched this thing unfold in the news. I have no knowledge of the USN's approach to refits of this scale. I do understand how easy it is to let this kind of disaster creep up on you. Ships in refit are incredibly vulnerable to fire, for all the reasons explained and more, it is very easy to slide into a disaster. For this reason, it is a primary responsibility of the ships command team to be aware of what hazards are present. They must ensure that the remaining crew are equally aware, are trained, and absolutely sure of their responsibilities if they even suspect there is a fire, including being empowered to raise the alarm, how to react, what fixed firefighting resources are available, and how to conduct a timely attack on a fire. Frequent drills, with blunt critiques of the response; of the timeliness of the response; of the integration of external response teams; of the overall situational awareness maintained by leadership; and of the exercise outcomes are essential. This tragedy seems to me to be a direct result of failed leadership from the top down, with the "top" extending well above the level of C.O.
Absolutely. This was a CO level failure, though. This was all about a CO not accepting blame for his lack of attention, and I'd also blame the ship's CPO for not keeping up training. The XO for not keeping up with the situation. This was a direct failure on the part of the entire command staff of the ship. Also. An hour to get to the scene? A freaking hour? Where the hell was the captain that it took him an HOUR to get to his ship? I don't blame him for going home when he's in port. Who doesn't take every opportunity to go home? But it shouldn't have taken that long. Get out and run if traffic is bad.
Why weren't there automatic warnings alerting the sailors to the fire danger? All these radars and sonars and sensors to detect oncoming outside threats, but no sensors for what could damage a ship INSIDE it? Do these things not come with smoke detectors??
@@williamyoung9401 Lots of systems were offline for maintenance. Maintenance periods are the best time for a fire to get out of hand. Not a lot of people, alarm systems and fire suppression systems can be offline... But they should have doubled firewatch for just that reason, advised sailors to report EVERYTHING because of the possibility of systems being offline, and just be generally more aware of threats.
Iirc this isn’t the first time the navy blamed an enlisted man for a systemic leadership failure. The USS Iowa in the 1990s got improperly mixed powder bags for her guns,which where a mix of 1980s propellant and unstable 1940s propellant. During a test firing turret 2 had an explosion that killed all inside,and what did they blame? They blamed an enlisted man in the turret crew that died during the explosion.
"He did it because he was a bitter BUD/S drop" so is 95% of deck across the Navy but somehow this was never an issue before whole thing stunk of a hatchet job from day one
I was on LHD 7 when this happened. Complete embarrassment, fingers pointed in every direction thankfully no one was hurt but these Amphibs are more than capable of fighting fires. The 8010 NEEDS to be adhered to by GD NASCO, BAE, VIGOR etc. Shipyards are a huge part of the problem.
This is probably a good indicator of how leadership looks across the entire Navy, and other branches, currently. Any somewhat competent officer would have had enough ability to properly manage the situation until more senior Officers arrived. First day on watch or not. I'm also surprised that there weren't more senior officers in the general area who would run over to assist when the gravity of the situation became apparent.
The Navy specifically seems to be in some dire straights with its leadership recently. This incident, Hawaii fuel leak, sailors drinking water with jet fuel in it. Each one has leadership ignoring red flags, and trying to scapegoat enlisted.
@@TheLightypants I can only talk from what I heard by third parties. But my sergeant in the German navy told me he once visited an American navy vessel. He said he was super envious of how much equipment they had stored, said we could only dream of having that much stuff. While at the same time he was super pissed about how the American soldiers just didn't give a shit about proper maintenance. Like we'd investigate when a motor runs out of oil a bit faster than supposed to, the Americans would pour 5-10 gallons a day into some motors and be like "It's fine, it just oils a bit that is normal"
Leadership is need however, it would have been better to assign a real commanding officer and XO with an advance STEM Degree during a shipyard period....Manpower scheduling mishaps....
@@rgloria40 Or they moved the incompetent ones to shoreside duties, where they were less likely to kill the enlisted under them, and thus get a reputation for being as useful as a chocolate teapot, or being so bad that the underlings decide to allow the enemy to kill the idiot.
As with just about everything in the military, officers are technically in charge. The smart officers say "fix it" and GTF out of the way while the Enlisted do their jobs. The very LAST thing you generally want is a gaggle of officers working on a problem.
I know this is an old video and an old story, but as a retired sailor from the USN, this enrages me to no end. The incompetence at EVERY level is astonishing. Every single ship I served on (5 total) had a "rapid reaction team" (or flying squad) within the in port duty section, whose soul purpose was to respond to a casualty (fire/flooding) outside of other normal casualty actions and have agent on a fire (or working controlling actions for flooding) within 3 minutes. They didn't go to the repair locker for assignments, they didn't wait for boundaries to be set, they didn't wait for the Locker Leader or OSL ("On Scene Leader") to give orders. They went straight to the problem and engaged as they saw fit. They were the very tip of the spear. These were predominantly engineering sailors (engineering sailors were typically best suited for this role). At duty section muster and turnover in the morning, those assignments were given and KNOWN. That team is typically the same people every single duty day so there should be no question or confusion. Being a "small boy" sailor for my whole career, that part may different on a "big deck", but that particular operating structure is in place (or it was back in the day, at least) on EVERY SHIP. A proper RRT could probably have put this out with CO2 bottles at its inception had the first sailor at least investigated the "haze" and called away a fire. At the very least, one of them would have had the gumption to activate AFFF (assuming it available). AFFF isn't intended for class A fires, but it probably would have worked. Agent on the fire 2 HOURS after called away is simply unbelievable to me. 3-5 minutes could have saved this ship. I was enlisted so I stood MANY duty days as EDO (Engineering Duty Officer), and I place a HELL OF A LOT OF BLAME for this on the EDO. A solid EDO who has a handle on system status (Engineering owns the firemain system) within the ship would have been crucial in this whole mess. DC plates not being properly updated or even used were also HUGE issues here as well. Any sailor would know what I am talking about here. This one hurt my heart. To see a ship lost while pier side. I just don't understand.
Great analysis, only two things missing: Your average ship has up to 1/4 of it's crew diverted to war on terror operations, this means your average sailor is expected to literally do more with less. Also, starting on 2009, navy leadership decided it was much more important to buy new boats than to care about such petty things as ship maintenance and upgrades. Leading to this incident, the Fitzgerald, the John McCain, etc ....
Not to mention that when a ship is in the yard for overhaul, most of the damage control systems are locked out or otherwise disabled for ease of access. It’s not a matter of pressing a button or flipping a switch, but rather valves, handwheels, etc, all over the ship with multiple locks on them. Even the hatches and doors that could stop the spread of the fire are locked in the open position.
You’re blaming lack of upgrades and maintenance as the cause for those ship collisions? It was obvious from the start the reason. Stupidity and incompetence.
@@SamBrickell Not the one you're thinking of - it is either his grandfather who was one of Nimitz's admirals in WWII or his father who was CINC SE Asia during the Vietnam War. Salt water runs in that family's veins...
My heart goes out to the crew that lost their ship. It was upsetting when I saw it on the news. The more that I learn about the incident, the more upset I get at all involved. It almost happened to one of my ships. My training ship was used annually for approximately three months. The other months, it was at our dock, cold iron, with dehumidifiers. Students, "Middies," did most of the work, under the supervision of officers and staff. Some jobs were contracted out. A contractor, welding on bulkheads, failed to properly do inspection and monitoring, before, during, and after a job. They didn't even leave a fire watch for complete cool down. Instead, their entire crew left the ship to go to lunch. SOP is a deckie & an engineer are on the quarter deck 24/7 watches. Fortunately, one of them was diligent in their rounds, especially in spaces with work activity. They called the alarm on a smoldering fire. They called the campus office, the day watch officer, the nearby boathouse, every dorm phone, the front gate watch, and the local fire department. I can't remember if the fire pumps drew from the surface water, or if we were attached to shore supply water that day. We did both back then. I do remember that the watch had all lines primed before anyone else arrived. Students and staff came running. The space had become fully involved by then; and the smoke plume could be seen for miles. Everyone had firefighting training, knew the systems, and where the gear was. Many Middies were already fighting the fire directly with fog lines, while others were cooling bulkheads, and inspecting all connecting spaces, above, and below. The gate awaited the arrival of the firetrucks from the city & directed them to the ship. Every city firefighter was paired with a student guide in turnout gear, etc. Students also protected the ship with extra techniques unique to shipboard fires. Fire was just barely out as the contractors returned to campus. The watch & the Middies had saved their ship. Our mopups and repairs took ages and added a lot of excessive workload to a tight budget. The local firefighters also arranged to use our ship for training afterwards, since they had previously been unaware of the difference in tactics needed. This was DECADES ago. HOW can a modern Navy and a professional base firecrew not do what a civilian maritime academy was able to do? Fire is THE number one enemy of ships, and ALL crew members should have firefighting training tactics, and intense knowledge of their individual ship's systems. It was my habit to get immediately oriented to a new ship's physical layout, and it's fire & emergency systems within my first 24 hours aboard. My life depended on it. Please, even if someone isn't putting it into your schedule, take it upon yourselves, both civilian and military, to educate yourself on your surroundings, how you can make a safe egress in the pitch black; and where all emergency resources are located. Your life, and others, might depend on it one day. Sorry for the length; but the USS Bonhomme Richard fire hits too close to home.
I was on a carrier in the early 90s. some dude, smoking in an unauthorized space, haphazardly tossed his butt -where it landed in some oily rags- and left the space. Big fire ensued… followed by an investigation -that was even bigger… which was followed by many sailors losing their ranks, rates, and careers.
Didn't that same thing happen aboard the GW a couple years ago? Or is that what you were talking about? Feel like the one I'm thinking of was way more recent because I had shipmates who were aboard during that event and so it wouldn't have been back in the 90s
@@tigerpjm the military isn’t a valid career? why do you say that? Joining the US Military at 18 years old… getting some of the best training/education available on the planet… retiring with a full pension at age 38 and then getting a job with your skills/training/experience before you’re 40. Now you have two incomes with another pension in sight by the time you’re 65… and you say the military is a bad career choice? you sound like someone who has a gender studies “degree”
_"This room isn't usually filled with smoke... Nah, this is probably fine, plus I have some equipment I should be losing right now anyway."_ Truly they are the best of the best.
Very good video. I live in San Diego, and we watched this ship burn four days. The smoke was thick and toxic blowing onto Barrio Logan (a neighborhood) causing many to evacuate. This was first class FUBAR. The OOD and Captain should have been on trial, not the seaman scapegoat. If you don't train for damage control in every situation, you don't have people with the situational awareness to fight a shipboard fire. You won't have a ship long. Who makes sure damage control adapts to changing shipboard conditions like a rebuild? The Captain.
The issue here is that during a renovation the automatic fire suppression sprinklers were disabled. Then the area became too hot for fire personnel along with a slow response from trained firefighters. Very embarrassing to loose a ship this way.
the issues aren't skin deep, i served on a submarine with a guy that was on the USS Miami when it went up in flames, he would tell us about how the officers and chiefs, the leaders onboard, were too scared to fight the fire while someone low ranking would be begging to be sent in to help out. the vast majority of people like to sit there and say "I would do this or I would do that" but no one knows how you're actually going to react until you are in the moment. the submarine i was on had a real fire while underway and we took care of it within minutes, but hearing the alarm bells toll and people running/yelling can cause panic. I am in no way defending the actions of the people involved, I'm just saying that I understand the difficulty of the situation and how being improperly trained/ not ready for every scenario could cause mass panic especially when the people you should rely on, the officers, can't even point you in the right direction. the biggest issue with todays military is that for the vast majority of leaders, they've never seen war and care too much about little things that only lead to cascading problems, things like not having a good enough shave or your boots aren't shined enough so they pull you away from maintenance/studying/watch to "counsel" you but at the end of the day the only thing thats happened is you lost 3 hours of your time that you could have spent being productive
@@mrdan2898 No, the issue is that people on that ship ignored obvious signs of a fire, when even a sub-80 IQ civilian would either go for help or pull a fire alarm. Someone had to train those sailors to ignore their basic instincts. In psychology, it is called "learned helplessness," and it was probably accomplished through a system of indiscriminate blame and punishments.
Institutional corruption. If we hold this asshole accountable, why, someone might blame us when we do something grossly negligent! Like sit around humming and hawing when multiple ships crash into civilian vessels.
The captain obviously did horrible but the crews non-response is also concerning. What was the previous captain doing? He wasn’t keeping the crew at a state of readiness either.
My old boss said that the difference between a failure and a disaster is that a failure is caused by a single component stopping something temporarily, and a disaster a many failures in a series that lead to an unrecoverable outcome.
You'd think any smoke-producing operations (welding, running a generator) would have to be well-ventillated for safety reasons, so *any* smoke is a bad sign.
Remember that you are dealing with civilian workers on board. They don't really care about all those stupid Navy regulations, Hot Work Permits, etc. If they want to weld it, they will drag the leads over and weld it. They might even check to see if there is anything on the OTHER side of what they are welding. Some don't. Since those welding leads are heavy, they will typically just leave them there until they need them for the next job. No biggie if their welding started a fire in the space and the leads are preventing you from shutting the hatch to contain it. We are literally talking folks here who will save themselves a walk up two flights of stairs by pissing and shitting in a dark corner, and toss their lunch sack over their shoulder when they are done eating rather than putting it in a trash barrel 50 feet away.
I work in a Naval Shipyard, and almost all hot work requires permits, ventilation, and one or more fire watches. However, there was no hot work being conducted on the ship the day of the fire.
@@Kriss_L dunno if other ships/departments/divisions did it differently, but for my div, we had to provide a body for fire watch/supervision, REGARDLESS of whether the civvies provided their own FW.
@@pluto8404 nope. Missiles mostly. Only damage a few compartments. Same for torpedoes. Fires that get out of hand leave nowhere for the crew to run. Missile or torpedo damage below the water line can be mitigated by sealing the affected compartments. In a lot of ways, that sort of damage control is much easier than firefighting. You can go back to fighting once you seal them and complete repairs later. You can't put a fire on hold.
As a former (german navy) sailor i am amazed by the sheer incompetence (or lack of proper training). On a warship there is never ever a benign reason for smoke OR burn smell. You ALWAYS anounce ANY potential fire and (after announcing the fire) you immedeately start evaluating the situation and fight the fire if possible. And after round about 5 minutes the dedicated firefighting team will ALWAYS show up in full firefighting gear and also fight the fire if there is any. Best case is a false alarm and nobody will blame you for it (at least not for long)
One of the things about fire fighting onboard a ship is that they're not designed to have fires fought from the outside in. They're designed to be fought from the inside, where the fire fighters (sailors) are. Coming at it from the outside limits access to the fire and onboard fire fighting gear, as well as the swarming response from everyone on board when the PA makes the all hands call. It's unbelievable as a former sailor that NOBODY said "OH SHIT! SMOKE" and sounded the alarm onboard. Even a skeleton crew should have been able to handle this. Even if the stations are randomly nonfunctional, it takes a few seconds to check.
@@andrewstackpool4911 I can't imagine this happening. I can still hear damage control class.. '' congratulations, recruit! All your fucking crewmates are dead and it's your fault! '
@@Canthus13 Ok, I do not go for that type of instruction, based on negativity and criticism. They are immediately setting up a barrier in the JR. Be positive and tell them where they have gone wrong and, if necessary, run the exercise again. If you went through that I am sorry. But when push comes to shove, I don't want some kid making a difference positive or minus. Nor do I want a DCO whether his first day or 200th. You got a probably LCDR bands on the blouse. FFS. Get out there and take fkn command. Screw the gd phone. Call the CO shortly.
@@andrewstackpool4911 Dunno when you went to boot, but that was pretty normal for the 90s. And I'm not complaining. My point is there's no way I wouldn't have taken it seriously at the first hint of smoke. You don't need an officer to sound the alarm and get moving. By the time an officer was even alerted it sounds like it was too late. These failures are inexcusable from the bottom to the top. I'm still dumbfounded by someone ignoring smoke. sounding the alarm and having it turn out to be nothing is a lot cheaper and safer than ignoring it.
Was onboard her with my NJROTC unit while she was getting ready for her refit. Got to talk with her Captain while we got to tour the bridge. Was insane to see her burning, and seeing shots of the places we had walked. Insane!
Because they didn't have a trans bi racial women who is in a poly relationship to deal with it. All the forces should be OK now that this is being mandated
@@EFFEZE I'm picturing 15 sailors in a huddle taking a vote regarding the fire: "Is everyone clear on what we're doing about this fire? I will text our boss with a message about the fire, eight of you said Madam, and 7 said Sir, so the message we send to our boss will start "Madam, there is a fire."
@@EFFEZE Yeah bro because clearly the all white guy crew can handle it on their own, after all they only managed to burn down a 4 billion dollar ship, havent seen a trans person do that yet.
The CO/XO also had 14 straight fire drill failures in a row under their belt. Incompetence starts at the top, and 'Fail Upwards". (Actually rolls down from the incompetence from the current CIC!) In my DOD experience this was SOP for Promotion/Management placement...
Is anyone else remembering that episode of The Simpsons where Homer screws up a navy submarine and when asked to explain himself he sheepishly shouts _"Erm, it's my first day?"_ through a megaphone?
I was a HT and I worked a sims San Diego I spent most of my time in the ship yard. There are so many welders and different projects going on I frankly am amazed it doesn’t happen more often. I remember climbing over other welders just to get to my job.
My ship's fire marshal was on the BHR as an investigator. He now does fire drills, flood drills, and toxic gas drills at least 2-4 times a week. They're really annoying but now they're needed because its better to be overtrained then undertrained. I can say with certainty, if a fire occurred on our ship, it will be handled much smoother and quicker than the BHR.
Fed Fire not being notified by CDO, or hell, even the OOD! immediately is a massive red flag. That's like... default action. Even if you have a trash can fire, Fed Fire is at least notified so that they can prepare for the situation escalating. Worst case scenario, you call back and say "nevermind, very minor Class A, we handled it", like the narrator points out the FFD station is right on base so it's not like they're driving 30 minutes out of their way and missing a call from a burning house somewhere or something to respond.
The sad thing is the San Diego Fire Department was the first entity to put water on the fire(almost two hours after the first report of smoke)per the Navy's report.
At first I thought the ship's name was 'Ballnumber Shark' Then I turned on the subtitles because I didn't catch the exact times (10: 30 firefighters start withdrawing and 10: 50 explosion) and only then did I found out it was the 'Bonhomme Richard!' The second US Navy ship bearing that name served in The Pacific War but didn't suffer any fatal fires. But speaking about the Pacific War, the US Navy had some excellent firefighting and damage control teams back then, didn't they?
This damage control was so bad I rather have the damage control used on fighting the fires and floods of the sinking japanese battleship yamato becuase AT least their crew was competent enough to turn a impossinle situation into a somehow manageable one albet it did sink regardless. This crew made an embarrassment of our navy and I bet those ww 2 veteran damage control officers are rolling in the graves
It was due to both a shipyard and culture issue in the naval yards amongst both crew and yard workers. It's still a problem, though now being mitigated pretty significantly.
This is unbelievable, purely from a FedFire and San Diego fire integration point of view. Here we cross train to ensure equipment, Comms, and scene management actually work. We had some absolute shambles over the years, and whilst we can never say it won't happen again, these types of multi-agency disasters shouldn't happen as often with all the historic information available. Great video, thank you 👍
When we were in drydock, or just doing welding and such jobs. We had at least 1 Deckape or snipe, watching with a fire extinguisher. USCGC CHASE/ESCAPE! The 2 Cutters I was on. DAMM SHAME!
Even civilian ships do this. When cruise ships are in maintenance, they have hospitality/housekeeping staff standing watch with fire extinguishers over any engineering work. This is just as boring, but it is considered a better post than deep cleaning passenger areas.
Instead of trying to figure out how to how to prevent another fire from getting out of control like this again, the Navy tried to prosecute a sailor for arson, just because he was seen in the area.
My guess is the Captain tried to Captian's Mast a lower enlisted sailor and when that happened the sailor probably requested a Court Martial as a Mast is basically the captian is the investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury. Once you've been put up for a Mast you're gonna be guilty unless you ask for a Court Martial
I served aboard the USS Nashville (LPD-13), and i can tell you, our Damage Control leadership ran us ragged with damage control drills. By the end of that deployment, i knew every job, in every damage control locker. They beat into us to report any sights, sounds or smells that "didnt seem right". One of the landing craft had a fuel leak during deployment and spilled fuel on the deck of the landing bay. The ship basically went on lock down for 12 hours while it was cleaned up. THAT is how leadership is supposed to act when accidents happen aboard a ship. This whole situation is an absolute embarrassment of the Navy as a whole, and puts the Navy in a bad light.
The most sad part is that the Navy tried to blame a single junior sailor when this is a command problem. Third fleet, a three star admiral, the group commander who is likely a 2 star admiral, the CO, the XO, the chief engineer, the CDO, and all the chief petty officers of the engineering department should all be facing severe disciplinary actions, with the most harsh going from the highest ranking to the lowest ranking. The senior officers should all be facing prison sentences. This should apply even if none of them were there, because this is the nature of responsibility that comes with rank. I am a 22 year navy vet and this whole thing was just despicable and makes me ashamed of all navy leadership even remotely involved.
One thing I think they should add from that incident is that Have Civilian Fire Departments being at least be able to communicate with FedFire and at best to train Civilian Fire Departments with FedFire where there are Navy Bases. You never know when big fire can happen and you need civis to help with containing fires.
I worked my career as a security officer I'm currently retired., and we were drilled over and over and over again at the slightest indication of smoke either by scent or visual indication once verified pull the alarm, get on the PA system, make the designated announcement depending on what you see, and call 911 and then you notify operations if they are at home and if it is small enough for you to control yourself use extinguishers to do so if not evacuate yourself and anyone else from the area and let the fire department handle it. This was a mismanagement and training disaster,. The contractors treated this ship like a normal work site, and they got complacent and it bit them on the ass. And the commanding officer made the entire Navy look like an idiot., by the way he handled the captain's mast and the investigation that followed, and a good man's reputation got trashed for it. And the Navy wonders why they can't recruit enough new sailors or retain experienced sailors approaching the end of their service commitment. It's because of crap like this.
I am a security guard as well and you have SOPs for this type of thing. If in my building the fire system is shut down for maintenance its usually because the fire panel people are o site, which means fire control systems people where on site. So where where the fire control specialists when this disaster go on? To me that is unacceptable to turn off the fire systems without back up plans for a fire situation. Also at a basic fire fighting situation you should havw sailors on fire watch, routinely patrolling the ship so they can spot these fires at the earliest time.
@@filipinorutherford7818 yeah I remember when we had a situation where we had to go on firewatch because the system would keep activating turned out it was a wiring issue in the system. It took three different teams of technicians to restore the system to full service over an 11-week span of time that meant we had to walk firewatch every hour on the hour 24 hours a day for 11 weeks, on top of all the regular Duty that we were assigned. To say that no one from Operations , Security, building Administration as well as the tenants were happy about this was an understatement. We had shifts where you never even took a break even to go to the bathroom because you had to stay on that schedule. I remember when this first started and we ended up calling Atlanta Fire Rescue as a precaution, engine 26 was our closest responder. We explained what happened and they actually watched us reset the system back to normal after checking for evidence of fire and smoke in the building and lo and behold it went off again with both firefighters and security standing in the Fire Control Room. They eventually had to replace the entire system you don't want to know what the cost was.. the final numbers were brutal. Two of my coworkers in the team actually left because of how this was handled.
For marines to deploy on a naval vessel, they have to complete a course on shipboard firefighting. In the classroom, all us marines sat there quietly trying to learn. The sailors though, sheesh, you can tell how much training they get in boot camp and beyond that this type of knowledge is STAMPED into them. One of those rare moments of genuine pride and appreciation. Rah you lil’ devil dolphins!
@@MalcomHeavy Okay, we may have gotten a little over zealous when we practiced shouting “Training Time Out” for the teacher. Teacher: What is it? Navy: Training Time Out! Teacher: One more time? Marines: TRAININGTIMEOWWT!!
@@HotRodsnHueys bullsh!t. I was a grunt in 2/1 and served on this very ship in 2012 (31st MEU) and we received ZERO shipboard firefighting training. All we did were a few man overboard drills. And to be honest I EAS'd and got out of the Corps because of bad leadership and stupid knuckle dragging lifers who only cared about advancing their careers and acting all moto instead of doing actual training or improving our actual combat readiness. I have a feeling you fall into that category, based on how you speak.
@@41tl who hurt you? The 31st is more a det than a MEU. We do it every two years. You’re only on ship some 40 days compared to the 15th where it’s 6 months or more. All aviation marines received shipboard firefighting. We’re in the hanger and on the deck working where it’s required. Can’t speak for the grunts, we love what y’all do on shore, but on ship ya really just make the chow hall lines longer while we’re trying to support a flight schedule. Not tracking where the animosity is coming from, not a snco and never will be. Five years is more than enough of this place.
with how strict and by the book the military prides itself in being, i'm surprised at how almost nobody seemed to know what was going on or what to do. Fortunately, their general training taught most of them to be proactive and actually DO something about odd situations (like dude on the shore calling the firefed)
That was my last command in the Navy I got out a few months before the fire but I lived down the street from base and watched it burn up, pretty surreal to watch.
Absolutely. Signed off Tag Out Authorization, Signed off Tag Out List. Sig from the person who hung and signed the tags, Sig from the second person who took the Tag Out List and verified/signed each and every tag, all together in the Tag Out Log and, if applicable, noted on the DC Charts and passed down to the Fire Team leaders. Welcome to the US Navy. Oh. A work order to pull and rebuild a pump. Go to ship. Find the pump. Isolate the valves. Pull the pump. Take it back to your shop. Paperwork all fine, you have the work order. F**k all that Navy Tag Out BS, you ain't Navy. Welcome to the Shipyards.
@@iancowan3527 Ship yard is SUPPOSED to notify before shutting down a critical system, SUPPOSED to T/O with ship, and SUPPOSED to notify when they have actually taken down a system. Personal observation from two drydock periods shows reality is Sometimes/Rarely/Occasionally.
I was at San Diego Naval Base in September. I noticed the fireies doing a lot of drill on the wet side. Which was great to see! As well as a month ago, I was at JBPHH onboard an Aussie destroyer and we did firefighting exercises with the USN. Cross platform on their ships with our equipment, it's a great exercise and is a great way to learn how different Navies use different firefighting techniques!
Forgot to mention the fact that multiple other ships on the waterfront sent fire fighting personnel and equipment to help. Officers made the decision to break up experienced fire fighting teams and put them with inexperienced personnel. Some officers denied other fire fighting teams and insisted on only using the already exhausted Bonhomme Richard personnel. Just to top it all off leadership then tried to make a disgruntled deck seamen a scapegoat. Multiple fire suppression systems were tagged out and contractors constantly trashed the ship during the availability period to include bags of oily rag waste primarily in the well deck, upper V and flight deck. I was there until November of 2019 during the availability and know many people who fought the fires personally. I am just thankful that no one was seriously injured.
The early detection was the number one cause of the loss of the ship. 2nd was the OIS's lack of reporting and coordinate the attack. If the previously mention things were done correctly, the Fire would have been knocked out. I dont know what the time distance was between the person who noticed smoke and the report of the fire, but timing is of the utmost importance as a ship fire can heat up and smoke up the area very quickly preventing a quick and safe extinguishment of the fire. The ship should have (and probably did have) a fire watch. This is more important on Vehicle decks and work areas. I have more to add but It would take up more space.
The ship was in port and in the midst of a 2 year upgrade program, with barely 10% of its normal (1070) complement on board. I highly doubt they had an active and trained fire watch ongoing. Willing to bet the majority of the sailors assigned were just liked the CDO, new to their jobs and learning on a parked ship, so they would know what to do when it was underway.
If the civilian Emergency Services were part of the base Emergency Response plans, then not having compatible _AND TESTED_ comms with each service provider is truly an epic failure at many levels in San Diego. I'm certain that a number of savvy E4's and E5's probably identified this shortcoming to their superiors, only to be overlooked. This also highlights the necessity of the terribly mundane but always critical _"Watch Duty"_ with appropriate oversight at number of levels.
Even with the communication failures; there was a way around it. My maritime academy had a dockside ship fire. Our local city firefighters had never been aboard. So each paired with a student as they came up the gangway, onto the quarter deck. It kept the FFs from getting lost in the superstructure. Every student could make their way around blindfolded. We actually trained for it. It also helped that the students all knew the unique tactics for firefighting aboard ships. It's infuriating to see that basic problem solving wasn't used in San Diego at the start of the fire attack.
@@elizabethbottroff1218 Yes, your Maritime Academy had substantially more wisdom aforehand than a major U.S. Naval base. Thank you for pointing this simple, yet elegant solution to all whose eyes land upon this thread. "But wait!! We're the U.S. Navy, FFS!?!?!" - heard from the peanut section. "That might've carried some water, if you had said: 'We're the British Navy, FFS!' - My retort. Sorry, I foresaw some low hanging fruit and couldn't let it slide. I truly respect all Sailors, Naval Aviators and Marines from around the world, as they pin their very survival on slim number of inches of cold-rolled steel. - A former U.S. Army Infantry leg.
A fire is bad, a fire on a ship is terrible. But hearing the different problems of being able to put the fire out, made me think of the three stooges. Hopefully a lot, if not all, of the issues were solved.
As a FF I can tell you how important command and communication is. I can also tell you that no matter who can talk to who on radios (which is almost everyone these days), each departments commanding officer will be at the command post, their all together so you can focus on your dept while with the other leaders. It works great. (This is for our local area but similar in most places).
The most salient detail is the time of response. It took 2 hours from the time the fire was reported to when it was engaged. That is reflective of the total failure of ship's force from the leadership all the way down. Poor planning and management led to the ships' firefighting systems taken offline. Poor leadership led to inadequate training (or none at all). Ship's force was not capable of fighting the fire with the equipment and training they had. If ship's force had the equipment, training and organization, that fire probably would have been engaged within 10-15 min from the time it was reported and that ship most likely would have survived suffering a manageable amount of damage. The Navy knows this, but they needed a scapegoat. So lets pin it on the lowest paygrade Sailor who just happened to be in the area where the fire started.
If the ship had been in her normal configuration, then I would agree. However, when you have civilian shipyard workers not notifying Ship's Force of major FF systems down, fouling hatches by stringing leads, calbles, hoses, etc. through them, storing flammables by the 55-gallon drum wherever they please, etc.the whole dynamic changes. Ship's Force did not KNOW that installed sprinklers, firefighting stations, etc. were inoperable due to shipyard work until they tried to use them. Ship's Force did not know that the shipyard workers had taken large portions of the 1MC down. Hatches were fouled but DC Central never notified so that it could be noted on the plates. OF COURSE it will be blamed on SR Nobody rather than the shipyard (lack of) procedures. Some high-ranking officer probably saw his retirement plans of being on the Board at a major shipyard going down the drain and took immediate action.
@@kevincrosby1760 Ship's force should have known about the condition of the ship. Yard periods are planned out well in advance and every detail regarding taking down systems would be in the plan. The fact that the command signed off on this is highly questionable. One of the main jobs of the fire marshal is to document and report all problems regarding damage control equipment. So I find it hard to believe that the ship's force was not aware of the condition of ship IF they were following the 8010 instruction which came out of the USS Miami fire. The only conclusion I can come to is that they were not following the 8010 instruction in so many ways from the lack of training, to lack of awareness of the material condition of their ship.
@@dmac7128 USS Miami was before my service time. Personal observation from 2 DPMA periods was that the official schedule went out the window about the time as the water went out of the dock, and reverted to "whenever the yard sends the workers to do the work". It was to the point where I spent a good portion of both DPMAs assigned to rove through the Engineering spaces specifically monitoring for work being performed which was NOT on the day's list of work that DC Central knew about, missing equipment not on the list, work being performed with no Hot Work Permit, etc. I learned that quite interesting burn patterns, small fires, and some really foul smoke are created in your space when a yard worker starts welding brackets to the bulkhead in an adjoining space. My having a fire extinguisher present was helpful. Knowing that I might need it would have been even more so. I also learned that the Yard definition of a "Fire Watch" is your buddy who lurks around the corner and tosses a wrench down the PW so that you can stop welding before the pissed off sailor next door catches up with you. I learned that using a 5-gallon can of Lacquer thinner as a stool while welding is an accepted yard practice if your buddy doesn't toss the wrench in time. I learned that "Don't have time to fuck with that gay-assed shit" is apparently a valid reason for not having a Hot Work permit. I learned that picking up trash and such generated by yard work is the responsibility of a yard employee with the name of "Someone Else". I learned that yardworkers carry tools, so if it is valuable it might disappear even if it IS indeed bolted down. Police retrieved our test equipment AND the cabinet from a pawn shop. Yard worker was back on the ship soon after he was released from jail. I also learned that, when faced with a trip to the Porta-Potties located one deck above, more than one yard worker will simply piss and shit in a dark corner. I (and 4 shipmates) personally learned that it is quite possible for in-dash car stereos and mounted speakers to disappear from cars parked in an internal separately-fenced shipyard parking lot, past the Yard Security securing said lot, and out the front gate...all 5 within the same hour. The list could go on forever. I think the crowning glory was the yard worker who thought it was for a minor subsystem and "Didn't think anyone would notice" his opening the Shore Power Disconnect. We were Cold Iron and the EDG was not in working order. We noticed.
There is a system called nims (national incident management system) that obviously they didn't use, the system allows for the integration of different entities into one command structure for an incident
Just a few days before this incident, China’s 1st Type 075 LHD also caught fire. Remarkable coincidence for two ships of similar types in two different navies catching fire one after another.
The bridge is the LAST place that you would coordinate a shipboard fire from. Damage Control Central is the place that has the ships diagrams, fire equipment location maps, firemain pressure monitoring, comms to all of the Repair Lockers, fire/flooding alarms, etc. Comms were mainly as issue because shipyard work had the 1MC (General Announcing) down in large sections of the ship. Would have worked out better if they had started said work according to the scheduled date a week or two out, or notified Ship's Force that they had disconnected several sections of the 1MC. Ditto for most of the firefighting stations that the crew tried to use...critical pumps and such were sitting on benches over in the shipyard.
during world war a similar accident during the transformation of a french civil boat to military ship occured due to uncompabality between french and americans pipe and no adaptator despite the brand new and evolved firefighting system of this ship, they didn't have learn anything of all those failures. the "normandie" ocean liner
The loss was because fire fighters put so much water into her upper decks to put out the fire they caused the ship to capsize due to the change of her center of gravity, as soon as she had the slightest list it was all over and she rolled
I was serving on a sub that was moored next to the Miami in the EB shipyard when it burned. It was arson by a shipyard worker who had seeded smoldering wads of wipes between bulkheads and in the outboards. All because he "wanted to go home".
What is crazy is 8 months before this the USS Iwo Jima, the same class of ship that the Bonhomme Richard was caught fire in a very similar way. The difference was how quickly the fire was reacted to. The personl on board were quickly overwhelmed due to inexperience and would have lost the ship if not for the actions and help from another ship moored down the pier from them. I have to wonder if there is anything to this. The Iwo Jima though was down in Mayport Florida and not San Diego. But the similarities are uncanny.
I can't actually believe that it made me sad. I stood for her alone like a weirdo. Far from home in oceans that make you feel little it was home. I can't help but respect that and the Gator Fleet. She deserved better than a drop out from buds to down her. 1997-2006 Marine infantryman Sgt.100P.T. Semper Fi, Shipmates.....Josh
he was acquitted because there was literally zero evidence and it took like 5 mins to poke holes in the accusations. one thing i dont understand is why so many people like to bash spec ops drops. people with jobs that have a 95% pass rate who never even signed up or tried out for for the hard shit. just love hating on people for failing a 90% fail rate pipeline. in some illogical weird way. you want it to be so hard 90% fail but than take it as a personal inuslt and stigmatize the 90% that fail. its really just stupid asf. like do want to encourage less people to try? 90% are gonna fail, why do they need to take shit from marines that passed a bootcamp with the same pass rate as every other branch? you do realize all branches have the same pass rate, right? and outside of about 15 jobs all schools have a 80-90% pass rate. so your shitting on one of the few people that will even try out for the 90% fail rate.
Oh that reminds me of the submarine that was lit on fire and decommissioned. The fire was started while it was in a dry dock by a contractor who intentionally lit a fire on the sub because he got a message that his ex girlfriend was seeing some guy and he wanted to stop her. Well, they have camera on the dry dock and found that the fire started where he was welding, the sub was decommissioned and he was sent to federal prison. People’s motivations to do some crazy things can be very trivial.
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Submarine vet here. We take fires especially seriously onboard (for obvious reasons) and one of the first things we are trained on in our firefighting quals is "if you're not sure it's a fire, it is." Don't be afraid to call the casualty away if you have your doubts, because people being angry at you for "crying wolf" is better than losing the ship and potentially lives. Even if people are mad at you it will subside quickly, we understand that this is what we all were trained for and will praise you for being aware of your surroundings.
Yea, I've heard so many accounts from royal navy sailors. They take fire very very seriously! They have mock fire drills, hauling out fire hoses every single day, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day! Everybody is trained in firefighting, extensively drilled into them. First thing you do upon discovering a fire or smoke is, Shout "fire fire fire!", the next person near you starts yelling "fire fire fire" upon hearing you, this carries on until the yelling reaches someone to sound the general alarm (this takes a matter of seconds). this is broadcast across entire ship. From this point the ships firefighting teams are dispatched. People can stop yelling fire fire fire once the general alarm is raised. Smoke barriers are deployed, people with breathing apparatus are deployed, sealing doors and hatches, ensuring the smoke doesn't spread. Hoses are depolyed and support parties start turning up. later followed up by the containment parties. This goes on and on, people swapping out until the fire is out. Minor fires drill every day, Major fire drills about once a week. They take their job very very seriously. How on earth this incident on the Bonhomme Richard managed to get to the stage it got to is well beyond me.
I’m just a civilian, but I live in wildfire country, and basically have the same rule-of-thumb. It’s amazing how fast a small fire can turn into a conflagration that takes out whole towns, sometimes faster than they can be evacuated.
I'd imagine your average submariner is an intellectual class or two above the knuckle-draggers making up the crew of a lot of the U.S. Navy.
It's a similar thing in Air to Ground attack. If there is doubt that the target is hostile there is no doubt about employing weapons. You don't.
Everyone is a safety inspector is what my unit preached. It can save equipment and more importantly it can save lives.
I am a retired USCG CPO with nine years of sea duty on their frigate sized ships. The CO is always, always, always solely responsible for everything involving his ship. This incident isn't the first time a command has placed blame on a junior enlisted sailor, in this instance an E-2. The deplorable incompetence up the chain of command resulted in billions of taxpayer dollars being wasted. Training videos alone don't prevent catastrophic failures.
“Shit rolls down hill” - USN Leadership
It boggles my mind that the CO of LHD-6, nor the local FedFire commander, weren't running fire suppression drills regularly during the ship's overhaul.
Well put Chief. Concur
To continue. Especially in this case as they had already lost a boat in similar circumstances. Aboard the Richard it seems that even the most basic first alarm mechanism (see smoke yell fire) wasn't dinned in.
An E-2 of all things
The sailor that was found not guilty was also found not to have enough evidence to recommend the case go to a court martial to start with. The Commanding Officer of the ship insisted the case go to trial anyway. The entire case against the sailor was based on someone seeing him near the passageway that led to the ramp where the fire was 45 minutes after the fire was reported. Even the person who saw him wasn't sure where the sailor was coming from or going. He was just in the area.
The CO of the ship was allowed to remain in his position until the ship was officially decommissioned and then he retired. He was found derelict in many ways but his punishment was a letter being placed in his record. I guess it would be more difficult to get a promotion during retirement.
Yup, they saw him as a scapegoat because of his contract. Seeing as he was a buds dropout, they could pin it as him lashing out against the navy.
Ty.
Honest question: you can get promoted after you retire??
@@DinoNucci no
As is typical, absolutely nothing of consquence was done to any of the idiot officers, or NCOs. Just the little scapegoat. Dispicable.
I am assuming the issues with threads and radios were not a factor. I know when I was a Federal FF they had adapters to connect to the system, and did walk troughs to familiarize the ship layout and fire fighting systems. Communication to the attacking crew should have been done as it would have saved them more time that was already wasted.
The Navy times article about this was if anything, more brutal. The ship's motto even was not safe from ridicule, as "We have Yet to begin to fight" describes the captain's attitude towards his ship being on fire. The conclusion of the article pointed out that there was a fire on board the Bonhomme's sister ship, the USS Essex the very same day, the entire reason we are talking about the USS Bonhomme Richard and not the Essex is that the Sailors aboard the Essex were not idiots. And indeed once they had done their job, they tried to save the Bonhomme as well. Well done, crew of the Essex!
"We have yet to begin to fight" is particularly ironic for a ship that was lost in port during peacetime.
The more one reads into this, the more painful it gets.
That is extremely meme-able.
@@HenriFaust Might say it was a hot take on the subject.
I would be pissed if I were from the Essex and a part of the FFE team, especially primary.
"Guys, we know you're tired as shit from overheating and fighting with a pressurized hose, but Bonhomme can't get their shit together! Get over there, and relieve them!"
imagine having social anxiety so bad you're too afraid to make a phone call when your ship is on fire....
This is fine meme.
thats the Government
Me tbh, there could be 10 people dying in front of me but I wouldn’t call the ambulance because it might disturb the traffic.
Can’t have or be being treated for anxiety and join the us navy, coastguard, or other branch of the us armed forces.
@@mist5992 your a loonie
The US Navy never apologized to the accused. Sub Brief has really good videos that go more in depth about the different reports, events, and agents involved in this case.
If the US Navy won’t apologize for murdering 290 people when they shot down an airliner.. why would they apologize for this?
An excellent summary of how this went down, and a sober analysis of just how institutional and command failures can cause far more damage than enemy action.
Also, good on you for not buying into the Navy's and BATFE's scapegoating of enlisted seamen. The seaman the judge advised against prosecuting at the end of September, as an aside, had a court martial (prosecution) ordered against him by the base admiral notwithstanding the judge's findings.
This was the most sickening problem. While yes, the sailor accused was considered a troublemaker, he was presumed guilty the whole time. They knew it was a problem with the leadership, but they didn't want to accept that responsibility.
It sounded like most of the issues with the sailor were a failure of his NCOs and officers to mold him into a better sailor. I suppose this goes to show why you don't want to stick out in the military.
Was the JAG Officer a mustang?
And just like with the USS Iowa turret explosion fallout, the more things change, the more the Navy seems to stay the same. After what happened with the Iowa and how the Navy came down on this guy so quickly as a suspect, I was seeing the same parallels instantly. Lo-and-behold they were extremely similar situations. Only, this time with the Bonhomme Richard, thank god no one was killed. That said, there was still a huge accident and immediately instead of trying to find out what actually happened and why the Navy and government tried to immediately find out who they could blame and try to make it look like the Navy wasn't at fault for anything. If you look at the investigation, it was a laughingstock.
The ATF investigator found what he claimed to be a possible ignition site/source and... stopped looking for other potential ignition sources. Like, he saw that and just said, "Nope, we don't have to look any further for any other evidence. This is it." Despite the place where the fire originated on having tons of other things like lithium batteries, cardboard, machinery and vehicles that could spark, etc. That's... not how you do an investigation. The eyewitness account? Changed over time. Other suspects, including the guy that was searching about steel melting and stuff and they wrote him off because he was researching about dragons? Just discounted. They had their guy, no need to look at anyone or anything else!
It wasn't an investigation. It was a witch hunt. One which the sole objective was to find someone to pin the blame on that would make the Navy look less incompetent. Only, in the end, it made the Navy look *_even more_* incompetent and even more pathetic in terms of leadership than it already did.
...Seriously, would it have been so terrible for the Navy to come out and say, "leadership was lacking and failed at all levels and negligence and complacency let this happen and the responsibility lies with us to prevent to from happening again"? I mean, sure, losing a $4 billion dollar amphibious assault ship because "whoopsie, it was clusterfcuk and we didn't do our jobs correctly" is a bitter thing to have to come to terms with... But it's better than having it happen and just trying to pin the blame on someone innocent and ignore the actual problem - which is what the Navy did this time. Again.
They say the first step to dealing with a problem is admitting there is one int he first place. In that case, the Navy failed once again as well.
@@stormycatmink
"It sounded like most of the issues with the sailor were a failure of his NCOs and officers to mold him into a better sailor."
Looking at how many people were disciplined in the aftermath of the Bonhomme Richard and what their failures were... honestly, the sailor in question was the least of the Navy's problems. The guy was not happy with the Navy and was "disgruntled," sure... But from all indications he was also actually doing his job. Which is more than could be said for most of the crew in leadership positions on the Bonhomme. Also, I wish I knew where I saw it (swore it was in a SubBrief video on the incident, but I don't see it), but the conditions during that maintenance period were absolute dogshit. Basically months on end of being in the ship, oftentimes in extreme heat with little or no ventilation doing the same tedious work day-after-day-after-day with no end in sight. Not saying that this guy was disgruntled because of that or it caused someone to start a fire, but... when you put sailors in that environment for that long and you start throwing around accusation of "being disgruntled," I would be more concerned with who *_WASN'T_* disgruntled. Like somehow that means something in this case.
@matchesburn To be fair to the Navy, there were two investigations. Despite the Navy's efforts to sabotage and restrict it, the command investigation was brutal and appropriately self-reflective... and then essentially buried in favor of NCIS/BATFE's witch hunt. It's worth noting, too, that this base's NCIS division was just coming off another scandal right when this happened.
The "disgruntled" sailor was a BUDS washout who was doing literally everything in his power to get a second shot, because apparently BUDS has a 3-strike policy. I'm not in the Navy, so that might be wrong, but that certainly appears to be what the seaman in question believed. "I'm busting my butt to qualify, even going for extra certifications like rescue diver training," doesn't line up with, "I hate the Navy and am going to burn my PoD down."
Feel so bad for the sailor who was blamed by the captian in an attempt to hide his incompetence
the incompetence is all-round...not reporting SMOKE on the ship??? criminally derelict...
It went in a special underwater operation
I was thinking the same thing.
@@nikoc8968 At least we know why that sailor wasn't stationed on a ship.
Recruitment standards have been lowered to a point that no one with an IQ above their shoe size would want to join our woke navy.
imagine a 4 billion dollar ship going in flames under your watch on the first f**** day at your job
that is guiness at worst first day on a job
first and last day. lol
A Wasp Class ship only cost a cool $1.98 Billion when adjusted for the 2020 Dollar. The cost to repair had a high end estimate of $3.8 Billion which is where this channel is getting its misleading figure. Why fix it when you can order 2 new ones for the estimated repair costs of 1?
@@jamesjellis they didn't fix it, she was scrapped.
@@jamesjellis it cost 4 billion dollars to build a replacement.
I’m a firefighter. This is going to be in every class ever for now on. Jeez what a big mess up. Good teaching points
If you are civilian, insist on touring vessels in your area, and discussing best attack methods with their crews. If you are already on vessels, please be the one that makes a point to invite the local civilian departments.
Our maritime academy was able to save our training ship from a contractor caused fire. Our students did the work. We also made sure to pair every civilian firefighter from the nearby city each with their own student as a guide. The local department later coordinated future training with our school on our ship, when they realized how different the shipboard environment and tactics were.
I can tell you with personal experience there was not any lessons learned. We have a naval base and college in my mutual aid area and the information about how to respond to the naval base is still very limited. Even the federal firefighters on base do not have a hard and fast SOP about how to approach shipboard fires. Officers on board still believe that a fire on ship is best handled in their own damage control with the their own people. With that being said, having my own fire companies operate on a naval ship is suicide as we have 0 training on how to navigate a ship.
@@hihfty military bases with ships the size of a city should be obligated to put on training for all of the departments near them that could respond. Guess 4 billion dollars of damage isn't a big enough lesson. We will just have to wait till someone dies as a result, as usual in the fire service.
Where were the smoke detectors to detect that white "fog?"
@@Zaiderr Absolutely!!! Unconscionable that even without guidance CO should involve local firefighters in a consolidated plan - chain of commands, necessary staged equipment, emergency response call-tree, etc. How come I can think,of this and more and Navy didn’t do it?
Incompetence is an understatement
Fits more the Fraud, Waste and Abuse definition...
Don’t forget in WWII a US Admiral’s incompetence led to the loss of a cruise ship in fire fighting.
Yes yes. The US military should be more inclusive and such! 🤣
The "greatest military in the world"; 2022 Defense Budget = $737b. 2022 Navy budget is nearly as much as China's entire defense budget, and Russia's total is far less than this.
This is what happens when you let imperialist mafia coke addicts and child predators run everything and let them build bases around the world to assert their will. Somehow, you end up with a baffling mess which can't function. I can't imagine why...
It's the fault of the Top Brass and the lack of implementation of basic fire standards. It's a good thing we're lowering our recruitment standards to fill our open slots...
As a former officer in a different navy, I watched this thing unfold in the news. I have no knowledge of the USN's approach to refits of this scale. I do understand how easy it is to let this kind of disaster creep up on you. Ships in refit are incredibly vulnerable to fire, for all the reasons explained and more, it is very easy to slide into a disaster. For this reason, it is a primary responsibility of the ships command team to be aware of what hazards are present. They must ensure that the remaining crew are equally aware, are trained, and absolutely sure of their responsibilities if they even suspect there is a fire, including being empowered to raise the alarm, how to react, what fixed firefighting resources are available, and how to conduct a timely attack on a fire. Frequent drills, with blunt critiques of the response; of the timeliness of the response; of the integration of external response teams; of the overall situational awareness maintained by leadership; and of the exercise outcomes are essential. This tragedy seems to me to be a direct result of failed leadership from the top down, with the "top" extending well above the level of C.O.
Absolutely. This was a CO level failure, though. This was all about a CO not accepting blame for his lack of attention, and I'd also blame the ship's CPO for not keeping up training. The XO for not keeping up with the situation. This was a direct failure on the part of the entire command staff of the ship. Also. An hour to get to the scene? A freaking hour? Where the hell was the captain that it took him an HOUR to get to his ship? I don't blame him for going home when he's in port. Who doesn't take every opportunity to go home? But it shouldn't have taken that long. Get out and run if traffic is bad.
In which Navy did you serve, pray tell?
"with the 'top' extending well above the level of C.O." Yep, but I have yet to see one Admiral get fired for this.
Why weren't there automatic warnings alerting the sailors to the fire danger? All these radars and sonars and sensors to detect oncoming outside threats, but no sensors for what could damage a ship INSIDE it? Do these things not come with smoke detectors??
@@williamyoung9401 Lots of systems were offline for maintenance. Maintenance periods are the best time for a fire to get out of hand. Not a lot of people, alarm systems and fire suppression systems can be offline... But they should have doubled firewatch for just that reason, advised sailors to report EVERYTHING because of the possibility of systems being offline, and just be generally more aware of threats.
Thank God the sailor was found no guilty. The media smeared him too since they thought he did it in anger for "failing" seal school.
Should absolutely sue them for defamation!
Iirc this isn’t the first time the navy blamed an enlisted man for a systemic leadership failure. The USS Iowa in the 1990s got improperly mixed powder bags for her guns,which where a mix of 1980s propellant and unstable 1940s propellant.
During a test firing turret 2 had an explosion that killed all inside,and what did they blame? They blamed an enlisted man in the turret crew that died during the explosion.
"He did it because he was a bitter BUD/S drop"
so is 95% of deck across the Navy but somehow this was never an issue before
whole thing stunk of a hatchet job from day one
How do you not report a fire? Thats completely lacks common sense. I still blame them.
He’s guilty
I was on LHD 7 when this happened. Complete embarrassment, fingers pointed in every direction thankfully no one was hurt but these Amphibs are more than capable of fighting fires. The 8010 NEEDS to be adhered to by GD NASCO, BAE, VIGOR etc. Shipyards are a huge part of the problem.
This is probably a good indicator of how leadership looks across the entire Navy, and other branches, currently. Any somewhat competent officer would have had enough ability to properly manage the situation until more senior Officers arrived. First day on watch or not. I'm also surprised that there weren't more senior officers in the general area who would run over to assist when the gravity of the situation became apparent.
The Navy specifically seems to be in some dire straights with its leadership recently. This incident, Hawaii fuel leak, sailors drinking water with jet fuel in it. Each one has leadership ignoring red flags, and trying to scapegoat enlisted.
@@TheLightypants I can only talk from what I heard by third parties. But my sergeant in the German navy told me he once visited an American navy vessel.
He said he was super envious of how much equipment they had stored, said we could only dream of having that much stuff. While at the same time he was super pissed about how the American soldiers just didn't give a shit about proper maintenance. Like we'd investigate when a motor runs out of oil a bit faster than supposed to, the Americans would pour 5-10 gallons a day into some motors and be like "It's fine, it just oils a bit that is normal"
Leadership is need however, it would have been better to assign a real commanding officer and XO with an advance STEM Degree during a shipyard period....Manpower scheduling mishaps....
@@rgloria40 Or they moved the incompetent ones to shoreside duties, where they were less likely to kill the enlisted under them, and thus get a reputation for being as useful as a chocolate teapot, or being so bad that the underlings decide to allow the enemy to kill the idiot.
As with just about everything in the military, officers are technically in charge. The smart officers say "fix it" and GTF out of the way while the Enlisted do their jobs. The very LAST thing you generally want is a gaggle of officers working on a problem.
I know this is an old video and an old story, but as a retired sailor from the USN, this enrages me to no end. The incompetence at EVERY level is astonishing. Every single ship I served on (5 total) had a "rapid reaction team" (or flying squad) within the in port duty section, whose soul purpose was to respond to a casualty (fire/flooding) outside of other normal casualty actions and have agent on a fire (or working controlling actions for flooding) within 3 minutes. They didn't go to the repair locker for assignments, they didn't wait for boundaries to be set, they didn't wait for the Locker Leader or OSL ("On Scene Leader") to give orders. They went straight to the problem and engaged as they saw fit. They were the very tip of the spear. These were predominantly engineering sailors (engineering sailors were typically best suited for this role). At duty section muster and turnover in the morning, those assignments were given and KNOWN. That team is typically the same people every single duty day so there should be no question or confusion. Being a "small boy" sailor for my whole career, that part may different on a "big deck", but that particular operating structure is in place (or it was back in the day, at least) on EVERY SHIP. A proper RRT could probably have put this out with CO2 bottles at its inception had the first sailor at least investigated the "haze" and called away a fire. At the very least, one of them would have had the gumption to activate AFFF (assuming it available). AFFF isn't intended for class A fires, but it probably would have worked. Agent on the fire 2 HOURS after called away is simply unbelievable to me. 3-5 minutes could have saved this ship. I was enlisted so I stood MANY duty days as EDO (Engineering Duty Officer), and I place a HELL OF A LOT OF BLAME for this on the EDO. A solid EDO who has a handle on system status (Engineering owns the firemain system) within the ship would have been crucial in this whole mess. DC plates not being properly updated or even used were also HUGE issues here as well. Any sailor would know what I am talking about here. This one hurt my heart. To see a ship lost while pier side. I just don't understand.
Great analysis, only two things missing:
Your average ship has up to 1/4 of it's crew diverted to war on terror operations, this means your average sailor is expected to literally do more with less.
Also, starting on 2009, navy leadership decided it was much more important to buy new boats than to care about such petty things as ship maintenance and upgrades. Leading to this incident, the Fitzgerald, the John McCain, etc ....
Not to mention that when a ship is in the yard for overhaul, most of the damage control systems are locked out or otherwise disabled for ease of access. It’s not a matter of pressing a button or flipping a switch, but rather valves, handwheels, etc, all over the ship with multiple locks on them. Even the hatches and doors that could stop the spread of the fire are locked in the open position.
Wow, our military was really stupid enough to name a ship after john mccain?
You’re blaming lack of upgrades and maintenance as the cause for those ship collisions? It was obvious from the start the reason. Stupidity and incompetence.
@@TheBooban The ship's fire suppression system literally failed when it was needed to not fail due to lack of decent maintenance on it.
@@SamBrickell Not the one you're thinking of - it is either his grandfather who was one of Nimitz's admirals in WWII or his father who was CINC SE Asia during the Vietnam War. Salt water runs in that family's veins...
My heart goes out to the crew that lost their ship. It was upsetting when I saw it on the news. The more that I learn about the incident, the more upset I get at all involved.
It almost happened to one of my ships. My training ship was used annually for approximately three months. The other months, it was at our dock, cold iron, with dehumidifiers.
Students, "Middies," did most of the work, under the supervision of officers and staff. Some jobs were contracted out.
A contractor, welding on bulkheads, failed to properly do inspection and monitoring, before, during, and after a job. They didn't even leave a fire watch for complete cool down. Instead, their entire crew left the ship to go to lunch.
SOP is a deckie & an engineer are on the quarter deck 24/7 watches. Fortunately, one of them was diligent in their rounds, especially in spaces with work activity. They called the alarm on a smoldering fire. They called the campus office, the day watch officer, the nearby boathouse, every dorm phone, the front gate watch, and the local fire department. I can't remember if the fire pumps drew from the surface water, or if we were attached to shore supply water that day. We did both back then. I do remember that the watch had all lines primed before anyone else arrived.
Students and staff came running. The space had become fully involved by then; and the smoke plume could be seen for miles. Everyone had firefighting training, knew the systems, and where the gear was.
Many Middies were already fighting the fire directly with fog lines, while others were cooling bulkheads, and inspecting all connecting spaces, above, and below.
The gate awaited the arrival of the firetrucks from the city & directed them to the ship. Every city firefighter was paired with a student guide in turnout gear, etc. Students also protected the ship with extra techniques unique to shipboard fires. Fire was just barely out as the contractors returned to campus.
The watch & the Middies had saved their ship. Our mopups and repairs took ages and added a lot of excessive workload to a tight budget. The local firefighters also arranged to use our ship for training afterwards, since they had previously been unaware of the difference in tactics needed.
This was DECADES ago.
HOW can a modern Navy and a professional base firecrew not do what a civilian maritime academy was able to do? Fire is THE number one enemy of ships, and ALL crew members should have firefighting training tactics, and intense knowledge of their individual ship's systems. It was my habit to get immediately oriented to a new ship's physical layout, and it's fire & emergency systems within my first 24 hours aboard. My life depended on it.
Please, even if someone isn't putting it into your schedule, take it upon yourselves, both civilian and military, to educate yourself on your surroundings, how you can make a safe egress in the pitch black; and where all emergency resources are located. Your life, and others, might depend on it one day.
Sorry for the length; but the USS Bonhomme Richard fire hits too close to home.
Concise and insightful thank you
Bro wasted his all life for this story
@@koby9356 You wasted your all life for this stupid comment.
I was on a carrier in the early 90s. some dude, smoking in an unauthorized space, haphazardly tossed his butt -where it landed in some oily rags- and left the space. Big fire ensued… followed by an investigation -that was even bigger… which was followed by many sailors losing their ranks, rates, and careers.
Bruh moment
Didn't that same thing happen aboard the GW a couple years ago? Or is that what you were talking about? Feel like the one I'm thinking of was way more recent because I had shipmates who were aboard during that event and so it wouldn't have been back in the 90s
Losing a "career" in the U.S. isn't something I'd imagine too many people shed tears over...
@@tigerpjm the military isn’t a valid career? why do you say that?
Joining the US Military at 18 years old… getting some of the best training/education available on the planet… retiring with a full pension at age 38 and then getting a job with your skills/training/experience before you’re 40. Now you have two incomes with another pension in sight by the time you’re 65… and you say the military is a bad career choice?
you sound like someone who has a gender studies “degree”
@@alitlweird
No, I was an infantryman you fukn clown.
You sound like a f*ckwit.
You’re a bloody menace, your second triangle of fire was gold! Not even a minute in and I can tell this one will be good.
This is such an extreme next level of incompetence, that it needs a new word to call it.
Acompetence? Anticompetence?
Malicious dereliction of duty?
Hyperincomperence?
Idiocy
Hypocompetence
This shows how important fire suppression devices such as sprinklers are even during renovations. This is a learning lesson for the military.
_"This room isn't usually filled with smoke... Nah, this is probably fine, plus I have some equipment I should be losing right now anyway."_
Truly they are the best of the best.
Welders can generate smoke all the time without the Wood smell associated with wood fire most will assume its ongoing hot work.
@@eggos5074 Ship's crew should never trust contractors. The contractors still have a home to go to that night.
Women lol
It's crazy how much you know about terminology and just get everything right about the navy. As a sailor kudos to you.
Research is a powerful thing.
Alas not everyone does decent research.
Very good video.
I live in San Diego, and we watched this ship burn four days. The smoke was thick and toxic blowing onto Barrio Logan (a neighborhood) causing many to evacuate.
This was first class FUBAR.
The OOD and Captain should have been on trial, not the seaman scapegoat.
If you don't train for damage control in every situation, you don't have people with the situational awareness to fight a shipboard fire.
You won't have a ship long.
Who makes sure damage control adapts to changing shipboard conditions like a rebuild?
The Captain.
You know your Navy is in trouble when your officers and men forget how to react and fight a fire
The issue here is that during a renovation the automatic fire suppression sprinklers were disabled. Then the area became too hot for fire personnel along with a slow response from trained firefighters. Very embarrassing to loose a ship this way.
the issues aren't skin deep, i served on a submarine with a guy that was on the USS Miami when it went up in flames, he would tell us about how the officers and chiefs, the leaders onboard, were too scared to fight the fire while someone low ranking would be begging to be sent in to help out. the vast majority of people like to sit there and say "I would do this or I would do that" but no one knows how you're actually going to react until you are in the moment. the submarine i was on had a real fire while underway and we took care of it within minutes, but hearing the alarm bells toll and people running/yelling can cause panic. I am in no way defending the actions of the people involved, I'm just saying that I understand the difficulty of the situation and how being improperly trained/ not ready for every scenario could cause mass panic especially when the people you should rely on, the officers, can't even point you in the right direction. the biggest issue with todays military is that for the vast majority of leaders, they've never seen war and care too much about little things that only lead to cascading problems, things like not having a good enough shave or your boots aren't shined enough so they pull you away from maintenance/studying/watch to "counsel" you but at the end of the day the only thing thats happened is you lost 3 hours of your time that you could have spent being productive
@@mrdan2898 LOSE not loose. I don't think it's quite as simple as you're making it out to be.
"dIvErSiTy iS oUr sTrEnGtH"
@@mrdan2898 No, the issue is that people on that ship ignored obvious signs of a fire, when even a sub-80 IQ civilian would either go for help or pull a fire alarm. Someone had to train those sailors to ignore their basic instincts. In psychology, it is called "learned helplessness," and it was probably accomplished through a system of indiscriminate blame and punishments.
Have a nice day
Cat
Thx
🏆
@@NotWhatYouThink fr
The first 3 comments on all of our videos get a medal. The 4th comment gets a participation trophy (you know, for trying!)
Unbelievable, 2 hours to begin putting suppression on the fire, yet the Captain retained his job after the ship was destroyed.
Institutional corruption. If we hold this asshole accountable, why, someone might blame us when we do something grossly negligent! Like sit around humming and hawing when multiple ships crash into civilian vessels.
The captain obviously did horrible but the crews non-response is also concerning. What was the previous captain doing? He wasn’t keeping the crew at a state of readiness either.
How does that even work? he destroyed his own ship... ego he's no captain no more
@@doriandundee9906 The ship and command still exists, but the ship will be scrapped.
@@williewonka6694 I mean, he killed his ship, right? By not managing the entire thing better?
So why give him another ship :B
You could do a whole series on peace time naval incidents worldwide.
My old boss said that the difference between a failure and a disaster is that a failure is caused by a single component stopping something temporarily, and a disaster a many failures in a series that lead to an unrecoverable outcome.
You'd think any smoke-producing operations (welding, running a generator) would have to be well-ventillated for safety reasons, so *any* smoke is a bad sign.
Remember that you are dealing with civilian workers on board. They don't really care about all those stupid Navy regulations, Hot Work Permits, etc. If they want to weld it, they will drag the leads over and weld it. They might even check to see if there is anything on the OTHER side of what they are welding. Some don't.
Since those welding leads are heavy, they will typically just leave them there until they need them for the next job. No biggie if their welding started a fire in the space and the leads are preventing you from shutting the hatch to contain it.
We are literally talking folks here who will save themselves a walk up two flights of stairs by pissing and shitting in a dark corner, and toss their lunch sack over their shoulder when they are done eating rather than putting it in a trash barrel 50 feet away.
I work in a Naval Shipyard, and almost all hot work requires permits, ventilation, and one or more fire watches. However, there was no hot work being conducted on the ship the day of the fire.
@@Kriss_L dunno if other ships/departments/divisions did it differently, but for my div, we had to provide a body for fire watch/supervision, REGARDLESS of whether the civvies provided their own FW.
@@angrytigermpc The section I'm in now is cutting up subs, so they haven't had any Sailors on them for a long time.
Yo your ship is 🔥🔥🔥🔥
“Thanks bro”
From my Naval experience, a fire aboard a ship is the deadliest situation. The USS Saratoga had a number of them, but not at sea.
Saratoga never had one go this out of control.
hmm, I would have thought taking missile fire or torpedoes would have been the deadliest. the more you know.
@@pluto8404 nope. Missiles mostly. Only damage a few compartments. Same for torpedoes. Fires that get out of hand leave nowhere for the crew to run. Missile or torpedo damage below the water line can be mitigated by sealing the affected compartments. In a lot of ways, that sort of damage control is much easier than firefighting. You can go back to fighting once you seal them and complete repairs later. You can't put a fire on hold.
I was actually on the bay that day. The smoke seemingly spread everywhere and the wind almost seemed to change. Cool to see a video on it
The fire was a strategy called "Tactical Decommissioning"
And the explosion was actually unplanned rapid deconstruction. Lol 🤣🤣
Makes you wonder why China bothers building new ships. The US Navy sink there own quicker
Dude this is not Russia that undeniably incompetent
@@FEURVERM This is why you dont get the joke nor girls.
Rome burned while Nero fiddled.
I would like to state that this channel is one of my Go-Tos for weird or interesting military facts. Thank you, NWYT
You got it, Ethan!
Brings a new level of understanding to the term, "ship of fools."
As a former (german navy) sailor i am amazed by the sheer incompetence (or lack of proper training).
On a warship there is never ever a benign reason for smoke OR burn smell. You ALWAYS anounce ANY potential fire and (after announcing the fire) you immedeately start evaluating the situation and fight the fire if possible. And after round about 5 minutes the dedicated firefighting team will ALWAYS show up in full firefighting gear and also fight the fire if there is any.
Best case is a false alarm and nobody will blame you for it (at least not for long)
minus strebt gegen Unendlich.
It wasn’t incompetence it was just a weather balloon
One of the things about fire fighting onboard a ship is that they're not designed to have fires fought from the outside in. They're designed to be fought from the inside, where the fire fighters (sailors) are. Coming at it from the outside limits access to the fire and onboard fire fighting gear, as well as the swarming response from everyone on board when the PA makes the all hands call. It's unbelievable as a former sailor that NOBODY said "OH SHIT! SMOKE" and sounded the alarm onboard. Even a skeleton crew should have been able to handle this. Even if the stations are randomly nonfunctional, it takes a few seconds to check.
Correct. And regular rounds at secure and during stand down by a properly briefed duty watch including by the OOD and other command elements
@@andrewstackpool4911 I can't imagine this happening. I can still hear damage control class.. '' congratulations, recruit! All your fucking crewmates are dead and it's your fault! '
@@Canthus13 Ok, I do not go for that type of instruction, based on negativity and criticism. They are immediately setting up a barrier in the JR. Be positive and tell them where they have gone wrong and, if necessary, run the exercise again. If you went through that I am sorry. But when push comes to shove, I don't want some kid making a difference positive or minus. Nor do I want a DCO whether his first day or 200th. You got a probably LCDR bands on the blouse. FFS. Get out there and take fkn command. Screw the gd phone. Call the CO shortly.
@@Canthus13 And if that happened to you. Im a retired Australian senior naval officer but sorry. We seek to build you, not degrade you
@@andrewstackpool4911 Dunno when you went to boot, but that was pretty normal for the 90s. And I'm not complaining. My point is there's no way I wouldn't have taken it seriously at the first hint of smoke. You don't need an officer to sound the alarm and get moving. By the time an officer was even alerted it sounds like it was too late. These failures are inexcusable from the bottom to the top. I'm still dumbfounded by someone ignoring smoke. sounding the alarm and having it turn out to be nothing is a lot cheaper and safer than ignoring it.
Was onboard her with my NJROTC unit while she was getting ready for her refit. Got to talk with her Captain while we got to tour the bridge. Was insane to see her burning, and seeing shots of the places we had walked. Insane!
Beennnffffff
This makes me absolutely enraged at how poorly these “adults” could manage a fire on such a ship
Because they didn't have a trans bi racial women who is in a poly relationship to deal with it. All the forces should be OK now that this is being mandated
@@EFFEZE people in wheelchairs can carry extra fire extinguishers.
@@EFFEZE I'm picturing 15 sailors in a huddle taking a vote regarding the fire: "Is everyone clear on what we're doing about this fire? I will text our boss with a message about the fire, eight of you said Madam, and 7 said Sir, so the message we send to our boss will start "Madam, there is a fire."
@@EFFEZE Yeah bro because clearly the all white guy crew can handle it on their own, after all they only managed to burn down a 4 billion dollar ship, havent seen a trans person do that yet.
Put you there and see you do better.
The CO/XO also had 14 straight fire drill failures in a row under their belt. Incompetence starts at the top, and 'Fail Upwards". (Actually rolls down from the incompetence from the current CIC!) In my DOD experience this was SOP for Promotion/Management placement...
Is anyone else remembering that episode of The Simpsons where Homer screws up a navy submarine and when asked to explain himself he sheepishly shouts _"Erm, it's my first day?"_ through a megaphone?
I was a HT and I worked a sims San Diego I spent most of my time in the ship yard. There are so many welders and different projects going on I frankly am amazed it doesn’t happen more often. I remember climbing over other welders just to get to my job.
Sad and telling. Grateful that there was no loss of human life.
Small fires turn into major fires. 2 hours to start fighting fire was devastating. Time is critical.
When I first read the title in notification I thought "INCOMPETENCE" is a ship name 🤣
Wasn't that one in the Russian Pacific squadron? 😁🤣😄 maybe I'm getting names mixed up...
Bruh😂
My ship's fire marshal was on the BHR as an investigator. He now does fire drills, flood drills, and toxic gas drills at least 2-4 times a week. They're really annoying but now they're needed because its better to be overtrained then undertrained. I can say with certainty, if a fire occurred on our ship, it will be handled much smoother and quicker than the BHR.
Damn. She was the first deck I served on as a Marine. It is sad she went like that.
Fed Fire not being notified by CDO, or hell, even the OOD! immediately is a massive red flag. That's like... default action. Even if you have a trash can fire, Fed Fire is at least notified so that they can prepare for the situation escalating. Worst case scenario, you call back and say "nevermind, very minor Class A, we handled it", like the narrator points out the FFD station is right on base so it's not like they're driving 30 minutes out of their way and missing a call from a burning house somewhere or something to respond.
The sad thing is the San Diego Fire Department was the first entity to put water on the fire(almost two hours after the first report of smoke)per the Navy's report.
I served onboard the Bonnie Dick in the early 2000’s. It was an amazing ship. She will be missed.
At first I thought the ship's name was 'Ballnumber Shark'
Then I turned on the subtitles because I didn't catch the exact times (10: 30 firefighters start withdrawing and 10: 50 explosion) and only then did I found out it was the
'Bonhomme Richard!'
The second US Navy ship bearing that name served in The Pacific War but didn't suffer any fatal fires.
But speaking about the Pacific War, the US Navy had some excellent firefighting and damage control teams back then, didn't they?
This damage control was so bad I rather have the damage control used on fighting the fires and floods of the sinking japanese battleship yamato becuase AT least their crew was competent enough to turn a impossinle situation into a somehow manageable one albet it did sink regardless. This crew made an embarrassment of our navy and I bet those ww 2 veteran damage control officers are rolling in the graves
Is that the right pronunciation?
It was due to both a shipyard and culture issue in the naval yards amongst both crew and yard workers. It's still a problem, though now being mitigated pretty significantly.
I can just imagine the naval board review:
“But I sent several fire emojis!”
What an unbelievable and fully preventable disaster!!
This is unbelievable, purely from a FedFire and San Diego fire integration point of view. Here we cross train to ensure equipment, Comms, and scene management actually work.
We had some absolute shambles over the years, and whilst we can never say it won't happen again, these types of multi-agency disasters shouldn't happen as often with all the historic information available.
Great video, thank you 👍
When we were in drydock, or just doing welding and such jobs. We had at least 1 Deckape or snipe, watching with a fire extinguisher. USCGC CHASE/ESCAPE!
The 2 Cutters I was on. DAMM SHAME!
I stood enough firewatches around welders. Boring as heck, but necessary.
Even civilian ships do this. When cruise ships are in maintenance, they have hospitality/housekeeping staff standing watch with fire extinguishers over any engineering work. This is just as boring, but it is considered a better post than deep cleaning passenger areas.
Thank you! Brilliantly explained: training, training, training.... saves blood!
Instead of trying to figure out how to how to prevent another fire from getting out of control like this again, the Navy tried to prosecute a sailor for arson, just because he was seen in the area.
My guess is the Captain tried to Captian's Mast a lower enlisted sailor and when that happened the sailor probably requested a Court Martial as a Mast is basically the captian is the investigator, prosecutor, judge and jury. Once you've been put up for a Mast you're gonna be guilty unless you ask for a Court Martial
I served aboard the USS Nashville (LPD-13), and i can tell you, our Damage Control leadership ran us ragged with damage control drills. By the end of that deployment, i knew every job, in every damage control locker. They beat into us to report any sights, sounds or smells that "didnt seem right". One of the landing craft had a fuel leak during deployment and spilled fuel on the deck of the landing bay. The ship basically went on lock down for 12 hours while it was cleaned up. THAT is how leadership is supposed to act when accidents happen aboard a ship. This whole situation is an absolute embarrassment of the Navy as a whole, and puts the Navy in a bad light.
600 views after only 5 minutes of this video being out is pretty impressive
Now 2500 views
3.1k now
us navy ships don't catch on fire very often so....
now people are going to feel the need to comment under this comment the amount of views the video has....
Ahhh the new Navy. We had fire parties and damage control when I was in 99-06.
The most sad part is that the Navy tried to blame a single junior sailor when this is a command problem. Third fleet, a three star admiral, the group commander who is likely a 2 star admiral, the CO, the XO, the chief engineer, the CDO, and all the chief petty officers of the engineering department should all be facing severe disciplinary actions, with the most harsh going from the highest ranking to the lowest ranking. The senior officers should all be facing prison sentences. This should apply even if none of them were there, because this is the nature of responsibility that comes with rank. I am a 22 year navy vet and this whole thing was just despicable and makes me ashamed of all navy leadership even remotely involved.
Same for that turret explosion on the battleship, they blamed a sailor, management walked away
This video is supremely crafted and I think you did an excellent job educating. Keep up the good work!
A "special fire operation" was responsible. For details see any Keystone Kops movie, or a 3 Stooges film.
One thing I think they should add from that incident is that Have Civilian Fire Departments being at least be able to communicate with FedFire and at best to train Civilian Fire Departments with FedFire where there are Navy Bases. You never know when big fire can happen and you need civis to help with containing fires.
I worked my career as a security officer I'm currently retired., and we were drilled over and over and over again at the slightest indication of smoke either by scent or visual indication once verified pull the alarm, get on the PA system, make the designated announcement depending on what you see, and call 911 and then you notify operations if they are at home and if it is small enough for you to control yourself use extinguishers to do so if not evacuate yourself and anyone else from the area and let the fire department handle it. This was a mismanagement and training disaster,. The contractors treated this ship like a normal work site, and they got complacent and it bit them on the ass. And the commanding officer made the entire Navy look like an idiot., by the way he handled the captain's mast and the investigation that followed, and a good man's reputation got trashed for it. And the Navy wonders why they can't recruit enough new sailors or retain experienced sailors approaching the end of their service commitment. It's because of crap like this.
I am a security guard as well and you have SOPs for this type of thing. If in my building the fire system is shut down for maintenance its usually because the fire panel people are o site, which means fire control systems people where on site. So where where the fire control specialists when this disaster go on? To me that is unacceptable to turn off the fire systems without back up plans for a fire situation. Also at a basic fire fighting situation you should havw sailors on fire watch, routinely patrolling the ship so they can spot these fires at the earliest time.
@@filipinorutherford7818 yeah I remember when we had a situation where we had to go on firewatch because the system would keep activating turned out it was a wiring issue in the system. It took three different teams of technicians to restore the system to full service over an 11-week span of time that meant we had to walk firewatch every hour on the hour 24 hours a day for 11 weeks, on top of all the regular Duty that we were assigned. To say that no one from Operations , Security, building Administration as well as the tenants were happy about this was an understatement. We had shifts where you never even took a break even to go to the bathroom because you had to stay on that schedule. I remember when this first started and we ended up calling Atlanta Fire Rescue as a precaution, engine 26 was our closest responder. We explained what happened and they actually watched us reset the system back to normal after checking for evidence of fire and smoke in the building and lo and behold it went off again with both firefighters and security standing in the Fire Control Room. They eventually had to replace the entire system you don't want to know what the cost was.. the final numbers were brutal. Two of my coworkers in the team actually left because of how this was handled.
Excellent video. My experience looking at what’s happening at the Norfolk Naval Yard, I do not think lessons have been learned yet.
For marines to deploy on a naval vessel, they have to complete a course on shipboard firefighting. In the classroom, all us marines sat there quietly trying to learn. The sailors though, sheesh, you can tell how much training they get in boot camp and beyond that this type of knowledge is STAMPED into them. One of those rare moments of genuine pride and appreciation. Rah you lil’ devil dolphins!
Oh come on. I've been in a few of those classes. There's nothing quiet about a bunch of Marines in a classroom.
@@MalcomHeavy Okay, we may have gotten a little over zealous when we practiced shouting “Training Time Out” for the teacher. Teacher: What is it? Navy: Training Time Out! Teacher: One more time? Marines: TRAININGTIMEOWWT!!
@@HotRodsnHueys bullsh!t. I was a grunt in 2/1 and served on this very ship in 2012 (31st MEU) and we received ZERO shipboard firefighting training. All we did were a few man overboard drills.
And to be honest I EAS'd and got out of the Corps because of bad leadership and stupid knuckle dragging lifers who only cared about advancing their careers and acting all moto instead of doing actual training or improving our actual combat readiness.
I have a feeling you fall into that category, based on how you speak.
@@HotRodsnHueys you also forgot to capitalize Marines in your original post.
@@41tl who hurt you? The 31st is more a det than a MEU. We do it every two years. You’re only on ship some 40 days compared to the 15th where it’s 6 months or more. All aviation marines received shipboard firefighting. We’re in the hanger and on the deck working where it’s required. Can’t speak for the grunts, we love what y’all do on shore, but on ship ya really just make the chow hall lines longer while we’re trying to support a flight schedule. Not tracking where the animosity is coming from, not a snco and never will be. Five years is more than enough of this place.
with how strict and by the book the military prides itself in being, i'm surprised at how almost nobody seemed to know what was going on or what to do. Fortunately, their general training taught most of them to be proactive and actually DO something about odd situations (like dude on the shore calling the firefed)
Fortunately, DOD has addressed this disaster by upgrading the Navy’s focus on equity and inclusion.
....you're probably right. Also explains how this happened in the first place.
I am glad to hear that the underlying problem has now been resolved.
That was my last command in the Navy I got out a few months before the fire but I lived down the street from base and watched it burn up, pretty surreal to watch.
Fire systems not in service are supposed to be tagged - not tagged out - but tagged DOWN! It's a red tag too
and should be communicated to all, and posted at the command post
Absolutely. Signed off Tag Out Authorization, Signed off Tag Out List. Sig from the person who hung and signed the tags, Sig from the second person who took the Tag Out List and verified/signed each and every tag, all together in the Tag Out Log and, if applicable, noted on the DC Charts and passed down to the Fire Team leaders. Welcome to the US Navy.
Oh. A work order to pull and rebuild a pump. Go to ship. Find the pump. Isolate the valves. Pull the pump. Take it back to your shop. Paperwork all fine, you have the work order. F**k all that Navy Tag Out BS, you ain't Navy. Welcome to the Shipyards.
@@kevincrosby1760 No, shipyard side has to tag...
@@kevincrosby1760 falls outside PMS...
@@iancowan3527 Ship yard is SUPPOSED to notify before shutting down a critical system, SUPPOSED to T/O with ship, and SUPPOSED to notify when they have actually taken down a system.
Personal observation from two drydock periods shows reality is Sometimes/Rarely/Occasionally.
I was at San Diego Naval Base in September. I noticed the fireies doing a lot of drill on the wet side. Which was great to see! As well as a month ago, I was at JBPHH onboard an Aussie destroyer and we did firefighting exercises with the USN. Cross platform on their ships with our equipment, it's a great exercise and is a great way to learn how different Navies use different firefighting techniques!
Shameful how the US Navy tried to blame this on an innocent seaman.
Forgot to mention the fact that multiple other ships on the waterfront sent fire fighting personnel and equipment to help. Officers made the decision to break up experienced fire fighting teams and put them with inexperienced personnel. Some officers denied other fire fighting teams and insisted on only using the already exhausted Bonhomme Richard personnel. Just to top it all off leadership then tried to make a disgruntled deck seamen a scapegoat. Multiple fire suppression systems were tagged out and contractors constantly trashed the ship during the availability period to include bags of oily rag waste primarily in the well deck, upper V and flight deck. I was there until November of 2019 during the availability and know many people who fought the fires personally. I am just thankful that no one was seriously injured.
The early detection was the number one cause of the loss of the ship. 2nd was the OIS's lack of reporting and coordinate the attack. If the previously mention things were done correctly, the Fire would have been knocked out. I dont know what the time distance was between the person who noticed smoke and the report of the fire, but timing is of the utmost importance as a ship fire can heat up and smoke up the area very quickly preventing a quick and safe extinguishment of the fire. The ship should have (and probably did have) a fire watch. This is more important on Vehicle decks and work areas. I have more to add but It would take up more space.
You see smoke you report it to the EDO....
The ship was in port and in the midst of a 2 year upgrade program, with barely 10% of its normal (1070) complement on board. I highly doubt they had an active and trained fire watch ongoing. Willing to bet the majority of the sailors assigned were just liked the CDO, new to their jobs and learning on a parked ship, so they would know what to do when it was underway.
Active duty here in San Diego base of the BHR. Was a scary day for sure seeing so much smoke and firefighters and helicopters
If the civilian Emergency Services were part of the base Emergency Response plans, then not having compatible _AND TESTED_ comms with each service provider is truly an epic failure at many levels in San Diego. I'm certain that a number of savvy E4's and E5's probably identified this shortcoming to their superiors, only to be overlooked.
This also highlights the necessity of the terribly mundane but always critical _"Watch Duty"_ with appropriate oversight at number of levels.
Even with the communication failures; there was a way around it.
My maritime academy had a dockside ship fire. Our local city firefighters had never been aboard. So each paired with a student as they came up the gangway, onto the quarter deck. It kept the FFs from getting lost in the superstructure. Every student could make their way around blindfolded. We actually trained for it. It also helped that the students all knew the unique tactics for firefighting aboard ships.
It's infuriating to see that basic problem solving wasn't used in San Diego at the start of the fire attack.
@@elizabethbottroff1218 Yes, your Maritime Academy had substantially more wisdom aforehand than a major U.S. Naval base.
Thank you for pointing this simple, yet elegant solution to all whose eyes land upon this thread.
"But wait!! We're the U.S. Navy, FFS!?!?!" - heard from the peanut section.
"That might've carried some water, if you had said: 'We're the British Navy, FFS!' - My retort.
Sorry, I foresaw some low hanging fruit and couldn't let it slide. I truly respect all Sailors, Naval Aviators and Marines from around the world, as they pin their very survival on slim number of inches of cold-rolled steel. - A former U.S. Army Infantry leg.
A fire is bad, a fire on a ship is terrible. But hearing the different problems of being able to put the fire out, made me think of the three stooges. Hopefully a lot, if not all, of the issues were solved.
Wow, You would think this would be a single incompetence but no, everyone was absolutely incompetent
As a FF I can tell you how important command and communication is. I can also tell you that no matter who can talk to who on radios (which is almost everyone these days), each departments commanding officer will be at the command post, their all together so you can focus on your dept while with the other leaders. It works great. (This is for our local area but similar in most places).
The most salient detail is the time of response. It took 2 hours from the time the fire was reported to when it was engaged. That is reflective of the total failure of ship's force from the leadership all the way down. Poor planning and management led to the ships' firefighting systems taken offline. Poor leadership led to inadequate training (or none at all). Ship's force was not capable of fighting the fire with the equipment and training they had. If ship's force had the equipment, training and organization, that fire probably would have been engaged within 10-15 min from the time it was reported and that ship most likely would have survived suffering a manageable amount of damage. The Navy knows this, but they needed a scapegoat. So lets pin it on the lowest paygrade Sailor who just happened to be in the area where the fire started.
If the ship had been in her normal configuration, then I would agree.
However, when you have civilian shipyard workers not notifying Ship's Force of major FF systems down, fouling hatches by stringing leads, calbles, hoses, etc. through them, storing flammables by the 55-gallon drum wherever they please, etc.the whole dynamic changes.
Ship's Force did not KNOW that installed sprinklers, firefighting stations, etc. were inoperable due to shipyard work until they tried to use them. Ship's Force did not know that the shipyard workers had taken large portions of the 1MC down. Hatches were fouled but DC Central never notified so that it could be noted on the plates.
OF COURSE it will be blamed on SR Nobody rather than the shipyard (lack of) procedures. Some high-ranking officer probably saw his retirement plans of being on the Board at a major shipyard going down the drain and took immediate action.
@@kevincrosby1760 Ship's force should have known about the condition of the ship. Yard periods are planned out well in advance and every detail regarding taking down systems would be in the plan. The fact that the command signed off on this is highly questionable. One of the main jobs of the fire marshal is to document and report all problems regarding damage control equipment. So I find it hard to believe that the ship's force was not aware of the condition of ship IF they were following the 8010 instruction which came out of the USS Miami fire. The only conclusion I can come to is that they were not following the 8010 instruction in so many ways from the lack of training, to lack of awareness of the material condition of their ship.
@@dmac7128 USS Miami was before my service time.
Personal observation from 2 DPMA periods was that the official schedule went out the window about the time as the water went out of the dock, and reverted to "whenever the yard sends the workers to do the work".
It was to the point where I spent a good portion of both DPMAs assigned to rove through the Engineering spaces specifically monitoring for work being performed which was NOT on the day's list of work that DC Central knew about, missing equipment not on the list, work being performed with no Hot Work Permit, etc.
I learned that quite interesting burn patterns, small fires, and some really foul smoke are created in your space when a yard worker starts welding brackets to the bulkhead in an adjoining space. My having a fire extinguisher present was helpful. Knowing that I might need it would have been even more so.
I also learned that the Yard definition of a "Fire Watch" is your buddy who lurks around the corner and tosses a wrench down the PW so that you can stop welding before the pissed off sailor next door catches up with you.
I learned that using a 5-gallon can of Lacquer thinner as a stool while welding is an accepted yard practice if your buddy doesn't toss the wrench in time.
I learned that "Don't have time to fuck with that gay-assed shit" is apparently a valid reason for not having a Hot Work permit.
I learned that picking up trash and such generated by yard work is the responsibility of a yard employee with the name of "Someone Else".
I learned that yardworkers carry tools, so if it is valuable it might disappear even if it IS indeed bolted down. Police retrieved our test equipment AND the cabinet from a pawn shop. Yard worker was back on the ship soon after he was released from jail.
I also learned that, when faced with a trip to the Porta-Potties located one deck above, more than one yard worker will simply piss and shit in a dark corner.
I (and 4 shipmates) personally learned that it is quite possible for in-dash car stereos and mounted speakers to disappear from cars parked in an internal separately-fenced shipyard parking lot, past the Yard Security securing said lot, and out the front gate...all 5 within the same hour.
The list could go on forever. I think the crowning glory was the yard worker who thought it was for a minor subsystem and "Didn't think anyone would notice" his opening the Shore Power Disconnect. We were Cold Iron and the EDG was not in working order. We noticed.
There is a system called nims (national incident management system) that obviously they didn't use, the system allows for the integration of different entities into one command structure for an incident
Just a few days before this incident, China’s 1st Type 075 LHD also caught fire. Remarkable coincidence for two ships of similar types in two different navies catching fire one after another.
Its not what you think it is .. Just stop . work in a ship yard before you make comments like this .
And that, folks, was the very definition of a 'cluster'. Wow.
You fight a fire like you fight the ship, command on the bridge coordinating all activities, had they done that, comms wouldn't have been an issue.
The bridge is the LAST place that you would coordinate a shipboard fire from. Damage Control Central is the place that has the ships diagrams, fire equipment location maps, firemain pressure monitoring, comms to all of the Repair Lockers, fire/flooding alarms, etc.
Comms were mainly as issue because shipyard work had the 1MC (General Announcing) down in large sections of the ship. Would have worked out better if they had started said work according to the scheduled date a week or two out, or notified Ship's Force that they had disconnected several sections of the 1MC. Ditto for most of the firefighting stations that the crew tried to use...critical pumps and such were sitting on benches over in the shipyard.
*Kevin Freeman* Apparently they *did* fight the ship.
And the ship lost.
I love the little video clips in between the story. I miss my Marines.
during world war a similar accident during the transformation of a french civil boat to military ship occured due to uncompabality between french and americans pipe and no adaptator despite the brand new and evolved firefighting system of this ship,
they didn't have learn anything of all those failures.
the "normandie" ocean liner
normandy?
@@bambam144 Normadie is the proper spelling in French and was the name of the liner
The loss was because fire fighters put so much water into her upper decks to put out the fire they caused the ship to capsize due to the change of her center of gravity, as soon as she had the slightest list it was all over and she rolled
@@mattheww2797 ok thx
The guy sending a text message because there was a fire on his first day on the job! :D
This video is fire 🔥 but it's not what you think.
I was serving on a sub that was moored next to the Miami in the EB shipyard when it burned. It was arson by a shipyard worker who had seeded smoldering wads of wipes between bulkheads and in the outboards. All because he "wanted to go home".
That wasn't a fire. That was an insurance claim 😂
Too bad the Navy is self-insured.
Hell yeah they are. Pay your taxes. Lol
What is crazy is 8 months before this the USS Iwo Jima, the same class of ship that the Bonhomme Richard was caught fire in a very similar way. The difference was how quickly the fire was reacted to. The personl on board were quickly overwhelmed due to inexperience and would have lost the ship if not for the actions and help from another ship moored down the pier from them. I have to wonder if there is anything to this. The Iwo Jima though was down in Mayport Florida and not San Diego. But the similarities are uncanny.
I can't actually believe that it made me sad. I stood for her alone like a weirdo. Far from home in oceans that make you feel little it was home. I can't help but respect that and the Gator Fleet. She deserved better than a drop out from buds to down her. 1997-2006 Marine infantryman Sgt.100P.T. Semper Fi, Shipmates.....Josh
he was acquitted because there was literally zero evidence and it took like 5 mins to poke holes in the accusations. one thing i dont understand is why so many people like to bash spec ops drops. people with jobs that have a 95% pass rate who never even signed up or tried out for for the hard shit. just love hating on people for failing a 90% fail rate pipeline. in some illogical weird way. you want it to be so hard 90% fail but than take it as a personal inuslt and stigmatize the 90% that fail. its really just stupid asf. like do want to encourage less people to try? 90% are gonna fail, why do they need to take shit from marines that passed a bootcamp with the same pass rate as every other branch? you do realize all branches have the same pass rate, right? and outside of about 15 jobs all schools have a 80-90% pass rate. so your shitting on one of the few people that will even try out for the 90% fail rate.
great content, thank you for sharing! USN has become quite the chitshow!
Oh that reminds me of the submarine that was lit on fire and decommissioned. The fire was started while it was in a dry dock by a contractor who intentionally lit a fire on the sub because he got a message that his ex girlfriend was seeing some guy and he wanted to stop her. Well, they have camera on the dry dock and found that the fire started where he was welding, the sub was decommissioned and he was sent to federal prison. People’s motivations to do some crazy things can be very trivial.
Oh no I remember this day. I was on Coronado island, and saw it catch on fire while on the bridge. Horrid
dammmmm
America is so powerful that nothing can destroy our from the outside; it can only be destroyed from the inside
As all empires are.
Challenge accepted.