USS Bonhomme Richard

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Triton

Triton

Donald McKelvy
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Published on Oct 5, 2018

SAN FRANCISCO (Sept. 17, 2018) A video tour of the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard (LPD 6) explaining the ship's capabilities, systems and a brief history. Bonhomme Richard was in port as part of San Francisco Fleet Week which is an opportunity for the American public to meet their Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard teams and experience America's sea services. During Fleet Week, service members participate in various community service events, showcase capabilities and equipment to the community, and enjoy the hospitality of San Francisco and its surrounding areas. (U.S. Navy video/Released)

https://youtu.be/g63UWBnxbzg
 
amp.cnn.com

21 injured after an explosion and fire on a naval ship in San Diego

Twenty-one people were injured after an explosion and fire on board a ship at the US Naval Base in San Diego, US Navy officials said.
amp.cnn.com amp.cnn.com

Explosion. 11 injured at this point. All personnel on-board disembarked.
Seems it will be pull out of the bay. Damage presumed to be significant.
 
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TomcatViP said:
Seems it will be pull out of the bay.
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I'm not sure what this means. I really doubt they're going to tow a ship on fire away from the pier. Especially since the city firefighters are working from the pier.

Sounds like they are moving the ships across the pier out of harm's way, though. Including USS Fitzgerald, which definitely doesn't need any more trouble.
 
sferrin said:
Well hopefully they'll learn some good lessons about damage control. If it's taking them this long to get it under control tied up next to a pier god help them if they'd been under attack.
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Fighting with a full compliment onboard and the ship in fighting trim is a different animal than this. What they need to learn from this is to discard the "we're in yard, what could go wrong?" mindset that makes ships on the waterfront vulnerable
 
Grey Havoc said:
There are fears that it is a constructive total loss.
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Hard to imagine how it's not at this point. The fires have probably gutted the machinery spaces, burned out the whole C4I spaces, and essentially destroyed the island and a chunk of the flight deck. Economically it's going to make far more sense to take the loss, pivot to whatever smaller amphibs they want to experiment with, and maybe increase the procurement tempo a bit on the LHA(R) program to backfill in a few years.
 
TomS said:
Grey Havoc said:
There are fears that it is a constructive total loss.
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Hard to imagine how it's not at this point. The fires have probably gutted the machinery spaces, burned out the whole C4I spaces, and essentially destroyed the island and a chunk of the flight deck. Economically it's going to make far more sense to take the loss, pivot to whatever smaller amphibs they want to experiment with, and maybe increase the procurement tempo a bit on the LHA(R) program to backfill in a few years.
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Why is this more severe than what happened to Forrestal and Enterprise? Location of the fires? :confused:
 
A 551-pound armor-piercing bomb had plunged through the flight deck 15 feet inboard of her island and penetrated fifty feet into the ship before exploding above the forward engine room. Six compartments were destroyed, as were the lighting systems on three decks and across 24 frames. The gears controlling the No. 2 elevator were damaged. She had lost her radar and refrigeration system. Near misses by eight bombs had opened seams in her hull from frames 100 to 130 and ruptured the fuel-oil compartments. Rear Adm. Aubrey Fitch, aboard the damaged carrier, estimated that repairing the Yorktown would take ninety days.
[...]
the Yorktown eased into Drydock Number One. The caissons closed behind her, and pumps began draining out the water. With at least a foot of water still remaining in the drydock, men in waders gathered to inspect the hull. One of them was Nimitz. After staring at the burst seams and other damage on the hull, Nimitz turned to the technicians and said, “We must have this ship back in three days.” After a long silence, hull repair expert Lt. Cmdr. H. J. Pfingstag gulped and said, “Yes, sir.”
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;)

https://www.defensemedianetwork.com...-days-repairing-the-yorktown-after-coral-sea/
 
sferrin said:
Why is this more severe than what happened to Forrestal and Enterprise? Location of the fires?
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Lack of damage control. The carrier fires happens when they were in service - i.e. crews were in place and prepared, firefighting measures implemented, ect. Bonnhome Richard is on shipyard, opened up for repair, without her crew, with all her safety measures down and probably filled with a lot of flammable materials like paint, gas torches fuel, plastic covers, ect., lying all around - including the places when normally nothing flammable should be left. It seems that her repair crew was badly trained (if trained at all) in containing the fire, and allowed it to spread fast.
 
sferrin said:
TomS said:
Grey Havoc said:
There are fears that it is a constructive total loss.
Click to expand...

Hard to imagine how it's not at this point. The fires have probably gutted the machinery spaces, burned out the whole C4I spaces, and essentially destroyed the island and a chunk of the flight deck. Economically it's going to make far more sense to take the loss, pivot to whatever smaller amphibs they want to experiment with, and maybe increase the procurement tempo a bit on the LHA(R) program to backfill in a few years.
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Why is this more severe than what happened to Forrestal and Enterprise? Location of the fires? :confused:
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My sense is yes. Those were flight deck fires. They burned the hangars and flight decks, and berthing spaces adjacent to/below those spaces, but they never had fire in the islands or the machinery spaces.

Forrestal had the flight deck fire out in 90 minutes and the rest controlled within 14 hours. It looks like BHR has been burning basically uncontrolled for more than 24 hours already.
 
TomS said:
sferrin said:
TomS said:
Grey Havoc said:
There are fears that it is a constructive total loss.
Click to expand...

Hard to imagine how it's not at this point. The fires have probably gutted the machinery spaces, burned out the whole C4I spaces, and essentially destroyed the island and a chunk of the flight deck. Economically it's going to make far more sense to take the loss, pivot to whatever smaller amphibs they want to experiment with, and maybe increase the procurement tempo a bit on the LHA(R) program to backfill in a few years.
Click to expand...
Why is this more severe than what happened to Forrestal and Enterprise? Location of the fires? :confused:
Click to expand...

My sense is yes. Those were flight deck fires. They burned the hangars and flight decks, and berthing spaces adjacent to/below those spaces, but they never had fire in the islands or the machinery spaces.

Forrestal had the flight deck fire out in 90 minutes and the rest controlled within 14 hours. It looks like BHR has been burning basically uncontrolled for more than 24 hours already.
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I hope they're able to find out what the cause was. And that it wasn't sabotage.
 
Hard to imagine how it's not at this point. The fires have probably gutted the machinery spaces, burned out the whole C4I spaces, and essentially destroyed the island and a chunk of the flight deck. Economically it's going to make far more sense to take the loss, pivot to whatever smaller amphibs they want to experiment with, and maybe increase the procurement tempo a bit on the LHA(R) program to backfill in a few years.
Why is this more severe than what happened to Forrestal and Enterprise? Location of the fires? :confused:
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My sense is yes. Those were flight deck fires. They burned the hangars and flight decks, and berthing spaces adjacent to/below those spaces, but they never had fire in the islands or the machinery spaces.
Forrestal had the flight deck fire out in 90 minutes and the rest controlled within 14 hours. It looks like BHR has been burning basically uncontrolled for more than 24 hours already.
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Another factor is that in an operational warship the hull is divided into a multitude of water and airtight compartments that can be used to limit a fire's spread. A ship in the yard will typically have the hatches between compartments obstructed by hoses and cables, making it impossible to close off these compartments. This problem gets worse on larger ships due to a correlary of the cubed/squared law - as the ship get larger, the volume served, and so the requirements for air/power/whatever, increase by the 3rd power while the size of the major passageways and hatches remains nearly unchanged. I've been on aircraft carriers undergoing fairly minor yard work where the major passageways became obstacle courses. So firefighters in a ship under repair face all of the disadvantages of compartmentalization (close quarters, obstructions - which are typically even worse than on an operational ship) with none of the benefits. Also, with most of the crew absent, the firefighters (San Diego FD apparently) lack specific knowledge of the ship that the ships DC teams acquire through regular drills.
 
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Dilandu said:
Would the USN consider recommissioning one of two remaining reserve "Tarawa"-class ships to cover the loss?
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I think very unlikely.

For one thing, those are really old ships and their machinery is pretty worn out. They'de also need a bunch of electronics modernization to be up to modern standards.

For another, their internal arrangements are not entirely compatible with the way the Marines operate right now. For example, their well deck has an island down the middle so it can't operate multiple LCACs. And I'm not sure the new LCU 1700s would fit since they are a bit bigger than the soon-to-be retired LCU 1610s the Tarawas were designed around.

On the aviation side, I think the Tarawas have smaller hangars and might not be easy to adapt to operate the F-35.
 
Holes in the island structure, but not the flight deck as far as I can see. Rebuilding/replacing the island is not easy but it's within what I'd consider the range of the doable. The question is where the hull structure itself has been so weakened by prolonged exposure to high temperatures that it cannot handle the loads associated with operating the ship for the remainder of its service life. There's little chance repairing an extensively compromised hull is going to be acceptable from a cost and time point of view.
 
It looks like maybe holes abeam the Sea Sparrow, or are those piles of debris that fell off the island?

The oilcanning of the flight deck (seen in the pools of water on deck) suggests it's sagging and possibly softening in places, which can't be good news either.
 
Dilandu said:
TomcatViP said:
Just to remind all, it's the second major loss of expeditionary ship on the allied side under similar conditions in a month.
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Hm? And what was the first?
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Exactly a month ago France lost one of its nuclear attack subs (the last Rubis class build 25 years ago: MN Perle) the exact same way, in our very own San Diego, that is, Toulon.

It was to be maintenance and upgrade, it ended a flamming toast and probably a total loss. o_O
 
Seems the chinese and russians got their own similar miseries this year. This settles the score, somewhat.

More generally, while it is quite unfuriating to see $ billion worth of warship and taxpayer money going up in flames - maintenance or upgrade of ships remains (even in 2020) a fire-prone activity.

It also happened to Notre Dame de Paris, incidentally (is it so hard to prevent things from burning those days, really ??!!)

Also, both Perle and BHR burned up near the end of their useful lives (thanks them for that).
 
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Moose said:
Holes in the island structure, but not the flight deck as far as I can see. Rebuilding/replacing the island is not easy but it's within what I'd consider the range of the doable. The question is where the hull structure itself has been so weakened by prolonged exposure to high temperatures that it cannot handle the loads associated with operating the ship for the remainder of its service life. There's little chance repairing an extensively compromised hull is going to be acceptable from a cost and time point of view.
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It’s been reported elsewhere that the fire started in the lower vehicle stowage deck amongst combustible materials left over from the works onboard. That space is, I believe, just above the waterline directly under the forward part of the island. There are only a couple of deck spaces (magazine spaces) between that space and the hull bottom with the machinery spaces immediately aft. So the fire has ripped through her pretty much top to bottom let alone over whatever length. Add to that reported temps of 1000 degrees C cooking the steel for up to 2 days. I can’t see her coming back from that.
 
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Following all the comments here, the ship sounds like a write-off. I'm wondering why they just didn't tow it to a deep part of the harbor and scuttle it. It would have been cheaper to raise it afterwards ---
 
Part of that I suspect is that the brass seem to be in a state of denial...
 
Following all the comments here, the ship sounds like a write-off. I'm wondering why they just didn't tow it to a deep part of the harbor and scuttle it. It would have been cheaper to raise it afterwards ---
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You can't do that nowadays. To spoof Groundskeeper Willy (to Armin "Skinner" Tamzarian) "the green lobby would tear you a second a&&hole".
 
kitnut617 said:
Following all the comments here, the ship sounds like a write-off. I'm wondering why they just didn't tow it to a deep part of the harbor and scuttle it. It would have been cheaper to raise it afterwards ---
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Doesn't really go with the "I have not yet begun to fight"* ethos.

* John Paul Jones, Battle of Flamborough Head, 23-Sep-1779. Serapis and Countess of Scarborough vs Bon Homme Richard (Jones), Alliance, Pallas, Vengeance and a captured brig.
 
kitnut617 said:
Following all the comments here, the ship sounds like a write-off. I'm wondering why they just didn't tow it to a deep part of the harbor and scuttle it. It would have been cheaper to raise it afterwards ---
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There isn't a ton of deep water around, and worst case you get her into the channel and she turns turtle right there. If they lost her pierside then that side of the pier is tied up but they are a lot better positioned to either refloat her or cut her up in place. But it sounds like they have dewatering underway so it's unlikely that she's going to sink before they get the fires out.

In the latest press briefing, the admiral said they are not aware of fire reaching "critical" machinery spaces. Given that the lower vehicle hold is apparently adjacent to the main machinery spaces, that seems unlikely but a miracle if true.
 
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