Another good reason to ban all smoking from ships everywhere.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25937758/

Lets see how long it takes before they change the rules aboard all Navy ships.

The problem was a sailor breaking an existing rule. If he or she had not been smoking in a restricted area the fire wouldn't have happened. Now the C.O. and X.O. see their careers laying in ruins. I don't know who the sailor is, but they should expect to see a prison cell in their near future, and for a while after that.

$70 million in damage to a nuclear powered carrier shoud be worth a few years at least.

Back in my Marine Corps days I was an aircraft ordnance technician. This meant I loaded the bombs and missiles on the airplanes and also maintained the ordnance control systems. I had never loaded or armed a particular model of missile, but one day while on deployment to Yuma they wanted me to load it on an A-4, and then arm it. I told the warrant officer in charge that I wasn't comfortable but he told me to use the checklist and "get it done". So I did. However I did one thing out of sequence and when the pilot attempted to fire the missile the rocket motor didn't fire but the guidance unit (powered by a gas-grain generator) did fire up. The guidance unit was destroyed. This was about $100,000 in damage.

The airplane landed with the missile still on the rack. The warrant officer called me to the flight line and asked me to step through what I did. He immediately saw what I did wrong and all I could see was my sergeant's stripes going away. But he said "you told me you didn't know about this piece of ordnance. I guess you were right." That was the last I heard about it.

I followed the rules and sent up the warning flag, so I didn't get blamed. I don't know the full story, but find it hard to believe a sailor would be in a hazardous area who didn't normally work there - and would therefore know the rules about smoking.

The Navy has a bad history with carrier fires. The Forrestal (aka the Firestall), the Oriskany, the Enterprise, they all had deadly fires as the result of either poor procedures, poor designs, or inattention to detail.

And the article stated that the flammable liquid and cumbustible materials were improperly stored; so it wasn't just the fault of the crew member who was smoking. I guess that's why the CO and the XO went down too.

quote:

were improperly stored

I skimmed right past that. I guess the division officer and probably the enlisted leadership for that division can expect to at least see Captain's Mast (non-judicial punishment) if not Admiral's Mast (worse).