Bonhomme Richard ship fire was arson

[MillCreek]

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/29/1022514854/sailor-charged-arson-uss-bonhomme-richard-navy-san-diego?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_term=nprnews&utm_campaign=npr

A sailor is under charges.

[French G.]

Thought we already knew this, but I guess I am remembering when the same person was held and questioned last year. Not uncommon for this to happen, been on ships with the disgruntled fire starter. The military has a death penalty for a reason. Here’s a great place to use it.

[K Frame]

I'm not particularly up on military death penalty law, but I can't think of a situation where arson, without deaths involved, would rise to the status of a capital charge.

[French G.]

I'm not particularly up on military death penalty law, but I can't think of a situation where arson, without deaths involved, would rise to the status of a capital charge.

I know it doesn’t but it should. We would kill hundreds of terrorists and most of the sailors in the process of Abu bin Goatlove swam up to the pier one night to set the ship on fire. This action was deliberate and has national security implications for years to come. I also would have been authorized to use deadly force on a sailor if I as a sentry found one in the act of deliberately firing the ship.

[K Frame]

" I also would have been authorized to use deadly force on a sailor if I as a sentry found one in the act of deliberately firing the ship."

Slightly different situation in that use of deadly force to prevent or stop a crime like that is warranted.

As a punishment after the fact when there were no deaths involved? No.

[French G.]

Hmmm, if accurately reported he got charged with willful hazarding of a vessel. That qualifies for death. The act did not regard the safety of all of those who fought the fire. It does not regard the future reduced level of support Marines on a hostile beach get from there being one less capital ship than there should be.

I was a firefighter on a very similar amphib and a carrier. Every fire was a good chance to go die because you cannot just pull back and watch her burn like the local VFD. And every ship has a few dirtbags like this that corrode the morale of the whole ship. Mad about some injustice and usually confined to the ship they act out. Sabotage equipment, set fires, maybe just smear poop on the walls. Or my favorite of tie a beacon on a bag of trash while underway and toss it overboard. Every time it happens a helicopter crew and a boat crew risk their lives no matter the weather to try to save someone. This wasn’t the first major intentional fire and it won’t be the last. No consequences.

[K Frame]

OK, I stand corrected. Hazarding a vessel can be charged as a capital offense. Interesting.

[RoadKingLarry]

I'd support taking the shitbag a few miles out to sea and pitching him over the side.

Same for this piece of human filth
https://www.foxnews.com/us/worker-who-set-fire-to-uss-miami-submarine-sentenced-to-17-years

[French G.]

OK, I stand corrected. Hazarding a vessel can be charged as a capital offense. Interesting.

Eh, you’re still not wrong. They wouldn’t pursue it and it has no deterrent effect at a federal facility years later. The military criminal justice system has fallen victim to TV and people who hold it to civilian standards. Eddie Slovik got a bum deal but there are good examples out there. Get the appropriate flag rank officers to sign off on it, shoot the guy and be done with it.

[Angel Eyes]

I'd support taking the shitbag a few miles out to sea and pitching him over the side.

Same for this piece of human filth
https://www.foxnews.com/us/worker-who-set-fire-to-uss-miami-submarine-sentenced-to-17-years

... and now we know what Jesse Pinkman has been up to.

[MechAg94]

But he didn't intend to burn up the sub.  He just lit some rags on fire so he could leave.  that is okay right? 

[WLJ]

Keelhauling from a carrier would be rather interesting.

[MillCreek]

I just read a followup article in which the accused is a 19 year old seaman apprentice.  He will not be named until formal charges are filed.

[French G.]

I just read a followup article in which the accused is a 19 year old seaman apprentice.  He will not be named until formal charges are filed.

If you gave me a lineup of 500 sailors I bet I get him by the third guess. The shitbird has some pretty universal traits.

[BobR]

What I find disheartening is we lost the boat. They must be using a lot of aluminum these days.

When I was onboard the USS Forrestal we had an arson fire onboard that was bad enough we had to cut holes in the flight deck to access the fire. Our CIC was destroyed, all of the cable in the runs midship on the O3 level (right below the flight deck) were burned in half and lot of other little damages. We went into the yards and came out nearly 3 months later and made a 10 month Med cruise. Our arsonist turned out to be an E3 who didn't want to go on deployment so he set fire to the drapes in the Admirals cabin. He was charged with hazarding a vessel also but is still alive as far as I know. He was sentenced to five years. By now he has probably been upgraded to an Honorable Discharge (sarcasm). 

bob

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/12/06/archives/sailor-on-forrestal-denies-he-admitted-setting-ship-ablaze.html

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/12/08/archives/seaman-is-guilty-in-carrier-blaze-gets-5year-sentence-and-bad.html

[French G.]

I can see why you could lose a ship in the yards. More flammables, zero watertight integrity or ability set boundaries, reduced Manning, firemains and foam stations tagged out, etc. We had a yardbirds storing hazmat fire nearly get away from us on CVN 71. Right next to where 12’x12’ holes were cut from flight deck to the bottom in order to pull the rudder pins. Good luck setting boundaries on that one.

[BobR]

I can see why you could lose a ship in the yards. More flammables, zero watertight integrity or ability set boundaries, reduced Manning, firemains and foam stations tagged out, etc. We had a yardbirds storing hazmat fire nearly get away from us on CVN 71. Right next to where 12’x12’ holes were cut from flight deck to the bottom in order to pull the rudder pins. Good luck setting boundaries on that one.

The yards were a terrible place to have a fire. I did a yard period with the Forrestal. You are right, cables through the hatches, tons of welding going on. Fire hoses being replaced. I don't remember the boat (Maybe the Saratoga) was in the yards with us and they had a pretty good fire, we sent quite a few people to her to help them fight and contain the fire.

Worse yet was civilian boats, I was part of the Underway Rescue and Assistance Detail. We did a couple of assists with civilian ships mid ocean, those guys knew next to nothing about fire fighting. If the fire suppression system didn't take care of it they were ready to abandon their ship. 

Fun times. Fight the fire, dewater the boat and hopefully send them on their way.

bob

[K Frame]

Saratoga had a fire around the same time as the Forrestal, but Sara was berthed in Singapore on a port call at the time.

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/30/archives/3-sailors-killed-12-hurt-in-fire-on-the-saratoga-navy-reports-that.html

As for yard fires, for the reasons French noted, they can be really, really bad.

The SS Normandie, a very famous Atlantic liner, had been interned in New York at the start of the war in Europe. After US entry into the war the US seized Normandie through angary and began converting it to a troopship (she was the fastest liner then in service).

On February 9 welding sparks ignited flammable materials and the fire quickly went out of control because the ship's fire sprinklers and pumps had been deactivated during the conversion. Fire fighting efforts were successful, but resulted in so much water being pumped into the ship that it capsized at its berth... 

[Ben]

Saratoga had a fire around the same time as the Forrestal, but Sara was berthed in Singapore on a port call at the time.

I wonder how that fire started?

https://youtu.be/8alNxLjCBJc

[K Frame]

This is the last paragraph in the Saratoga article...

"Then on Oct. 13 the Pacific Fleet Command announced that 46 persons, both black and white, had been injured in a racial clash aboard the carrier Kitty Hawk off North Vietnam. Twenty‐five black men were subsequently charged with assault and rioting in a series of roving brawls that went on all night Oct. 12 and into the next morning."

I had NEVER heard about that incident before.

Wow.


As for how the fire started on Sara... no clue.

[TommyGunn]

Saratoga had a fire around the same time as the Forrestal, but Sara was berthed in Singapore on a port call at the time.

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/30/archives/3-sailors-killed-12-hurt-in-fire-on-the-saratoga-navy-reports-that.html

As for yard fires, for the reasons French noted, they can be really, really bad.

The SS Normandie, a very famous Atlantic liner, had been interned in New York at the start of the war in Europe. After US entry into the war the US seized Normandie through angary and began converting it to a troopship (she was the fastest liner then in service).

On February 9 welding sparks ignited flammable materials and the fire quickly went out of control because the ship's fire sprinklers and pumps had been deactivated during the conversion. Fire fighting efforts were successful, but resulted in so much water being pumped into the ship that it capsized at its berth...

As the R. M. S. Titanic  left europe for its maiden voyage to America,  there was a coal fire in one of the coal bunkers.  Some people believe it weakened the steel and hastened the ships sinking, however there is little evidence of this,  and the damage to the ship was not outside of normal for the metallurgy of the day.

[BobR]

This is the last paragraph in the Saratoga article...

"Then on Oct. 13 the Pacific Fleet Command announced that 46 persons, both black and white, had been injured in a racial clash aboard the carrier Kitty Hawk off North Vietnam. Twenty‐five black men were subsequently charged with assault and rioting in a series of roving brawls that went on all night Oct. 12 and into the next morning."

I had NEVER heard about that incident before.

Wow.


As for how the fire started on Sara... no clue.

There was also some racial tensions (yea, tensions) on several boats at the time. The  two most well known events were the USS Kitty Hawk and the USS Constellation. Those events resulted in the USN coming up with a program to increase racial awareness. We were all instructed to wear civilian clothes (no rank) and attend one of the seminars that had been implemented fleet wide. Personally, I thought they were a waste of time because it was mainly just a force feeding of what the Human Resources Management team thought you should think or a general bitch session. At the time they were referred to as watermelon U, which almost guaranteed they would be ineffective.

Later (late 70s, early 80's) as women were being assigned to traditionally male billets on ships and in deploying aviation squadrons we had a series of Women in the Navy (WIN) command level seminars that every one had to attend.

The Navy (all services probably) figured they could fix social issues with an 8 hour seminar and all would be peachy. Too bad it doesn't work that way.

bob

https://www.nytimes.com/1973/02/18/archives/the-constellation-incident-a-sort-of-mutiny.html

https://www.aavw.org/served/policy_eo_abstract19.html

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/racial-violence-breaks-out-aboard-u-s-navy-ships

[MillCreek]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/sailor-who-hated-navy-torched-dollar12b-assault-ship-warrant?ref=home&fbclid=IwAR1O8IDqTr5qNwqYKVjY8REtTAQf3sBYUulc1WYqvq3i6K0GMl2euCf4DMI


https://www.scribd.com/document/518700846/Ryan-Sawyer-Mays-search-warrant
Well hello, Seaman Ryan Sawyer Mays, and how is your day going?

[BobR]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/sailor-who-hated-navy-torched-dollar12b-assault-ship-warrant?ref=home&fbclid=IwAR1O8IDqTr5qNwqYKVjY8REtTAQf3sBYUulc1WYqvq3i6K0GMl2euCf4DMI


https://www.scribd.com/document/518700846/Ryan-Sawyer-Mays-search-warrant
Well hello, Seaman Ryan Sawyer Mays, and how is your day going?

Sounds like a shitbird who couldn't succeed at his chosen desires (Computers and SEAL) and was assigned to the fleet as an undesignated seaman. I seldom met one of those who didn't place all of the blame for their problems on the Navy. In their eyes the Navy had it out for them.

bob

[BobR]

Bringing this thread up from the ashes.

Not Guilty

Seaman Timmy is having a good day. After reading what the Navy had I am wondering how this even went to trial. Just more of the Navy trying their best to pin the blame as low on the chain of command as possible.

https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/investigations/fate-of-accused-arsonist-in-the-uss-bonhomme-richard-fire-now-in-hands-of-military-judge/509-adecaaee-5364-4ca2-aedd-ce1cf27fe5fc

bob