Huh. Just when i was thinking i knew something because i remember the 67 fire i get schooled. I never knew about the fire at the pier
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It's not really well known. A seaman (E3) set 3 fires right after each other. Two below decks and one on the O3 level (right below the flight deck) in the Admirals cabin. The O3 fire got into cable runs and went both ways on that deck and essentially destroyed the CIC. I had a 300 pair PBX cable for the airwing intercom system that was burned in half. I was never so happy to have some spare 20lb cans of coffee as I was when I went up to talk to the foreman of the yard workers to get them to run me a new cable.
We were only a day or so from deployment so were were fully loaded with ammo and fuel, there was talk of towing us out into the middle of the bay in case things started cooking off. It really screwed up thew east coast carried deployments for a while. They extended the boat we were supposed to relieve and we went on a 10 month Med cruise, which being 19 I loved every second of it. :)
On 10 July 1972, while moored at Pier 12, Norfolk, Forrestal was once again the scene of a catastrophic fire. This fire, which was set by a crewmember, was in an O-3 level computer room (just under the flight deck). A hole was cut in the flight deck to reach the fire from above and hundreds of gallons of water were pumped into the space. This ruined all of the computer equipment and the ship took on an exaggerated list, prompting concern that she might capsize. The ship returned to the yards at Portsmouth and three months later was at last able to relieve USS John F. Kennedy, which had to serve an extended Mediterranean deployment while the Forrestal was being repaired. Electrician's Mate Robert Horan, who was aboard at the time, recalls in a memoir "[The fire did] over seven million dollars in damage. The news videos...show[ed] the flight deck glowing red. We went back to Portsmouth for repairs and I believe we got most of the CIC and electronics equipment that was supposed to go on board the USS Nimitz, then under construction."[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Forrestal_(CV-59)
bob
