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From: sma2!fred@uunet.UU.NET (Fred Brooks)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Ship survivability (USS Midway)
Message-ID: <1990Jun29.025626.7143@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 29 Jun 90 02:56:26 GMT
References: <1990Jun24.233636.24292@cbnews.att.com> <1990Jun27.021023.1370@cbnews.att.com>
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From: sma2!fred@uunet.UU.NET (Fred Brooks)

In article <1990Jun27.021023.1370@cbnews.att.com> willner@cfa.harvard.edu (Steve Willner, OIR) writes:

>In reference to the recent explosion/fire on the USS Midway, 
>terryr@ogicse.ogc.edu (Terry Rooker) writes:
>> Basically there are fire and explosions on
>> navy ships on a regular basis (no they don't happen everyday, but
>> there are several a year).  Usually they get little or no press
>> coverage, even in the local press.  
>
>Certainly correct.  What bothers me is not so much that a fire occurred
>but rather that it (reportedly) took 10-12 hours to put it out.  And
>apparently the fire was in a storage area, not an ammunition or fuel
>compartment.  This sounds a lot more like Hiryu's experience than like
>Yorktown's.  Was the delay in putting out the fire the result of bad
>luck?  Or peacetime careless practices?  Or is there a fundamental
>problem?  Or have the facts been reported incorrectly?  I realize it
>may take some time to know for sure, but I would be glad if people
>kept these questions in mind and let us all know what they find out.

My personal experince says 10-12 hours is good for this type of fire.
On my old ship USS Okinawa we had a fire that started in a store
room (GSK). Most store-rooms are placed in lower areas, usually below the
waterline. Unluckly for us this one contained lots of paper, plastic and
flammable liquids. It started late at night in a locked room so nobody
spotted it until it had been burning for about a hour. To stop a fire
you have to remove at least one part of the fire triangle (fuel, heat, oxygen)
. It took several hours to contain it by moving everything that could burn
out of every room near it. Steel walls concentrate heat and start fires
in adjacent rooms by thermal radiation. All the walls around this thing
were glowing cherry red as was the floor. The tile was burning off the floor
as our crews started hozing down the fire. We had people watering down the
fire fighters and fire hozes to keep our shoes from burning off our feet and
the water hozes from burning in half. There was so much toxic smoke
that everyone had to wear OBA's (a device to generate air) and it was
impossible to see more than a few feet from your face. As we poured water
into the fire we also ran pumps to get the water out so we didn't sink. 
We finally pluged all sources of oxygen and sealed all the water-tight
doors around it. We then pumped water into the spaces for about 12 hours
until it had cooled down. 

Shipboard fires are very hard to fight and take a long time to handle 
correctly. Most peace-time fires start in regular storage spaces due to
electrical wiring. I don't know all the facts of the Midway but I'd
bet that's what happened.


-- 

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Fred Brooks   			        
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