{"id":127526,"date":"2022-07-05T11:47:44","date_gmt":"2022-07-05T15:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=127526"},"modified":"2022-07-05T11:47:44","modified_gmt":"2022-07-05T15:47:44","slug":"bonhomme-richard-fire-too-many-admirals-not-enough-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=127526","title":{"rendered":"Bonhomme Richard fire, too many admirals, not enough leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"

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When Bonhomme Richard went down in flames while piered in San Diego, it was a shock. One of America’s leading warships was destroyed, at home. Not at war. Not due to enemy action. This doesn’t happen. At least it shouldn’t. There is a seaman who has been charged with starting the conflagration, but it sounds like the men in charge didn’t know who was supposed to be in charge. While they played their proverbial fiddles as their Rome burned, we lost a $1 billion<\/em> warship.<\/p>\n

From Military Times<\/a>;<\/p>\n

The initial response to the July 2020 fire that destroyed the multibillion-dollar amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard was uncoordinated and hampered by confusion as to which admiral should cobble together Navy and civilian firefighters, according to new information from the then-head of Naval Surface Forces.<\/p>\n

The discombobulation in those early hours meant sailors may have missed a small window to contain the fire in a storage area. One admiral who said he lacked authority to issue an order pleaded with the ship\u2019s commanding officer to get back on the ship and fight the fire, when the CO and his crew were waiting on the pier. And when that admiral \u2014 now-retired Vice Adm. Rich Brown \u2014 found the situation so dire that he called on other another command to intervene, it refused, Brown said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Brown, who led Naval Surface Forces and Naval Surface Force Pacific from January 2018 to August 2020, told Defense News in June he set up an ad hoc chain of command to coordinate trying to save the ship that Sunday morning, after seeing lower-level leaders struggle to communicate or to fight the fire aggressively. The move came after the fleet\u2019s operational chain of command declined to step in due to confusion over who had control over the ship.<\/p>\n

An investigation into the fire, released in October 2021, outlined several failures leading up to the fire and during the response. But Brown\u2019s comments offer additional details and a new perspective on how the fire response came together and what was left out of the formal investigation.<\/p>\n

Brown said he is sharing his story with Defense News now as he faces a secretarial letter of censure. He was named in the investigation as contributing to the loss of the ship, but was cleared by what\u2019s known as a Consolidated Disposition Authority in December. He said he was not interviewed for the investigation into the fire.<\/p>\n

Capt. J.D. Dorsey, a spokesman for Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, told Defense News \u201cthe secretary is still in the process of reviewing the command investigation and has not yet made any final decisions on actions beyond what the CDA has imposed.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Much more at the source. Admiral Brown seems to be doing damage control. Ironically at the wrong time and place. Two years ago at San Diego might have been better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Bonhomme Richard went down in flames while piered in San Diego, it was a shock. … Bonhomme Richard fire, too many admirals, not enough leaders<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,236],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-127526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navy","category-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=127526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127526\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=127526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=127526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=127526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}