In 1779, John Paul Jones took over the command of the first USS BONHOMME RICHARD. The French name translates as “Good Man Richard” and was meant to honor Benjamin Franklin by referring to Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac.
On August 15, 1998, an amphibious warship was commissioned as the USS BONHOMME RICHARD. It has a length of 844 feet and a beam of 106 feet. Its crew is comprised of approximately 1,000 sailors.
The USS BONHOMME RICHARD serves as a mini-aircraft carrier and provides transportation for 1,000 Marines in a Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) to strategic locations around the world. The BONHOMME RICHARD can hold helicopters, tilt-rotor aircraft, and landing craft so the Marines can travel from ship to shore. She was deployed in 2001 as part of Operation Enduring Freedom and in 2003 as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In 2004, her mission was to assist in the relief efforts after the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunamis. She has also participated in international military exercises.
Just this July, a fire occurred on board the ship while it was undergoing maintenance. At the time of the fire, only the on-duty crew, about 160 sailors, would have been aboard the ship along with civilian contractors. At least one of the fire suppression systems would have been turned off and the fire main would have been drained. When the fire was discovered, the only firefighting equipment on board would have been fire extinguishers.
It has been reported that temperatures reached 1,000 degrees, which is hot enough to soften metal. In addition to the heat, the scaffolding from the maintenance operations and the small corridors on a ship made the job of controlling the blaze extremely difficult. Every ship has crewmembers trained to suppress fires on ships and crews from the other ships in port were called to assist. But it still took four days to extinguish the blaze.
I have seen pictures of the damage to the USS BONHOMME RICHARD on the Daily Mail website. The damage is extensive. It takes years to build an amphibious assault ship. The United States Navy is considered to be the best Navy in the world because of its size and technological capabilities.
The Navy will assess whether the ship can be repaired, but the loss of this ship would diminish our capability to protect the open seas and deploy military resources around the world.
