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Comment by sterwill | Hacker News Reader

Multiple news sources have called the ship "old" at 23 years, and more succeptable to fires because of its age. I mean, we knew about fire back in 1995 when the thing was designed (I was alive back then, and I knew about fire).

I don't know anything about shipbuilding, but isn't the US Navy full of much older ships that aren't considered fire hazards? Is there something special about this one? It had a halon system (that didn't work).

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The halon system was switched off because it was in maintenance.

I understand that, but why is a 23-year old ship considered old? USS Nimitz is nearing 50 years old. Wikipedia [1] lists a bunch of ships built in the 70s and 80s. USS Bonhomme Richard appears to be newer than half the ships there.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_ships_of_the_U...

It’s not. Commenters on HN know jack shit about this topic but love commenting like they have any idea. It’s the thing HN is most known-for: non-experts speaking out of their ass with top-tier confidence.

Edit: it’s not even halfway through its projected lifecycle.

hey now...most of us speak out our ass with top-tier confidence about things we ARE experts in. Don't limit us.

Well. Given that I've planned and rehearsed operations with this exact ship, I'll stand by my comment - this ship and its guts are hardly new. In colloquial terms - "old."

It’s not old. It’s not new. Wasp classes have a half-century lifespan. It’s one of the newest Wasp classes to be commissioned. You still have plankholders on active duty. By ship standards this is not an old ship.

Halon being tagged out wouldn't have influenced the outcome here. Lower V is not Halon protected. MMR1 below it is, but not V. The next closest Halon compartment would have been FWD EDG, which would have been beyond too late once the fire reached it. The AFFF system would have made short work of the fire, had it not been tagged out / in IEM -- definitely affected the fire attack.

I did two years on Iwo, and BZ to the Bonny crew. They did all they could have with those fire trees with plastic nozzles until help arrived.

Yeah it’s a harrowing situation. I look forward to seeing an accounting of what happened. This is a catastrophe for the Navy.

BTW were you aboard the Iwo in 2005? I was a Marine deployed w/ SPMAGTF Katrina down there and we got “evacuated” on the Iwo Jima when another hurricane was bearing down on the area. It was a Marine battalion along with a lot of civilians. Don’t remember how long I was aboard but a few days certainly, before disembarking in norfolk or somewhere thereabouts.

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