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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   420 thread views

Transnational Thursday for July 9, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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246 fires on aircraft carriers and big-deck amphibs over 70 years, after WWII.

"A clothes dryer caught fire and destroyed a carrier"

"Destroyed" is... a tremendously strong word. It's not like FORD went full BONHOMME RICHARD.

There's also that time the US sank one of its own subs while the thing was moored at a pier. Oh, and that time an aircraft carrier sliced the top off the cruiser USS BELKNAP. Can't recall if the cruiser was carrying nuclear cruise missiles at the time or not, but I do remember that the officer determined to be at fault had just won an award for his ship-handling skills.

And from a related branch, there was that landing craft that up and sank during training off the coast of California, killing 9 marines. Or the F-35 and refueling tanker casualty that had a botched SAR operation in very friendly waters. And I don't need to tell you of the (oft-maligned, and possibly out of context) Osprey safety record concerns...

"Destroyed" is... a tremendously strong word. It's not like FORD went full BONHOMME RICHARD.

Reports have varied, but we're looking at a return to service in 2027 on the optimistic government timeline. While "destroyed" is perhaps aggressive, "damaged sufficiently to be removed from operation" is infelicitous, and anyway we're being weirdo skeptics so we're rounding up and assuming the damage is worse than we were told.

How much of that is due to the fire, and how much is standard/deferred maintenance cycles, though? I have a feeling they'd be in port close until 2027 even without the fire.

The US Navy in WWII lost quite a few ships and aircraft to typhoon storms in the Pacific. Typhoon Cobra sunk three destroyers and killed 790 sailors, but there were a few other storms too.

There’s the German U-boat that had a catastrophic toilet failure…

Okay, but early submarines really cannot be used as representative of modern(ish) naval accident rates. Those things were... well, death traps is a bit too strong of a word, but issues abounded.

Interesting that the landing craft crash happened just five days after Russian forces broke through at Mariupol....

I'm honestly unsure of what you're trying to imply here.

That there is big unofficial US personnel presence on the ground in Ukraine as advisors and if you squint there is pattern where USA training accidents in conus happens soon after massive Russian missile attacks in Ukraine.

Judging by how well Ukraine's best pilot their F16s, the idea that there are people that help with stuff like Patriot at critical points is not unthinkable.

That'd have to be a lot of people in on the coverup... the other 12 landing craft and support ships/personnel involved in the exercise, the half the crew that did survive...

Technically possible, as you said, if you squint.

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