US sailor charged with arson for the destruction of the USS Bonhomme Richard.

 

Helicopters attempt to stop the fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard. BBC/Reuters.

A US sailor was charged with arson for the destruction of the USS Bonhomme Richard, an amphibious assault ship. BBC. The sailor has not been publicly identified and his or her motive has not been revealed. The ship was docked at the time and the fire injured 40 sailors and 23 civilians. Despite successfully stopping the fire, the ship was not salvageable and had to be scrapped. The ship cost $1 billion and would have been too expensive to repair. Amphibious assault ships are small carriers that can launch helicopters and F-35 fighter jets. 

My Comment:

I had long suspected that arson was the cause of this fire. It explained the silence from the Navy as to what the cause of the fire. The ship was destroyed and under those conditions you would have expected an explanation right away, not a year afterwards. Arson made the most sense as an explanation. 

This has to be a massive embarrassment for the Navy. They lost a $1 billion ship and weren't even able to restore it. And instead of losing it in an industrial accident or even in combat, they lost it to one of their own sailors. That's a major problem for the Navy as it could certainly happen again. 

Motive is going to be the big question here. Why would someone destroy the USS Bonhomme Richard? There are a lot of possibilities. The most disturbing is that this sailor could be a foreign agent who did it at the direction of a foreign government. If that is the case this would be an act of war as the US government has long said that an attack on one of their ships is considered an attack on US soil. Iran, China and Russia might have a motive to do so, but I find this scenario unlikely due to the high chance of blowback.

It's also possible this sailor did it for extremist reasons. Both the far-left and the far-right have reasons to want to destroy a ship like this to say nothing of Islamic extremists. Out of the three I find Islamic terrorism the most likely with left wing terrorism being more likely than right wing terrorism. 

But it's very possible that this sailor had no ideological purpose for this at all. It's possible he had a grudge against the Navy or the ship and its crew. He could just be a firebug arsonist that got off on the idea of burning a huge ship. Or maybe he just had a bad day. 

Regardless, this guy is probably going away for a long time. Losing a billion dollar ship is not something the Navy will simply forgive and forget. My guess is that this guy will have the book thrown at him. If he really did burn down the USS Bonhomme Richard than he owes this country a major debt that he will likely never be able to repay.