Photo:Elizabeth Dinan/www.seacoastonline.com
Crew responded to a fire on the nuclear submarine, USS Miami, at around 5:40 PM last night at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. This morning, the Navy reports that the fire has been put put. Three shipyard firefighters, two civilian firefighters and two crew members are reported to have received minor injuries. There were no weapons aboard the submarine and the reactor had been shut down for several months prior to the fire breaking out. The USS Miami (SSN-755) is a United States Navy attack submarine of the Los Angeles class. She was commissioned in 1990. Groton, CT is her home port.
Surely, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard is in Portsmouth, NH, not in Maine, on the other, “down-east” side of the river? It looks like the video could have been taken from Kittery, but I think the text of the article might be incorrect that the sub was moored there.
Fire on any ship is bad news. Fire in the enclosed spaces of a submarine is correspondingly worse. It might well be that this particular sub might never operate as a commissioned warship again.
Logically, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard should be located in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It is, in fact, located on Kittery Island on the southern boundary of Maine, across the river from from the city of Portsmouth.
Then again, New York Shipbuilding, which at one time was the world’s largest shipbuilder, was located in Camden, NJ across the river from Philadelphia.
The fire is out, lets fix the boat! There she sits on the keel blocks, Its about time for another 688 class boat to be recycled, demolished. What should be done is to bring the next schedualed recycle to Kittery, and drydock it, decommision it, cut off the hull at the forward operations compartment/auxillary machinery space, next we cut off the same configuration, off of the Miami, rejoin the components and make the whole, operational. This has been done before with the San Francisco/Hawaii 688 configurations. The drawback is the remaining full power reactor power hours of the Miami, this will be the overall cost factor. Needless to say, the fire would have caused a breech in pressure hull integrity as heat and the keel weight on the blocks would cause deflection of the pressure hull, which is non-acceptable for any futher use. The greater use of HY steel in submarine construction offers huge unheard of repair capabilities, this project should be used, not only to show “how its done” but to show “we can do it” and do it quick! Would I ride the Miami after this was accomplished? You bet I would! I’d be the diving officer of the watch, I’ve “flown a lot of hours” in submarine’s, diesel and nuclear!
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