So who was the little fire bug? Navy or civilian? It was a civilian who torched a submarine some years back as I recall, because he wanted the afternoon off. Also a total loss.
Brutal photos in that last article.
I’ve seen some other photos that haven’t been released. A berthing was burnt to the point the only thing left was the steel bed springs. The aluminum racks had melted or burned up.
Yes, fire will pretty much destroy even metal items if the combination of combustion gases, oxygen and fuels are right. I have photos from an MSC contract operated vessel that I took which show the burned out space pretty much gutted, cables left bare of insulation and so on. Steel beams bent and warped. What made the fire bad in my example was the presence of supplies stored in the space, such as various types of filters, rags and so forth. The fire was put out by local city FD but not before it caused a lot of destruction. You also have to remember that firefighting water destroys stuff not touched by fire and I am sure that was taken into consideration.
Fire fighting can definitely cause damage. Interestingly, fiber optic cables will continue to pass accurate data through a fire. That is unaffected by the stretching and deformation caused by heat and flames. What does them in is the water to put the fire out. That will break the cables. It was a bit of a surprise, as conventional wisdom was that copper wire is the material of choice when a signal HAS to survive damage.
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