Well, there are a lot of these ships going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don’t want people thinking that U.S. aircraft carriers aren’t safe.
this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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Was this U.S. aircraft carrier safe?
Well, I was thinking more about the other ones.
The ones that are safe?
Yeah, the ones the vent doesn't catch fire
THere's nothing out there… there's just sailors, and dirty laundry, and no bedding… and a fire.
Nice #TheFrontFellOff homage
Well, are there any design constraints? What are they?
Well, non-flammable vents for one thing
Or maintaining vent filter cleaning schedules.
This happens in homes as well. I knew a family who lived in a semi-remote Ontario area whose 2 yr old house burned to the ground because someone put a load into the dryer, then left for work. By the time the volunteer fire dept got there it was too late.
I just noticed your display name. Nice.
The whole profile, even!
Well, now that you point that out, I notice that most of their comments are playing on the theme. lol. Must surely be a multi, or maybe they just don't say much, but that is crazy. And fun. :)
It’s a great pleasure. Thank you.
I'll call you a cab, shall I?
About as good as one expects out of a Ford.
This is hilarious for the way it makes clear that he was never helping her whatsoever, lmao. He entirely vanishes in his way, the lass barely moves. Seems like a metaphor or something, idk.
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We think Americans are unsafe dude. Since the boats are crewed by them it’s probably too late to be concerned about this.
I’m not saying it wasn’t safe. It’s just perhaps not quite as safe as some of the other ones.
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There have also been reports of sailors flushing all sorts of things down toilets to clog them. These guys are doing everything they can to sabotage their ships and get out of there.
They have been on the boat for 260 some odd days.
They tie the post vietnam record on april 15.
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Apparently, careless smoking is not a uniquely Eastern European thing. Or perhaps someone decided to frag their ship (just a little bit, not badly).
From the article:
The U.S. military’s Central Command said two sailors received treatment for “non-life-threatening injuries.” People on the ship reported that dozens of service members suffered smoke inhalation.
And in the category of non-life-threatening, but still not ideal, many sailors have not been able to do laundry since the fire.
The ship, along with its 4,500 sailors and fighter pilots, was in the Mediterranean on Oct. 24 when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered it to steam to the Caribbean to add weight to President Trump’s pressure campaign on Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s leader before his seizure.
From the Caribbean, the carrier rushed to the Middle East for the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, which is now in its third week.
Speaking to sailors on board aircraft carriers is difficult in the best of circumstances. During a war, the ships and military bases involved in operations go “dark,” limiting the ability of service members to communicate with the outside world. The officials and sailors interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The Ford is now entering its 10th month of deployment. It will break the record for longest post-Vietnam War carrier deployment if it is still at sea in mid-April. That record, at 294 days, was set by the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in 2020.
Crew members on the Ford have been told that their deployment will probably be extended into May, which would put them at an entire year at sea, twice the length of a normal aircraft carrier deployment.
The fire, according to two officials, began in the vent of a dryer in the ship’s laundry facilities
Nah, dryer vent fires happen all the time in improperly maintained systems. Especially when you have people like college students or junior enlisted using them. Dryer lint is very flammable. Ask any boy scout.
"Careless smoking" is a cover for an airstrike. This is more akin to the Kuznetsov catching fire. Hopefully there are no cranes around to fall on the Ford.
improperly maintained systems
On a US Navy warship? The US military which has procedures and protocols for everything just... compromised mission-readiness by overlooking a simple, well-known, but critical maintenance item? I mean, this could possibly be something that the yard staff was tasked with when the ship comes in after a standard six-month deployment, but if they're overlooking stuff like that, it makes one wonder about the overall preparedness of the Navy.
It's a meme that the weakness of the Death Star is a tiny overlooked vent for a reason. The big things are carefully considered. The tiny things, like a dryer vent, are often overlooked.
I found online a Navy manual from the '70s which prescribed laundry operations in excruciating detail, running over a hundred pages. It required cleaning the dryer lint traps every 2 hours, and monthly cleaning of the ducts. The Navy even has ratings specifically for laundry workers, Ship's Serviceman (Laundry).
It just blows mind that this isn't a solved problem, since it was solved 50 years ago!
Right, that's all good. Now you have to get a couple of low-ranking servicemen to carry out every step of that hundred page manual to the letter on each of their several dozen machines, daily, after they've been deployed for an ongoing 10 months because their superiors are morons, and are further scheduled to become the longest running carrier deployment of all time at over a year of deploy time, because their superiors are morons.
I'd believe that some corners were cut in these servicemen's duty, and it just happened to be one too many corners one too many times. The men are fatigued, they want to get off the ship. It's possible these corners were even cut on purpose with exactly this result in mind in an attempt to get them off the ship.
If by “cutting corners” you mean “actively packing dryer lint into a place where it could conceivably be a mistake” I’d agree.
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That doesn't mean the procedure was actually followed though.
That's the thing about militaries. Like any other organization, it's all still humans.
It works like this, before they go to fight, they're the most invincible, most prepared, most tactical, most notorious, with the most fire power ready to turn countries to glass.
When they get fucked, its a local scout's fault, not that serious, happens all the time, nothing suspicious, rookie mistake, maintenance problems, not a big deal, just jets sliding off of ships, smoking mistake, and so on.
You get the idea. You can almost predict what their "explanation" are going to be. It'll be anything but accepting that they got their ass handed to them.
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I imagine this would be a large, commercial style dryer too, not a domestic one.
The fire, according to two officials, began in the vent of a dryer in the ship’s laundry facilities and quickly spread. Sailors battled the blaze for more than 30 hours, officials and sailors said.
That's actually pretty likely.
Sailors will smoke anywhere they can, but in a laundry room it's gonna be clogged dryer vents.
I'd bet on it actually being a dryer fire. The timing though, yeah, it makes me think that maybe it was on purpose. Sure, it happens sometimes. It isn't that strange. However, that's what makes it the perfect target for sabotage.
Most military personnel don't agree with invading random nations. Most joined to have a decent job that takes them out of a bad situation, and they get college paid for. At most, they joined for the idea of "defending the nation" (which is why the DoD was named that, as propoganda, and why I think the DoW is more honest and better).
Go check your dryer vents, people
Back in the day, I had a roommate in her late 20s, that didn't even know there was a dryer screen, let alone know to empty it. I spent months wondering why my least-linty clothes were still filling up the screen... My wife spent months wondering why it took 3 cycles to dry her stuff... The landlord spent hours cleaning out the dangerously blocked duct.
Clean your filters after every use, peeps!
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Great advice, cleaned mine out this past weekend.
So, an Iranian drone probably hit it. But they’re of course never admitting that
What are the odds it's self sabotage in an attempt to force the ship to leave.
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it can't always be friendly fire, so this time it is a dryer fire.
I wouldn't be surprised if the US military is a paper tiger just as Russia. Not to the same extent but I'd bet there's just as much rot and corruption under the hood.
Because they had a dryer catch fire, and despite that, the ship is still combat ready?
I get that you're not a fan of the US military, but this is just silly.
A single dryer fire would not have raged for hours nor necessitated a return to port.
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“Combat Ready” as reported by Pete the Kegstand King, from his freshly laundered, empty suit.
It isn't, provided the soldiers give a shit about the mission, which given that the carrier has been at sea doing stunts for trump for twice as long as that crew was supposed to be deployed, they absolutely do not give a shit. I'm 50/50 on coverup vs self sabotage on this one.
Hmmm...
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