The Belknap

USS Belknap was the lead ship of a class of guided-missile frigates, later reclassified as a guided-missile cruiser. Built by Bath Iron Works, she was launched on 20 July 1963, commissioned on 7 November 1964, and reclassified CG-26 on 30 June 1975, only months before the accident.

By November 1975, Belknap was operating with Task Group 60.1 in the Mediterranean. John F. Kennedy was conducting flight operations, which required the carrier to maneuver into the wind. It was night, in rough weather: passing rain and thunder squalls, winds of about 15 knots, seas of 6 to 8 feet by the time the rescue ships responded.

The carrier signaled a turn. Belknap's officer of the deck planned to slow, let the carrier complete the turn, and then maneuver the cruiser back into station. Instead, the two ships closed dangerously. Belknap came into contact with the carrier's port-side overhang.

The massive carrier structure tore into the smaller cruiser's superstructure. The Kennedy's angled flight deck ruptured aviation fuel lines, sending fuel down onto Belknap, where it ignited. The collision did not simply dent the cruiser. It crushed major portions of her mast and superstructure, started fires on both ships, and left Belknap burning amidships.

The most destructive element was not the impact. It was the burning aviation fuel. A key reason the disaster became famous was the vulnerability of Belknap's aluminum superstructure. The hull itself was steel, but much of the upper structure was aluminum, a common weight-saving choice in the Cold War Navy. Under the intense, fuel-fed fire, the upperworks were gutted and collapsed down toward deck level.

The fire was also dangerous because of ordnance. Belknap's ready ammunition cooked off. Shrapnel rained onto the rescuing ships while crews fought to keep water on the burning cruiser. The response was, in effect, conducted alongside a heavily armed warship on fire.

Later declassified information added another dimension. Belknap carried W45 Terrier missile warheads, and a Broken Arrow alert was issued because of the risk that nuclear weapons could be involved in the fire or in secondary explosions. By later reporting, the fire stopped only a few meters from Belknap's nuclear weapons magazine.

The alert was serious, and later downgraded after the Navy determined no nuclear weapon had been directly damaged or immediately physically endangered. The danger was real enough to trigger emergency reporting. The event did not become a nuclear detonation or a radioactive release.

The rescue effort involved multiple ships. USS Claude V. Ricketts rushed in from about three and a half miles away. USS Dale, USS Thomas C. Hart, USS Pharris, and USS Bordelon were also assigned rescue, medical evacuation, search, firefighting, or towing roles.

Ricketts came alongside Belknap and used extensive hose teams to fight the fire: 21 hoses, six fire pumps, and an estimated 2,500 gallons of seawater per minute at one point. Small boats evacuated burned and injured sailors in heavy seas. Ricketts also transferred pumps, nozzles, first-aid supplies, clothing, water, oxygen-breathing-apparatus cylinders, and other emergency items to Belknap.

USS Bordelon helped extinguish stubborn flames and later took Belknap under tow, bringing the cruiser to Augusta Bay, Sicily. After roughly two and a half hours alongside the burning ship, the fires were declared out. No one abandoned ship.

The formal Navy investigation led to accountability proceedings. Admiral James L. Holloway III, Chief of Naval Operations, summarized the matter in a memorandum dated 2 October 1976. The investigation held Belknap's commanding officer and officer of the deck accountable for the collision.

The commanding officer was referred to a general court-martial, though the disposition was described as tantamount to acquittal. The officer of the deck was convicted of three charges but sentenced to no punishment. Holloway used the case to draw a line between command responsibility and criminal guilt, emphasizing that command responsibility remained a core naval principle even where a criminal trial did not produce severe punishment.

Despite catastrophic damage, Belknap was not scrapped. She was towed back to the United States and rebuilt at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Reconstruction began on 30 January 1976. The rebuild included a new and improved 5-inch gun, updated missile systems, sonar, communications, and radar equipment.

Belknap returned to active service in May 1980. She later served as flagship for the U.S. Sixth Fleet, homeported forward at Gaeta, Italy, and was the U.S. flagship during the 1989 Malta Summit between President George H. W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. She was decommissioned and struck from the Navy list on 15 February 1995, and was later sunk as a target on 24 September 1998.

Belknap became one of the Navy's clearest warnings about aluminum superstructures on major surface combatants. Aluminum saved weight high in the ship, but it performed poorly in a severe, fuel-fed fire. Because the fire would have caused less damage had the superstructure been steel, the Navy began pursuing all-steel construction in future surface combatants.

The Belknap fire was not the only factor in later U.S. Navy design decisions. Later combat experience, including the Falklands War, also influenced survivability thinking. But Belknap strongly reinforced the move away from aluminum upperworks in major combatants, and toward steel superstructures in later ships such as the Arleigh Burke class.