Action. They're just really chaos on the water at this point. Danger. This is no
game we're here to do a real job. Adventure. I've been around the world twice
and I've seen everything three times. You're listening to Sea Story, Episode 11
"Fire on Deck."
I'm Chief Aviation Boatswain's Mate Jacob Hicks, I'm originally from
Trafalgar, Indiana and this is my Sea Story. I originally joined the Navy in 1997, I
lived in a small town in the southern central part of Indiana. It was small
town living wasn't much to do wasn't a lot going on I knew I needed to
do something. So, I walked into a recruiting office and I joined and that
was 20 years ago at this point and despite all the things that have
happened throughout my Navy career there's one thing that really really
really sticks out. I find it ironic in the events that led up to it because
prior to it happening I was actually a firefighting instructor stationed over
in Yokosuka, Japan. In my entire career between ships stationed here in Norfolk
or over an Air Station at Oceana I had always been in the Tidewater region of
Virginia. When I had left the USS Harry S. Truman, I'd received orders
to go to the firefighting school in Yokosuka, Japan and while I was over
there, even though we drill and we train and we do all these things, we teach
firefighting and damage control and we teach how to make sure that we are okay
because when we call 911, we are 911. We are the ones who are going to take
care of our own problems out there and a casualty at sea is something that no
sailor ever wants to deal with. So, after three years of teaching
firefighting I received orders to the USS Kearsarge and when she was on
deployment in 2016, she was doing a 2015-2016 deployment, we were doing
flight ops as normal everything was going the way that it's supposed to we
were launching aircraft, we were recovering aircraft, we were doing our
amphibious stuff, it's really exciting part of being in the Navy to see those
types of things. So it was a normal day of flight ops, everything was going just
the way everything normally does being in the fueling division, it's our job to
go up there and make sure that the aircraft are topped off and ready to go
the handlers are out on the deck and they're moving aircraft around and of course
everybody's down below and they're doing what they need to do to keep the ship
moving. Prior to launch the ABF's will go up there and refuel all the aircraft
and get them ready to go. The Ordnance guys, they load them up with everything
that they need, aircrew guys get the pilots ready, and then it's time to
launch. So at that point myself and the rest of my crew we went back down below
deck because we're no longer needed on deck after the refueling everything was
normal. They launched one aircraft get it off deck, launch a second aircraft it's
off deck, the third aircraft it's off the deck,
get down to the fifth aircraft and when they were spinning up ready to leave for
whatever reason there was a disaster with the engine. On this particular AV-8B
and it exploded on the flight deck. I was below deck and I had just come off the
deck and all I remember hearing was this loud thud and then the crash alarm
sounded. It was kind of surreal because between
training and the education we go through about this stuff it's supposed to be an
instinct that you just react to what's going on and the surreal part about it
was the fact that all we did was grab our gear and head back up. When we
got up there, there was already crews the mobile firefighting truck we used up
there was already there putting out the fire there were people on hose teams
that we're putting out this fire. I noticed a hose team was missing a hose
team leader, so I ran over to that team and I was helping them to extinguish the
fire. I remember thinking to myself that in three years of teaching firefighting
I had always asked the question about the fire on board the USS Forrestal.
I used to always wonder what was going on in the guys' heads who were on board
that ship that day that they had that fire. I remember standing there and
even though it was just instinct to do what we needed to do to move around to
take care of this fire I was thinking to myself what those guys were thinking and
it was the strangest sensation to actually experience that and to know
that's what was going through their heads. I knew exactly what those guys
were feeling that day and in 20 years of the Navy nothing had ever struck me as
being quite as powerful. So, when everything was said and done and
everybody was kind of looking over what had happened the normal flight deck crew
is generally around 30 people who were standing on deck taking care of whatever
needs to get done but after the fire we had well over a hundred maybe 150 people
up there. Despite all the stuff that was
laying around from obviously an airplane exploding all these bits and pieces
Everybody was just standing around like shocked that nobody
was hurt, nobody was injured, nothing happened to anybody.
Everybody was just fine and from the time that the fire ignited to the
time that it was out, was around thirty seconds and it was a pretty big fire
that's for sure. It just was an explosion it happened we got to put out and
everybody was just kind of overjoyed and talking about like "glad I went through
school" and "I'm glad we learned about that" and "I'm glad we talked about that."
Everybody was so proud of themselves for taking care of a situation.
You wonder whether or not you can actually get through something in some situations
in life pop up and you say to yourself I don't know I don't know if I would be
able to do that and then when you do it you do a thousand times better than you
ever thought you would. Being a small-town guy from Indiana to be able
to actually challenge myself and to be challenged and to constantly see that
I'm bigger and I'm better at things than I would have ever imagined. Despite all
the things that I've done in my career had it not been for the Navy there's no
way I would have never found that out about myself.
Sea Story is brought to you by America's Navy. Learn more at Navy.com.