Collision
Belknap was severely damaged in a collision with John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1975 in heavy weather off the coast of Sicily. A fire broke out on Belknap following the collision, and during the fire her aluminium superstructure was melted, burned and gutted to the deck level. Seven personnel were killed on Belknap and one on Kennedy. The ammunition ship USS Mount Baker (AE-34) was involved in the rescue of the Belknap, escorting her to an ammunition depot and then providing electric and water services as the Mount Baker's Explosive Ordnance Disposal team retrieved all of the remaining ammunition from the Belknap. Mount Baker also assimilated most of the Belknap crew until they could be transferred to a way station for re-assignment. This fire and the resultant damage and deaths, which would have been less had Belknap's superstructure been made of steel, drove the US Navy's decision to pursue all-steel construction in its next major classes of surface combatants; though the first USN combatant ships to revert to all steel superstructure were the Arleigh Burke class (DDG-51), which did not commission until the 1990s. Belknap was reconstructed by the Philadelphia Navy Yard from 30 January 1976 to 10 May 1980.
She was converted to a flagship by the Norfolk Navy Yard from May 1985 to February 1986.
On 27 May 1989, Belknap participated in Barcelona in a naval parade with ships from 10 countries.
Read more about this topic: USS Belknap (CG-26)
Famous quotes containing the word collision:
“When the wind carries a cry which is meaningful to human ears, it is simpler to believe the wind shares with us some part of the emotion of Being than that the mysteries of a hurricane’s rising murmur reduce to no more than the random collision of insensate molecules.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“I know my fate. One day my name will be tied to the memory of something monstrous—a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision invoked against everything that had previously been believed, demanded, sanctified. I am no man, I am dynamite!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)