Problems plaguing a nuclear aircraft carrier that’s been deployed in support of the war on Iran— including clogged toilets and a March 12 fire that injured three sailors and left 600 others sleeping on floors and tables—have sparked speculation that some crew members may have engaged in deliberate sabotage.
The USS Gerald R. Ford reportedly docked in Crete Monday for repairs and an investigation into the cause of the fire. One scenario being examined is that “the blaze may have been deliberately caused by crew members to terminate their extended mission,” the Greek news outlet Kathimerini reported on March 17.
Speculation of sabotage by U.S. Navy sailors, either as a protest against their long deployment or the war itself, may seem far-fetched. But the Navy faced similar problems at the end of the Vietnam War, a story that many steeped in the history of the Bay Area and the “Stop Our Ship” movement may recall.
In December 1972, Jeffrey Allison, a 19-year-old seaman’s apprentice from Oakland, was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted of setting a blaze aboard the USS Forrestal in Norfolk, Virginia. On retiring from the Navy the month before, Admiral Charles K. Duncan had called for the Navy to get rid of “‘activist, antisocial, antimilitary, anti-United States misfits” who “may cause sabotage” aboard U.S. ships, United Press International (UPl) reported at the time.
As the home port for aircraft carriers that projected American power during World War II, Korea and Vietnam, the former Naval Air Station Alameda (NAS Alameda) was one of the Navy’s gateways to the Pacific until its closure in 1997. In the summer of 1973, NAS Alameda became the backdrop for the high-profile trial of Patrick Chenoweth, a sailor accused of sabotaging the USS Ranger—one of four Cold War-era Forrestal class supercarriers built in the 1950s to handle jet aircraft.
According to the Naval History and Heritage Command’s official history of the ship, the military blamed Chenoweth for a three-month delay in the Ranger’s seventh deployment to the Western Pacific in 1972. Chenoweth was accused of placing a heavy paint scraper into the Ranger’s main reduction gear, disabling one of the ship’s engines.
“Held, imprisoned, and charged with destruction of government property and sabotage in time of war, Chenoweth faced 30 years imprisonment, but was quickly acquitted by a general court martial mostly due to lack of evidence,” the Navy’s history of the ship notes.
The Navy’s official history of the Ranger confirms that sabotage “was becoming more popular as the war in Vietnam became more unpopular.” Sabotage “happens every day all day,” a crewman serving aboard another carrier based in Alameda, the Oriskany, was quoted as saying.
A June 1973 Pacific News Service report (archived by Freedom Archives, a Berkeley-based nonprofit) described numerous other incidents of sabotage aboard the Ranger and other ships. The report noted that the Navy “has tried several methods for dealing with sabotage.” In addition to making examples out of high-profile offenders, the Navy had discharged between 4,000 and 5,000 “undesirables.”
War expansion to Cambodia and Laos
In the early 1970s, as the U.S. was in the process of extricating itself from the Vietnam War, carrier-based planes continued intense bombing campaigns against not only Vietnam but Cambodia and Laos as well, as part of efforts to reduce the number of American “boots on the ground.”
“By the end of 1971, it appeared that the Vietnam War was finally winding down, at least that is how senior officials in Washington would spin it,” Navy historian Sam Cox wrote in a 2021 retrospective. “The reality was that 1972 would see some of the most intense U.S. naval combat by air and at sea since World War II.”
According to Cox, on March 10, 1971 the Ranger and a sister carrier, the San Diego-based USS Kitty Hawk, had set a single-day record for “strike sorties,” launching 233 attacks. Positioned off the coast of North Vietnam at “Yankee Station,” planes from the two supercarriers flew 4,535 sorties that month alone, including 4,479 against targets in Laos, Cox wrote.
In an attempt to stem the flow of weapons on the Ho Chi Minh trail, the U.S. bombed Laos in secret for a decade, dropping more tons of explosives on the tiny nation than it had on Germany and Japan during World War II, as President Barack Obama noted in a 2016 speech at the Cooperative Orthotic and Prosthetic Enterprise (COPE) Centre in Vientiane, Laos.
Stop Our Ship
Meanwhile, America’s invasion of Cambodia in 1970 had sparked demonstrations by protestors who condemned it as illegal. Those protests intensified after four protesters were killed at Kent State. The expansion of the Vietnam war into Cambodia—along with the Navy’s role in bombing Laos and Vietnam—seems to have given momentum to a “Stop Our Ship” movement organized by sailors aboard the aircraft carriers Ranger, Coral Sea and Hancock.
When the Coral Sea returned from its station off the coast of Vietnam in the fall of 1971, more than 40 sailors stood on the flight deck and spelled out “SOS” as the ship sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge, the underground newspaper Good Times reported at the time.
The “SOS movement” was “strictly a serviceman’s trip,” according to Good Times articles and photos curated by the digital history archive FoundSF. “In fact they have had trouble drumming up support among civilians.” But looking back in 2006, Chenoweth’s lawyer, Eric Seitz, would claim that the sabotage case “inspired the opposition and materially hastened the end of the U.S. war in Vietnam.”
Deadly fires
Of course, few would condone sabotage of equipment that puts lives at risk. Shipboard fires are a serious hazard aboard any vessel, particularly those carrying tons of weapons and carrying out operations at a furious pace. More than 200 sailors serving aboard aircraft carriers during the Vietnam War died in accidental fires.
In July 1967, future Senator John McCain was piloting an A-4 Skyhawk jet that was parked on the deck of the Forrestal off the coast of Vietnam. McCain’s jet was hit by a rocket that was accidentally launched from an F-4, starting a blaze that killed 134 servicemembers before it could be extinguished.
McCain was flying off the Oriskany when he was shot down over North Vietnam later that year. In 1966, a fire aboard the Oriskany while deployed to Yankee Station killed 44 sailors, and 28 servicemembers died in a 1969 blaze aboard the USS Enterprise near Hawaii as the nuclear aircraft carrier prepared for its fourth deployment to Vietnam.
Current problems
It’s no secret that many sailors aboard the Gerald R. Ford are frustrated at the length of their current deployment, which began in June 2025 and is on track to be the longest since the Vietnam war.
Some crew members may be intentionally exacerbating problems with defective toilets aboard the ship by flushing t-shirts and other objects, as documented in an email from the ship’s engineering department obtained by NPR.
“Our sewage system is being mistreated and destroyed by Sailors on a daily basis,” the March 2025 email stated. “My [hull maintenance technicians] are currently working 19 hours a day right now trying to keep up with the demand.”
There’s no evidence that sailors aboard the Ford have engaged in sabotage during their latest deployment. But there is historical precedent for such actions when a war is deemed unjust, and it might be a mistake to dismiss such speculation offhand.
Matt Carter is a contributing writer for the Alameda Post. Contact him via [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/matt-carter.
