The film of the Forrestal fire is one of the Navy's most seen training film due to all the mistakes they made in starting the fire, and getting it under control. In the 4 years I served I must have seen that film about a hundred times. It hit home every time I saw it seeing as I was stationed aboard the aircraft carrier "USS Dwight D, Eisenhower" (CVN69) for two and a half of those 4.
We had a hanger deck fire once. The hanger bays are about 3/4's the size of the flight deck, and are separated into three bays by these huge doors that can close in less than a minute. A deck crew was redoing the deck in the forward bay, forward starboard side, an area about 50'x50'. The paint was in 5 gallon pails and they used a 1/2 inch drill with a 3' shaft with a blade on the end to stir the paint.
At any one time there is 50+ people working in the hangers, and another 50+ just hanging around, or using the hanger to get across to the other side of the ship. One of the crew left the drill standing in the paint pail, it fell over, sparked, and ignited the whole area. A fire ball hit the ceiling (3 stories up), before they could get the main doors closed 30 of us had the fire out. I never saw so many fire extinguishers fired off at the same time!!
Minimal damage, and the guys that cleaned up and repainted everything were MUCH more careful. The training was so good that we had the fire out before you "thought" about what to do.
