On March 12, inside the aft laundry facility of the USS Gerald R. Ford, something ignited. The space, one of the mundane engineering compartments aboard the Navy’s most advanced aircraft carrier, filled with smoke. Two sailors suffered lacerations. One required a medical evacuation off the ship. More than 200 others were treated for smoke inhalation as the crew worked to contain the damage.
The fire itself did not burn for 30 hours. But the damage control response stretched across more than a day, with teams ensuring the flames had not crept into other parts of the vessel. When the smoke cleared, the damage extended beyond the laundry space. Berthing areas, the tight quarters where sailors sleep, were contaminated. More than 100 racks, the Navy’s term for beds, were lost.
Officials pulled 1,000 mattresses off the future USS John F. Kennedy, still under construction at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, and shipped them overseas. According toUSNI News, the Navy also collected nearly 2,000 sweatsuits and other clothing items for crew members who could no longer clean their own.
A Deployment Stretched Past Nine Months
The USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78) remained “fully mission capable” throughout, according to US 5th Fleet. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed the ship’s status after the fire, adding that “the resiliency and mental grit of our Sailors has enabled USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) to support ongoing operations.”
The March 12 fire was not an isolated incident. It came nine months into a deployment that had already been extended twice.
The carrier left its homeport in Norfolk, Virginia, on June 24, 2025, initially bound for Europe. By November it was in the Caribbean, operating as part of pressure campaigns against Venezuela, where it participated in operations against sanctioned oil tankers. In mid-February it received new orders: head to the Middle East. The ship entered the region just days after the start of Operation Epic Fury, the US military campaign against Iran, as reported byBusiness Insider.
Its time in the fight was short. By mid-March, the Ford transited the Suez Canal northbound and was spotted near Naval Support Activity Souda Bay, a US and NATO base on the Greek island of Crete. US 6th Fleet described the port call as an opportunity for “efficient assessment, repairs, and resupply.” But USNI News reported the carrier would spend more than a week pierside for repairs directly tied to the fire.
Plumbing Problems Averaged a Call a Day
The fire drew attention to another failure that had been building for months. Sewage systems aboard the carrier malfunctioned repeatedly, with maintenance calls related to plumbing averaging roughly one per day, a service official told The Wall Street Journal.
The problem was not new to the Ford class. A 2020 report from the Government Accountability Office had flagged sewage system concerns years after the carrier was first commissioned in 2017. For the more than 4,000 embarked personnel, the combination of infrastructure failures, long hours and confined spaces added strain to an already extended deployment.
Adm. Daryl Caudle, the chief of naval operations, acknowledged the human toll in a statement last month. “Extended deployments demand endurance,” he said. “They ask Sailors to miss births, anniversaries, and everyday moments at home. They ask families to shoulder additional responsibility. That sacrifice is real, and we do not take it lightly.”
A Record in Sight
As of March 17, the Ford had been deployed for 266 days. If the carrier remained out through mid-April, it would break the post-Vietnam record of 294 days set by USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) in 2020.
If the deployment stretched into early May, it would approach the 300-day-plus deployments conducted during the Vietnam War. The USNI News carrier deployment database does not include certification cruises or training exercises, only operational deployments focused on national tasking.
USS Nimitz (CVN-68) was underway for just under a year during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic due to restriction of movement orders, though its operational deployment lasted 263 days.
One Carrier Left in the Fight
The Ford’s arrival in Souda Bay pulls it out of the fight with Iran, at least temporarily. Only one US aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, remains in the region as combat operations continue. The Ford had been operating in the Red Sea with escorts USS Bainbridge (DDG-96), USS Mahan (DDG-72) and USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG-81).
President Donald Trump said on March 23 that the US would postpone strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for five days following what he described as productive talks with Tehran. Trump had previously threatened to strike Iran’s power plants if it did not open the strategic Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. As of the Ford’s departure, the strait remained under Iranian control.
The USS Gerald R. Ford is the first-in-class of the Navy’s most advanced aircraft carriers, commissioned in 2017 and now on only its second fully operational deployment. For now, it sits alongside the pier in Crete, while crews repair damaged berthing areas and replace mattresses pulled from a carrier that has not yet entered the fleet.
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