Navy’s Top Officer Admits Ford Carrier Fire Halted Its Combat Sorties For Two Days

More details continue to belatedly come out in piecemeal fashion related to the Navy’s largest and most expensive supercarrier, the USS Gerald R Ford. It has withdrawn from the Iran theatre of operations and Mideast regional waters, now anchored in Croatia (Split) for largescale emergency repairs, after a March 12 fire which the Pentagon has said was non-combat related left some sailors with minor injuries.

New information has been disclosed by no less than the US Navy’s top officer. He has described in fresh remarks that the USS Ford was unable to fly sorties for two days due to (the alleged) laundry fire, which took over a full day to extinguish.

CNN has underscored that this marks the “first indication that the blaze hindered combat operations against Iran.” So the incident has been confirmed to have resulted in a complete halt to two days of combat operations against Iran – which is hugely significant given that only two carriers were launching operations at that time (the other was the USS Lincoln). And now the USS George HW Bush is en route across the Atlantic in a scheduled deployment.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle, addressed the Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Tuesday. While praising the crew’s response to the fire, he stated the following:

“They fought that, put it out, and started flying sorties two days after that, so I’m very proud of that crew,” he said.

Caudle described that they ended up battling the blaze –  and cleaned up the water damage and fire-fighting substances, for a total of 30 hours.

He also confirmed prior reports of some 600 sailors being displaced from their sleeping quarters due to the damage. 

As for the precise cause of the blaze, the last official word was a March 28 statement from 6th Fleet saying, “military and federal civilian law enforcement continued investigations into a fire aboard the ship originating in the ship’s laundry facilities.”

This comes amid an avalanche of speculation that the Ford might have been hit by an Iranian missile or drone – but this remains just theorizing and speculation.

It’s problems run deeper, Bloomberg writes…

The USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier arrived at a port in Crete on Monday after it had to leave the Middle East — and the war against Iran — when a fire broke out in its laundry area. But the massive ship’s problems run a lot deeper. https://t.co/B9odzYd9UY

— Bloomberg (@business) March 24, 2026

Adm. Caudle did make another important admission in his Tuesday remarks. He said: “The challenge … is how do you buy down risk in other parts of the world while you’re focusing a lot of resources in one area.” Already major US military assets have been diverted from southeast Asia, where China’s pressure campaign on Taiwan continues, toward the Middle East in relation to Operation Epic Fury.