2020-7-12 Bonhomme Richard Fire

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USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) was a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship of the United States Navy commissioned on 15 August 1998. Like the previous five Wasp-class ships, Bonhomme Richard was designed to embark, deploy, and land elements of a Marine Corps landing force in amphibious assault operations by helicopter, landing craft, and amphibious vehicle, and, if needed, to act as a light aircraft carrier.

LHD-6 was the third ship of the United States Navy to bear the name first given by John Paul Jones to his Continental Navy frigate, named in French "Good Man Richard" in honor of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, the publisher of Poor Richard's Almanack who at the time served as U.S. ambassador to France.

On 12 July 2020, a fire started on a lower vehicle-storage deck while the ship was undergoing maintenance at Naval Base San Diego. It took four days for firefighters to extinguish the fire, which injured at least 63 sailors and civilians and severely damaged the ship. After a lengthy investigation into the cause of the fire, a sailor was charged with arson but was acquitted at trial. Repairs to the ship were estimated to take up to seven years and cost up to $3.2 billion, so the ship was decommissioned on 15 April 2021 and sold for scrap.

The average cost of a Wasp-class landing helicopter dock (LHD) ship was estimated to be $750 million in 1989 ($1.6 billion in 2023) whereas the program unit cost of an America-class LHA (landing helicopter assault) was expected to be about $3.3 billion in 2015 ($4.1 billion in 2023). In 2020, the cost of replacing the ship was estimated to be about $4 billion.