Fire Cripples Missile Ship : Destroyer Limps Back to Norfolk; 1 Dead and 12 Hurt : Copter Lifts Injured Men Off Vessel

The guided-missile destroyer Conyngham was being towed back to port today after a fire spread from a boiler to the ship’s nerve center, killing one sailor and injuring 12 others, the Navy said.

The fire started around 5:30 a.m. on the 27-year-old Conyngham about 80 miles off North Carolina, said Lt. Cmdr. Carrie Hartshorne, spokeswoman for the U.S. Atlantic Fleet.

The fire broke out in the No. 1 boiler room when the boiler was fired up, said White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater.

“The fire spread to the combat information center spaces, which caused the captain to evacuate the combat information center and the bridge, temporarily leaving the ship without communications and dead in the water,” Fitzwater said.

The combat information center contains all of the ship’s communications equipment plus sonar and radar and is considered the ship’s nerve center.

The Norfolk-based ship, whose skipper is Cmdr. W. R. Williams, has a crew of 383.

The main fire was put out after about 2 1/2 hours and the crew battled smaller secondary fires through the morning.

Atlantic Fleet officials said the Conyngham was able to move under its own power en route to Norfolk at about 3 m.p.h. until midday, when it lost power about 60 miles east of Norfolk. It was then taken under tow by the salvage ship Opportune.

Navy officials were unable to say when the Conyngham would reach its home port.

The guided-missile cruiser Normandy, the Briscoe and Coast Guard cutters Point Arena, Gentian and Forward also assisted the Conyngham, said Capt. Paul Hanley, a spokesman for the fleet.

The 12 injured sailors were flown by helicopter to hospitals.

Three sailors initially taken to Sentara Norfolk General Hospital Trauma Unit were transferred to the Portsmouth Naval Hospital to join the others. Officials listed four in guarded condition and eight as stable. The Navy said nine had burns and three suffered smoke inhalation.

The dead sailor was identified as 34-year-old A. Pope Gordon Jr., son of a U.S. bankruptcy judge in Montgomery, Ala. A spokeswoman in the judge’s office was uncertain of his rank, but said he was married with three children and lived in Norfolk.

The Navy, as is its practice, refused to say whether the Conyngham was carrying nuclear weapons. According to Jane’s Fighting Ships, the Conyngham has the capability of firing nuclear depth charges and torpedoes.

In May, 1987, the Conyngham helped rescue the Stark after it was hit by missiles from an Iraqi jet in the Persian Gulf.

Last fall, a series of accidents around the world in which 14 people died prompted the Navy to order an unprecedented two-day stand-down to review safety procedures.

In addition to fires, aircraft crashes and sailors being swept overboard, a shell fired by the cargo ship El Paso during an exercise in the Atlantic struck the helicopter carrier Iwo Jima, killing one person and injuring another.