The amphibious transport docking ship New Orleans was ablaze off the coast of Okinawa, Japan, as of Wednesday night Japan Standard Time.
U.S. Navy crews were responding to the fire, along with the Japan Coast Guard and military. The Japan Coast Guard said it received an emergency message about the fire at 5 p.m. local time.
“We will provide more details as they become available,” U.S. Seventh Fleet said in a statement Wednesday.
A U.S. Marine Corps official told Military Times no Marines were aboard the New Orleans when the fire broke out. No injuries or oil spills have been reported at this time.
The fire could further hinder the availability of amphibious warships at a time when the Navy is already struggling with readiness issues within the fleet.
The readiness rate of amphibious ships critical to Marine missions has dropped to 41%, a defense official told Military Times earlier this week.
The lack of available amphibious warfare ships, known as amphibs, resulted in a more than five-month gap in Marine Expeditionary Unit deployments this year. The 31st MEU completed its last patrol aboard the America Amphibious Ready Group in early March. The 22nd MEU deployed aboard the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group on Thursday.
A U.S. official told Military Times on Monday that the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group was sailing off the coast of the Carolinas to avoid Hurricane Erin. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on the deployment, said the ships’ entrance into Caribbean waters had been delayed by the storm, which on Wednesday remained a Category 2 storm with winds of 100 miles per hour.
An investigation by the Government Accountability Office in 2024 found that half of the U.S. Navy’s 32 amphibious warfare ships were in poor material condition.
The Marine Corps has said it needs the amphib readiness rate at 80% or higher to complete its missions with the current number of ships in the fleet, and Marine Corps commandant Gen. Eric Smith has called the amphib readiness rate a “crisis.”
“I have the Marines, and I have the squadrons, and I have the battalions and the batteries … I just don’t have the amphibs,” Smith told Voice of America late last year.
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