USS Enterprise (CVAN-65) after a 4 hour-long catastrophe.

On January 14, 1969, the Enterprise was practicing their last day of drills on an Operational Readiness Inspection for their upcoming deployment. On the flight deck, an aircraft starter unit's exhaust outlet was two feet in front of a pod of four Zuni rockets mounted on the wing of an F-4 Phantom, which also carried two wing fuel tanks and six 500-pound bombs (227 kg). An inadvertent detonation of a Zuni rocket would require a temperature of 358°F (181°C); temperatures from two feet away of an aircraft starting unit reaches approximately 590°F (310°C). The explosion instantly pierced the aircraft's fuel cells and ignited the jet fuel. A minute later, the other three Zuni rockets in the pod exploded; which blew holes into the flight deck, allowing burning jet fuel to pour into the level below. The commanding officer of Enterprise, Captain Kent Lee, directed a port turn after the first explosion, steering the ship into the wind to blow smoke away from the ship. However about three minutes after the initial explosion, one of the 500 lb bombs attached to the burning Phantom exploded, triggering a chain-reaction of 18 total explosions of fuel tanks and ordnance, ultimately creating eight holes into the flight deck with burning fuel reaching as low as the first deck. 

27 sailors lost their lives and another 314 were seriously injured fighting the fire. Three other ships in Enterprise's strike group used their firefighting crews as well, together extinguishing the fire after four hours. Although 15 aircraft (out of the 32 stationed on the Enterprise at the time) were destroyed by the explosions, after 51 days of repairs, USS Enterprise returned to operationally ready and continued its regularly scheduled deployment.