Little, if nothing, is mentioned about the fire located in the Marine Storeroom above Engine Room #1 that ignited while navigating out of San Diego Harbor at the onset of the October 1977 WESTPAC. In fact, the incident is not mentioned in the declassified captain's report who was in command at that time. Knowing it was going to be a while before seeing US soil again, I was sitting in the auxillary conning room at the very forward of the ship with some fellow IC men looking through the port holes getting a last glimpse of city and shoreline. I was assigned to Engine Room #1 during special sea detail operations but found it more compelling to be in the auxillary conning room. While taking in the view, a call over the 1-MC beckoned the special firefighting team (SFFT) to investigate smoke in MMR1 (Engine Room #1). Realizing I was assigned to MMR1, and fearing the IC chief would call looking for me to find out what was happening, I quickly ran to the commonly used port side entrance of the engine room only to find the SFFT occupying the trunk. I quickly ran to the starboard side trunk entrance and opened the scuttle hatch located on the deck to descend by ladder to the next deck, closing the hatch each time prior to climbing down the vertical ladder. Upon opening a hatch several decks below, gray smoke filled the trunk. I climbed through the open scuttle and down the ladder and felt along the bulkheads of the trunk for warmth. Placing my hands on the padlocked entrance door of the Marine Storeroom indicated intense heat. I hurried up the ladders and ran to a SFFT scene leader, a chief, and told him I located the fire in MMR1 starboard trunk. He ran in a panic ahead of me passing MMR1 starboard entrance and ran into nearby MMR4 entrance. I yelled that he was at the wrong entrance, he turned and ran into the proper trunk. As he was descending through the hatch I said I would get the key to the storeroom from the Marine detachment berthing compartment. The Marine on duty in the berthing compartment didn't know the location of the key. I ran back to the trunk entrance to inform the chief but found the SFFT was lowering their equipment, so I went to the Forward IC Shop to wait out the fire. The IC switchboard was lit up with burnt fuse indicator lights, and the IC men on duty was turning off power to all circuits. The fire was fought for eight hours due to the electrician mates not figuring out how to secure power to several burnt main electical cables that were constantly arcing. The ship continued to steam toward Hawaii despite the situation. Once the fire was out, several Marines came in and gutted the entire storeroom so the IC men, Electrician Mates and the E-Division welder could begin restoration of the charred main wireway consisting of about 30 cables of various sizes (one cable had 300 conductors; a main telephone line). Several IC men (including myself) and EMs and the welder worked 48 hours straight to get the critical circuits on line. Letters of appreciation from the captain were place in the service records of many, but not all, due to quotas, who helped restore the electrical and communication circuits. The military and personal items in the Marine Storeroom were completely destroyed by the fire and/or extinquising water. In retrospect, this was an omen of things to come. The following WESTPAC of 1979 included the loss of six pilots, two due to a catapult failure while deployed in the Indian Ocean as a result of the captain ordering use of the faulty catapult because the ship had at the time two catapults non-operational and at least two had to be operational for the ship to be "war ready". A "jury rig" was installed as a temporary fix that proved fatal. After the two pilots were lost in plain sight of many (again, including myself), the ship was no longer "war ready" because the catapult was ordered shut down for proper repairs. No war was declared during the repair time of the catpult. In addition to losing the six pilots, the crew and helicopters lost during the aborted rescue mission to free the American hostages at the embassy in Tehran were initially deployed to the USS Kitty Hawk.