US Navy destroyer adrift in South China sea for 4 days without power, sailors left without toilets, kitchen, aircon: ‘an engineering casualty’

Reports are emerging that a US Navy destroyer spent 4 days adrift and without power after what a Navy spokesperson said was “an engineering casualty involving its generators.”

As reported by US Naval Institute News, the USS Benfold was sailing with the USS George Washington carrier strike group when it suffered a crippling electrical fault resulting in a loss of power.

The 10,000-tonne ship then drifted helplessly through the South China Sea for days, with the crew on board left without galley services, functioning toilets, and air conditioning, and with limited access to drinking water.

“No injuries to the crew”

Commander Matthew Comer of the 7th Fleet explained:

“On July 24, 2026, while conducting routine operations in the Indo-Pacific, Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Benfold (DDG 65) reported an engineering casualty involving its generators, causing a loss of power. There were no injuries to the crew, who demonstrated resilience, grit, professionalism and unwavering steadiness in their response.”

As per the report, Comer was pressed on how the sailors handled their waste, but did not respond. Private contractor tugboats were dispatched to retrieve the stricken ship, which was towed to Subic Bay in the Philippines.

Once there, the crew was evacuated while technicians attempted to fix the issue. The report says that USS Benfold left Subic Bay under its own power on Aug. 8, but did not join the other ships in the carrier group and yesterday returned to Yokosuka, Japan, where the Navy is investigating the root cause of the issue.

It has not been a good week for the image of the US Navy. The USS Benfold was escorting the carrier USS George Washington, which was heading to the Middle East to relieve the beleaguered USS Abraham Lincoln. That ship recently made the headlines for similarly negative reasons, with accounts of conditions on board so dire that sailors were reportedly attempting to leap overboard to escape it.

The reported mistreatment of sailors on board USS Abraham Lincoln has since become a political hot-button issue, with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth rejecting reports of dire conditions as “completely misrepresented.” Trump himself weighed in, saying that an admiral had told him that the Lincoln is “beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of”.

Democrats are skeptical, with Senator Ruben Gallego appearing on ABC News to argue that these problems are symptomatic of an administration trapped in a war they cannot escape: “The deep, deep, deep problem here is that this administration did not plan for this war, did not plan how to get out of this war, and did not really understand how this war was going to escalate.”

Trump has also begun weighing in on aircraft carrier design, this week signing an executive order that mandates that electromagnetic catapults cannot be installed, and that 1950s-tech steam catapults must be used instead. As the president explained, the modern tech left him confused: “It sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And it’s very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out.”