`USS Sheffield fire (Falkland Islands War)` (also recurs as `HMS Sheffield`)

Exocet missile strike ignites aluminum superstructure; cited to justify Navy's move away from aluminum superstructures in the 1980s.

In the Falkland Islands war, the British cruiser Sheffield got hit with the Exocet missile, started an aluminum fire, and it wiped out the whole ship. Earlier there was the Belknap disaster, where the Kennedy was out on maneuvers and the destroyer Belknap collided with the Kennedy. It didn't do that much damage, except some jet fuel came down on top of the Belknap, caught its aluminum superstructure on fire, and wiped out the Belknap. The joke at the time was that a gallon of jet fuel would wipe out any capital ship in the fleet if they had aluminum superstructures.