Bonhomme Richard as a chain of failures

What caused the loss of USS Bonhomme Richard?

The loss was best understood as a damaging convergence of several failures and bad decisions, not one isolated event.

The loss is described as a worst-case convergence of multiple poor events rather than a single simple cause. Although the brief answer does not enumerate the investigation's details, it points to interacting readiness, response, and safety failures. A single-cause explanation would miss those interactions.