Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Seven Sailors lost today. YGBSM

Watched the Admiral's press conference, he didn't really say anything, which didn't surprise me.

I was disappointed to see that the Navy has abandoned actual uniforms to adopt the camo pajamas the other services are wearing. The guy is a shore-bound admiral, in Japan, wearing camo? Seems a fully black ninja outfit would be more apropos.

All, I'm saying, is that unless a person were present on the bridge of that ship, experiencing the situation developing in real time, there's no way to know for sure that this happening is absurd. Earlier in the thread, I shared my own personal story of a very scary close call at sea, that I never would have guessed would happen. If the bridge team had waited 30 seconds instead of following my orders immediately, I'm convinced we would have been in a collision. I've seen many case studies were the absence of one person's action would have resulted in disaster. I'm not excusing anything and I still believe that there should be no reason for collision other than equipment failure or some malicious action. I'm just saying that this kind of thing is much more possible than some here may believe.

I've spent quite a bit of time as Command Duty Officer (Underway) on aircraft carriers, including underway replenishment where there is a scant 120' or thereabouts between us and the other ship. That DDG is extremely maneuverable and to my understanding, they were in fairly open ocean. Constant bearing, decreasing range, coupled with the CO's standing order as to when to notify him of vessels in close proximity, I'm not seeing my way clear to explain this.

I saw a map purportedly showing the merchant's track, can't find it now. They were all over the ocean; a starboard turn off their track, then a gradual looping around to port, then (apparently right before the collision) hard starboard back to near their original track. Collision was reportedly ten miles off the coast, that's pretty close to land, if it was crowded the options for maneuver could have been severely limited.

Standard Disclaimer: I have never been in the Navy or the Merchant Marine, so accordingly, I have never driven either a Destroyer or a Container or Merchant vessel.

BUT .... I have been a member of several delivery crews that have delivered 50 - 100 foot yachts from the PNW to California and back, and I have driven boats in that size range (day and night) as I pulled my watch. All the vessels had professional delivery captains who had shuttled yachts all around and all over the world for a living ..... and who had both blue water ocean crossing experience and coastal shipping lane experience. I distinctly remember being "schooled" by my first delivery skipper as we were bringing a 68' Tollycraft from the San Juans to Southern California. We cruised day and night ... stopping only for fuel ... staying pretty much in the south-bound coastal shipping lane about 60 miles offshore. Besides the basic "rules of the road" the primary thing that sticks in my mind was the skipper's caution that Container / Merchant vessels were highly automated, with relatively small crews, that they easily did 18 - 20 knots ... and basically they didn't stop. Their course was charted or plotted from way-point to way-point, and I was told that I was not to automatically assume that ANYONE was on the bridge .... because the ships were typically on autopilot once they were underway and in the shipping lane. Our radars went out to about 50 miles and when we saw them, (like huge floating cities in the middle of the ocean), .... the basic rule was that the they were to be given the right-of-way ..... and we were to stay the hell away from them. He went on to relate stories of Container ships that had collided with sailboats at night (apparently the sailboats were motoring at night on autopilot and the fools didn't have radar deflectors on their masts) ..... the Container ships never felt or saw the sailboats ..... and the collisions were never even discovered until the Container ships docked and a part of the hull of the sailboat was stuck on the bow of the Container ship.

So ..... from my limited experience ..... I wouldn't hold my breath that there was much of a "Team" on the bridge of the Container ship. Maybe a crew-member or two, if that ......

When you have a contact that is CBDR everyone on the bridge knows it, everyone in CIC knows it and the CO has got to know it. Even if the merchant ship was on auto pilot and the bridge unmanned, the Fitz should have been able to avoid collision. I just can't imagine a situation where that wasn't possible.

Its much more preferable to pass judgement on a believer to get your jollies anyway.

Let's take a moment and offer a prayer for these brave sailors who made the ultimate sacrifice and their families:


♦Gunner’s Mate Seaman Dakota Kyle Rigsby, 19, Palmyra, Virginia
♦Yeoman 3rd Class Shingo Alexander Douglass, 25, San Diego, California
♦Sonar Technician 3rd Class Ngoc T Truong Huynh, 25, Oakville, Connecticut
♦Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class Noe Hernandez, 26, Weslaco, Texas
♦Fire Controlman 2nd Class Carlosvictor Ganzon Sibayan, 23, Chula Vista, California
♦Personnel Specialist 1st Class Xavier Alec Martin, 24, Halethorpe, Maryland
♦Fire Controlman 1st Class Gary Leo Rehm Jr., 37, Elyria, Ohio

Amen to both great posts above.

That.... I've done all the above except XO and command.. I also heard a report that the captain of the destroyer just took command a month before.. But I haven't seen anything of his prior experience of any command.. Maybe the USN standards have changed since I was in, but NO WAY did we let any ship get within 5,000 yards unless we were on training ops with it OR that the other ship was steaming away at that range..

The upcoming inquiry will - as you stated - show plenty of guilt... WHO was the OOD? Did the lookouts notify the OOD of the ship? Did the OOD or lookouts read that ship's indicator lights wrong (masthead, range, port/starboard)?? Where the hell was the radar operator? What was the condition of the destroyer at the time? Underway? Speed?

Don't know what'll happen - but in my day the captain of that ship would not be in command again.. We had an XO on the Razorback that we used to refer to as "Shaky" Jake Steckler (LtCDR).....since before he came on board he was in command when he ran the Catfish aground.. He was promptly removed and sent to us to be second in command.. He was a nice guy though - and fair..

Sad for those sailors who lost their lives with this incident..

Thoughts and prayers from Iowa for all affected.

That Captain needs to be kicked TFO of the Navy. Allowing that to happen to his ship and crew is inexcusable, no matter what.

It seems that one expert pretty much agrees with me:

"I suspect, from the data, that the ACX Crystal was running on autopilot the whole time, and nobody was on the bridge. If anyone was on the bridge, they had no idea how to turn off the autopilot," said Steffan Watkins, an IT security consultant and ship tracking analyst for Janes Intelligence Review."

See:


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4617742/Shambolic-start-probe-USS-Fitzgerald-collision.html

One of the common themes that I have seen on the 4 ships that I've served on is that the Commanding Officer shall be called to the bridge if another ship will pass withing 1,000 yards. I'm sure this ship was probably no different. I would like to hear whether they failed to notify him. If the Commanding Officer was up and on the bridge, it hard to imagine an excuse.

And if he wasnt?

If the captain wasn't informed, it's the Officer of the Deck's fault, but unfortunately for the Captain, he is still ultimately accountable.

Sounds like CO was temporarily trapped in his stateroom after the collision; that seems to be how he was injured.

If he was in his stateroom when the collision occurred, his watch team let him down big time.

Adding injury to insult as it were, if so.