yup, see post #8Anyone else have curiosity about how fragile the communications are in the even of a hostile fire hit?
Yes, this was a major crash, but I would have expected a bit more communication redundancy for just such a damage event.
yup, see post #8I would expect that radio (comm shack) was near the captain's quarters. Since the CO was lucky to be alive afterwards, I would expect that maybe major damage was done to the comm shack. With people trying to combat flooding, saving lives etc., any radio message was probably not at the top of priorities. I read somewhere that they did communicate by Satphone which means you are probably right,
Remember this is just another media outlet. Who knows what was sent and received, or when it actually was. Nobody is going to volunteer anything or correct any misinformation until they themselves are sure about what happened and form a plan to minimize damages and negative publicity as much as possible.
Freegards
I must admit, that has me very concerned. These are excellent ships, best of that class the Navy has had (for the time it operates in) probably since WWII era.
But this is disturbing.
I will say, though, I am willing to grant some leeway and wait until I hear the whole story on communications and the delay.
It is one of the worst times for human reactions to anything (0000-0400) and while most of the crew was asleep, there were most certainly engineering watches, bridge watches, lookout watches and so on, but...I can imagine waking from sleep with a collision like that, being tossed from your rack onto the deck, screeching of metal, screaming and yelling, no lights except battle lanterns, and hearing the screams and shouts of “We’re flooding! or even worse “We’re sinking!” coupled with water rising fast right where you are.
On the bridge, the OOD was likely in shock and non-functional. Perhaps the XO or others couldn’t get to the bridge due to damage, or on the way, officers were hijacked to help save the captain or stop the flooding, etc. And I don’t see any evidence of fire damage, but...add fire and smoke to that, and I can imagine it is total chaos.
And for communication, perhaps things are offline...the OOD doesn’t know the methods for backup communications that well, and none of the sailors do...it ends up taking a while for someone to find a sat phone. You would think they have a special place for those kinds of things and have them worked into their damage control drills, but I admit I wouldn’t know that...I am an airedale.
But I can see some junior officer making his way to the bridge and getting people working on getting the comms back online, and they say it will take 10 minutes, so he says “Okay, let me know when we can transmit...” and that ten min. turns into twenty before he thinks to ask if they are ready yet, and when the answer is no, he tasks some random enlisted person to look for the sat phone after it is determined they cannot get comm back on the line, but...that enlisted person may have no idea, they have to ask someone else who has no idea...I can just see the whole thing going down. Eventually, the XO makes it to the bridge, and now a half hour or more has gone by. Then, maybe the batteries on the sat phone are not charged for some reason...and so on. I agree that the priority is to save the vessel, and from what I am guessing, the damage below the waterline is going to be significant. I think when we see it, we may well be amazed the vessel didn’t sink, but...that is just speculation on my part.
Granted, people train for this. But as any combat veteran will tell you, training for it and being in it for the first time are two separate things.
I will not cut them any slack for the collision itself, this stinks to high heaven of human error. But I will withhold judgement on their performance in damage control and to a lesser degree comms until we hear more.
And I guarantee you: The navy is going to examine this communication delay very closely. I expect changes from this, both from an infrastructure level on the ship next time they are in the yards, and big changes in training and drills to incorporate and concentrate on these things to a greater degree. (I am certain they already address them in training and drills, but they are going to be more pronounced.)