Posted on 06/19/2017 4:55:31 PM PDT by The Klingon
Per the USNavy's 7th Fleet public affairs office; USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) was involved in a collision with a merchant vessel at approximately 2:30 a.m. local time, June 17, while operating about 56 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka, Japan.
The merchant vessel was the Filipino-flagged ACX Crystal container-ship (IMO:9360611) and she did have her AIS transponder on at the time of the incident.
From the news footage below you'll notice an area of severe damage which looks to me to be from an impact at a perpendicular angle, and not a grazing strike, since there is no scraping or dragging down the length of the USS Fitzgerald. I'm not suggesting the impact was deliberate, only that the vessels would have deflected if they had hit with a glancing strike, where to me it looks like the bow of the Crystal embedded itself for a short period in the USS Fitzgerald. I originally thought the USS Fitzgerald was stationary before the impact, but I've since changed my mind, since I've been told that there would be no operational reason to be stationary near an area of high traffic, on a moonless night. Valid point. Then if she wasn't stationary, why was she crossing the path of the shipping lane and how didn't they notice the 30,000 Ton ship on a collision course with them?
(Excerpt) Read more at vesselofinterest.com ...
While helpful to us, the real gouge will be from the mishap board.
Sorry I missed your response...probably not an Ensign, but...I could see a LTJG. Gotta start climbing that ladder sometime!
No problem. Thanks.
And we agree: this event had tons of human errors involved...
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