Posted on 06/19/2017 6:42:45 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
The ramming of the USS Fitzgerald – still being misreported as a “collision” – is shrouded in puzzling behavior. This is an accident (if indeed it was unintentional) that should not have been possible. Now comes news of something very suspicious. The Associated Press has just filed a non-bylined story, “Japan investigates delay in reporting US Navy ship collision,” that reveals:
Japan's coast guard is investigating why it took nearly an hour for a deadly collision between a U.S. Navy destroyer and a container ship to be reported.What was going on that prevented prompt report?A coast guard official said Monday they are trying to find out what the crew of the Philippine-flagged ACX Crystal was doing before reporting the collision to authorities 50 minutes later.
The coast guard initially said the collision occurred at 2:20 a.m. on Saturday because the Philippine ship had reported it at 2:25 a.m. and said it just happened. After interviewing Filipino crewmembers, the coast guard has changed the collision time to 1:30 a.m.
Nanami Meguro, a spokeswoman for NYK Line, the ship's operator, agreed with the revised timing of the collision.Meguro said the ship was "operating as usual" until the collision at 1:30 a.m., as shown on a ship tracking service that the company uses. She said the ship reported to the coast guard at 2:25 a.m., but she could not provide details about what the ship was doing for nearly an hour.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I don’t know anything about ships and the navigation of vessels this size, so maybe someone here who is knowledgeable on this subject can educate me. I don’t understand how a collision like this could occur. It happened in the middle of the night, however, both ships must have had enough lights to enable a visual sighting while the two were still some distance apart. I realize that ships of this size can’t turn on a dime, but even if there was no visual sighting, both had to be equipped with navigation and detection technology that would provide a warning to the crews in enough time to take evasive action. Maybe I’m missing something obvious here, but I just don’t see how this could happen.
They reportedly did not awaken their CO. He was asleep in his quarters. That says they were unaware that a ship was even close. But I am going by news stories.
Wouldn't it seem more likely that the destroyer cut across the cargo ship's path?
They must have not been watching the radar on both vessels. Hard for radar to miss something that big and made of metal.
Whoever had the con should never be trusted again and busted in rank/pay-grade.
I had read earlier that the collision occurred in a narrow channel. But, according to that map, it looks like the collision happened in open water. Curious.
They were probably at some sort of diversity training.
Could be someone was dumping stuff off?
Are U-TURNS par for course for cargo vessels on that Tokyo bay??
"A coast guard official said Monday they are trying to find out what the crew of the Philippine-flagged ACX Crystal was doing before reporting the collision to authorities 50 minutes later. "
Could be they were dumping stuff off the ship?
technically, the manuever took 25 minutes, but from what I understand in the dead of night with the bay having all sorts of shipping and fishing vessels, it may as well have been a few minutes...
I can’t believe that with advanced radar and control systems the navy ship could not have seen the collision coming and commenced evasive tactics. Certainly the monster container ship would have appeared on radar. Strange events.
There’s really no doubt the CIC would know with great precision exactly where every nearby ship is located, along with its speed and bearing.
Multiple stories indicate this is a very high traffic area, especially at that time of night. My guess is the crew turned off the collision alarms, because they kept giving them false positives, until it wasn’t a false positive...
The skipper is at fault any way you look at it. Either he caused it to happen by lax readiness standards, or he allowed it to happen by lax readiness standards.
I downloaded graphs showing the speed of the ACX Crystal over a 24 hour period surrounding the time of the wreck. I posted them on a previous thread. I can’t access them right now, but will try again later.
The Crystal’s speed was erratic, going up and down. Then it went steadily up to about 19.3 knots, where it peaked at about 2:00 AM local time on 6/17/17. The graph shows a sudden sharp decline in speed right then. It appears the wreck occurred at about 2:00 AM. Not 1:30 or 2:30.
If that were the case the cargo ship would have cut her in half and sunk her
They dont have the ability to stop and it takes them 20 minutes to even start to slow down- thats about 7 miles of travel distance
The damage looks like the cargo ship was going dead slow, contacted the destroyer after an approach abaft starboard, and may already have been turning away
Wth the captain wasnt on the bridge when a possible collision was unfolding - is a mystery
If there was some clandestine intership transfer he would surely have been there
What part of the ship is the ‘citadel? I’ve never seen that term used with regard to ships.
Not if you knew the circumstances concerning an eerily almost (apparently) identical collision involving the USS PORTER in the Straits of Hormuz a few years ago. A solid projectile vomit head-shaker of disbelief. With that known history, this event falls in line with the others. Heads will roll.
The problem with this map is the collision time. The ACX Crystal didn’t report the incident immediately.
Japanese coast guard says, after interviewing crew, that the collision occurred at 130am.
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