What were they doing?
Howsabout: With the Captain severely injured—maybe trying to STAY AFLOAT AND NOT SINK???
Howsabout: What’s with all that maneuvering of the cargo carrier BEFORE THEY RAMMED the Fitzgerald??
No accident, this one.
How do you know the maneuvering was before the accident?
The container ship may have been “holding” for a spot in the harbor/port or for a pilot to be available. The container ship really can’t make much of a sharp turn. It probably takes it 5 or 10 miles to turn. It’s not like turning on land.
The destroyer should have been able to avoid the ACX Crystal even if it was hell bent on ramming...that will be hard for whoever was in charge at the time to explain.
(I posted this elsewhere with the above blue chart.)
Fitzgerald collision open discussion: IMHO, this was a deliberate ramming.
My experience aboard USN warships goes back to the 1980s. I was a SEAL officer (1130), not a Surface Warfare Officer (SWO), but on a couple of cruises I had to ride on the flagship with the commodore of an amphibious squadron, instead of riding on the ship carrying my SEAL platoon. Back in those days, as a lieutenant, (O-3), I was the senior frogman in the Amphibious Ready Group, so the commodore (navy captain in charge of a squadron of ships) wanted me on his staff instead of on another ship with my men.
As a result, I sat in on every flag staff meeting (at least twice a day, am and pm) going across the Atlantic a few times, once to Beirut, and another time crossing the Atlantic going to Norway. To keep me busy, I had to play SWO on the flag bridge, standing watch like any SW junior officer. This involved our flag officers setting the overall course for a half dozen amphibious ships sailing in formation. I was on the flag bridge at night going up the English Channel, through the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily. IOW, very congested waters, and not merely making a transit with one ship, but in overall charge (our flag staff, not me) of a half dozen ships in formation.
I mention all that to say that I have a pretty fair idea of what takes place on the bridge of a navy warship at night in congested coastal waters. To me, the Fitzgerald collision does not look like an accident, or an “autopilot malfunction.” Trust me, on the bridge of the navy warship, at least a half dozen very sharp and 100% alert officers, CPOs and petty officers are on duty 24/7. They stand 4 hour watches at night, so they are not all exhausted or anything like that. In fact, strong coffee flows freely at all times.
A petty officer is staring at the radar every single minute, and he is plotting the courses and the Closest Point of Approach (CPA) of every contact he sees. In addition, there is a lookout with a headset in comms with the bridge posted on the bow, the stern, and each bridge wing (outside). It’s a friendly competition to see if the lookout can spot a small boat unseen on radar. Every young set of eyes wants to be the first to spot a contact, and does not want to hear, “Bow lookout, do you see that fishing boat a mile ahead?” The bow lookout wants to be telling the bridge, “I see something ahead, a small boy, do you have it on radar?”
Further: the CO of the ship has standing orders which are reiterated every night that he must be awoken if any contact has a CPA closer than a certain distance of a set number of miles. The distance might vary according to conditions, (traffic, fog, etc), but generally any projected CPA closer than a few miles, and the captain will be on the bridge. The CPA of three miles, for example, might be projected to occur a half hour in the future, but the captain will be brought to the bridge from his “at sea” cabin which is only a few steps away. And when in doubt: get the captain!
Now, looking at the six turns made by the ACX Crystal, it looks to me as if the person at the helm took the decision to make a U-turn and come back in pursuit of lining up a collision attack against the Fitzgerald. There is no innocent explanation for those six turns ending up in a ramming. There are some reports that the Crystal turned off its AIS radar transponder, radios, and running lights.
A lot of effort went into the Crystal lining up a bow-to-bow crossing situation with the USN warship. The standard rule for passing bow to bow is for both ships to turn to starboard, and pass port side to port side. But this is a generalization and there are many exceptions, for example, if the two ships are on parallel but opposite courses so they will already pass starboard to starboard by a wide margin. Or if it’s not really bow to bow, but a crossing situation.
This is where it gets sticky, because one ship might consider that they are passing bow to bow, the other might see it as a crossing situation. In all such cases, both ships will be on the VHF radio from several miles out to clarify the situation so that there is no confusion about what each ship is going to do.
Given all that, how can they still have a collision? One way would be for the ramming ship (if that was his intention) to say, “Don’t worry, I’m turning to port.” And then turn to starboard. In the last thirty seconds to a minute, there is almost nothing anybody can do to prevent a collision, if the ramming ship did something like this, and turned the opposite way from what was expected by the other ship.
It will be interesting to hear from the officers and sailors on the bridge, and the lookouts, but I assume they are all sworn to secrecy. Even how long in advance did the collision alarm sound? One minute? thirty seconds? How about the “danger signal,” of five or more blasts on the horn? Everybody on the Fitzgerald would have heard the danger signal and/or the collision alarm. I’ve been on an amphibious ship that “bumped” another ship doing underway replenishment, and I’ve heard the collision alarm. NOBODY on the ship will have ANY doubt they are about to be hit!
So, in 2017, is it possible that a USN warship could be tricked into being the victim of an intentional ramming, perhaps even “ship jihad?” Yes, I think so. The watch standers on the bridge are going to trust what the person on the other ship is saying on the VHF radio about his intentions. A standard of maritime professionalism is expected, and trust is both given and expected. If the other ship says, “Hold your course, I’m turning to port, I’ll pass behind you,” and then he turns instead to starboard....an intentional ramming can occur.
Can US navy officers, in 2017, be that naïve? I think so again. Look at what happened in Alexandria VA last week. More than twenty Republican congressmen met for baseball practice with no security plan at all. It was just a fluke that Steve Scalise came to practice, and so his two-person security detail was present. Several of these Republican baseball team members were former senior military officers, including a former Army general, yet they didn’t even think about the possibility of a terror attack against them. Much younger officers on a warship might also be a bit too naïve about an unexpected ramming attack.
I look forward to hearing from active or former Surface Warfare Officers or merchant marine sailors.
I have to agree. And, remember all of the talk a couple of years ago about the Russians/Chinese being able to blind US surveillance systems?
What leads you to think the maneuvering was before the collision?
What’s more plausible is that IT IS an accident, and that the midwatch OOD decided not to follow Captain’s standing orders and wake the CO for contacts with CPAs of X nm of the ship.
Container ship should have cut her in half, and what likely happened is that the vessel flexed at the keel which opened a seam and ruptured through-hull fittings.
The collision happened on the right side of the ship. Open and shut that the collision was the fault of the DDG.
Captain got tossed across his stateroom by the impact of the collision, which hit directly on his stateroom, which is just below the bridge in most ships on the O2 or O3 level. Chances are he was unconscious, incapacitated, or they had real trouble getting into his stateroom. He medievac’d off. XO normally coordinates the DC response with the DCA.
This all screams NOT READY to any adversary that cares to pay attention.