Thanks for posting. Did you see this comment by a navigator-—
http://cimsec.org/circles-surface-warfare-training/24050
What happened aboard the USS Kinkaid in 1990 sounds very much like what may have happened aboard the Fitzgerald and McCain.
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“”Jeff Bukowski August 22, 2017 at 6:35 pm
Something must be done immediately to ensure that today’s U.S. Navy bridge/combat information center (CIC) underway watch teams who serve in tough but routine conditions can safely transit busy shipping lanes and international waterways.
This article is very timely and prescient, especially with the Navy’s announcement yesterday of a fleet-wide stand down in the wake of the USS John S. McCain’s August 21, 2017 collision with a merchant vessel, leaving 10 sailors missing and presumed dead. The McCain collision occurred when the ink was barely dry on the Navy’s supplemental preliminary report on the June 17, 2017 USS Fitzgerald collision.
On Sunday afternoon, I was trying to digest the report of the supplemental preliminary inquiry on the Fitzgerald incident. Sunday evening the news reported the McCain collision. In light of these disastrous events, so close in time, I have been wondering how they occurred, what should have been done differently to avoid their tragic outcomes, and if SWO training today–both before and after junior officers reach their ships–is different from the training we had when I served on active duty (1987-1992). Then all fleet 1160 JOs left their commissioning source and attended the late-July/early August 16-week SWOS Basic course in either Coronado or Newport for training. Many attended follow-on EEOW courses before joining their ships.
I served as the navigator of a Spruance-class destroyer during our 1990 Western Pacific/Indian Ocean carrier battle group deployment. I had been aboard since February 1988 after completing SWOS Basic in Coronado. I served in several positions (communications officer, auxiliaries officer, and main propulsion assistant) in 1998-89 through the completion of the ship’s overhaul and engineering light-off and operational exams. I had earned my EEOW and SWO qualifications. In the fall of 1989, our commanding officer asked me to serve as navigator for our battle group deployment scheduled to begin in February 1990. Prior to formally assuming my duties as navigator, I attended the PACFLT Navigation and Celestial Navigation courses.
I vividly recall our transit through the Malacca Strait in late April 1990, which occurred less than six months after our brethren on USS Kinkaid (DD-965) collided with a merchant vessel there. Tragically and ironically, my counterpart, Kinkaid’s navigator, was killed in the collision. He was asleep in his stateroom near the point of impact. He was not on the bridge when Kinkaid entered restricted waters. And he was not called to the bridge by the OOD when the watch team became confused about what they were seeing, where they were, and the bridge and CIC watch teams disagreed about the ship’s location. According to the investigation report, the OOD became so preoccupied with trying to figure out the ship’s location and why it was on the wrong side of the strait that he ignored warnings another vessel was closing on Kinkaid. No one called the Kinkaid’s CO to the bridge prior to the collision. Kinkaid’s CO was detached from his command for cause and court-martialed for dereliction of duty and hazarding a vessel.
Similarly, the CO of USS Fitzgerald was severely injured by the collision while in his in-port cabin. Why wasn’t he in his at-sea cabin? Why wasn’t he called to the bridge? Why wasn’t the collision alarm sounded until after impact? Fitzgerald’s CO has been detached from his command for cause.
We do not have any details yet about the cause of the McCain collision, but the investigation will likely reveal many similarities with the Fitzgerald and Kinkaid collisions.
What are the lessons to be learned?
After the Kincaid collision, we greatly increased our preparation for the Malacca Strait transit several months later. We planned the start of our transit to begin shortly after daybreak to minimize the confusion caused by numerous lighted navigational aids and vessel lights at night, which had been a factor in Kinkaid’s collision. We held a lengthy and detailed navigation brief the day before our transit, which had been thoroughly planned in advance. We planned to accomplish the transit using a modified sea-and-anchor detail instead of our ordinary underway watch teams.
All of our advance planning was overcome by events. A day earlier we rescued 35 Vietnamese refugees in the South China Sea. We drilled holes in the ocean waiting for instructions from the UN High Commission on Refugees. We were instructed to drop off our passengers in Singapore and rejoin our battle group, which by then was in the Indian Ocean. By the time we made it to Singapore, debarked our passengers, and got back underway to begin our transit through the Malacca Strait, it was nearly midnight. Therefore, we faced a middle-of-the night transit just like Kinkaid’s.
We put our plan into action, and we safely transited the Malacca Strait and rejoined our battle group the following day.””
I know most of you feel much the way I do, and feel some degree of irritation (to put it kindly) for people who think these collisions are the result of some kind of hack or electronic interference, and I have come to believe that they are susceptible to these fantasies and conspiracy theories for three reasons:
1.) They don't understand Navy/Maritime procedures
2.) They place far too much reliance on the infallibility of electronic systems and believe in inordinate dependence on those systems.
3.) They fail to account for simple human nature, which does not change and makes humans prone to mistakes, not realizing that weaknesses in human nature can be mitigated to a fair degree by strict behavior modification (via training and organizational discipline) to minimize it from becoming a root cause in a mishap.
I mean, look at this account of the Kinkaid collision. I can see them all arguing about their position, while someone on the bridge (probably some poor Seaman Apprentice) butts in and says:
SEAMAN APPRENTICE: "Uh, sir, we have a merchant vessel at 70 degrees making right for us..."
OOD:"Don't interrupt us, we are trying to get this straightened out!"
SEAMAN APPRENTICE:"But, sir...that ship..."
NAVIGATOR:"SHUT UP OR YOU WON'T SEE THE BEACH FOR A MONTH!"
(Note: not saying that happened on the Kinkaid or any specific vessel. Just an example of people acting oddly under stress, not the way they were trained to perform) For those of us who pay attention to this kind of thing, it is like watching re-runs of old horror movies.
Girl, don't go in there.
Girl, don't open that door.
Girl, you're being chased, don't run to the most desolate and un-populated environment that will certainly turn out to be an inescapable dead end.
Girl, even though you are a high school track star and can run marathons, and the psycho killer has a pronounced limp and can't pursue you much more effectively than an old lady with a walker, you know he is going to catch you.
Naval Personnel, you have sophisticated electronic gear that can spot an incoming missile at Mach 3 and guide a warhead to it, but you are going to deviate from seafaring and navigation protocols and procedures, lose your focus, panic, and get a hole punched in your side.
If the ending didn't continue to be so fascinatingly gruesome and egregious each time it happens (much the way the psycho killer ALWAY catches the stupid girl in a dead end with no escape and brutally murders her) we would have stopped paying attention to it years ago.