You seem to have a good idea on the location of the three ships. What do you think are the chances that the watch on the Fitzgerald saw the second tanker, Wan Hai, and was moving to avoid that while remaining unaware of the Crystal and that he was cutting across in front of it?
While I have a hard time believing the crew on the Fitzgerald was so incompetent that they could have missed a supertanker if that were all there was to it, is it possible that they were completely distracted by the other ship? That starts to at least make some sense.
I also believe that’s how the Porter ended up in a collision a few years back. In avoiding the one they saw first, they ended up colliding with the one they discovered next. In this case, maybe they never saw the Crystal at all, or at least the bridge never got the word in time.
By the way, thanks for attempting to sort out the captain’s report. It makes much more sense that way.
All from the accounts others have posted. I'm better with things that fly.
"...What do you think are the chances that the watch on the Fitzgerald saw the second tanker, Wan Hai, and was moving to avoid that while remaining unaware of the Crystal and that he was cutting across in front of it?"
Based on the position of the ships described above, I would think the Fitzgerald was well ahead, to right of the Wan Hai and moving faster, i.e., if Fitz was 40° ahead and to the left of the Crystal, then it would have been ahead and to the right of the Wan Hai.
When the Wan Hai turned from 70° to 60°, it would have been behind and moving away further left from the Fitzgerald's line of travel. The Fitzgerald (from the description above) sounds like it remained on a 70° heading.
"...While I have a hard time believing the crew on the Fitzgerald was so incompetent that they could have missed a supertanker if that were all there was to it, is it possible that they were completely distracted by the other ship? That starts to at least make some sense..."
This was supposedly a busy shipping lane at what is reported to be the busiest time of the day: early AM ships steaming to scheduled morning berthing times in Tokyo ports and afternoon/evening ships leaving Tokyo ports steaming southwest. The Fitzgerald would have nearly constantly had some targets on its radar moving somewhere in a 20nm or 30nm radius around it. Between computerized course conflict warnings, humans watching the radar blips and other humans eyeballing the horizon, I kind of doubt they were just/merely/only distracted by the Wan Hai.
My useless opinion is that they would have been about as likely to miss the Crystal or be distracted by another ship about as much an air traffic controller would be to miss an aircraft or be distracted by other aircraft on their radar screen. Possible? I suppose, but highly unlikely. This is what they do their entire shift and it's damn important. I have to believe the answer is a bit more complicated than that in ways I don't fully understand - that is, in terms of whatever else goes on on a Navy destroyer's busy bridge.