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Explanation by "Former Chief Engineer" with Maersk for events leading up to the "allision" with the Francis Scott Key bridge posted on Woke societies on Telegram:

Bridge Destruction

"Drop of Fuel pressure or machinery electrical computer system failure."

I did find a Michael Buckley - Care Business Partner - Maersk Line ... on LinkedIn, but I was not going to join to research further since I would have to join linked in. On its face, though, "Care Business Partner" does not sound like an Engineering position.

Poor ship power plant or computer system maintenance? Training or Personnel Issue? Hacking and Deliberate act? It will take an investigation to determine. Maintenance logs, computer logs, video record evidence that will end up in court at some point in order to determine liability. Courts, lawyers, judges...this may drag on for years. Everyone can make up their own minds at that point if they want to trust the investigators. (I think it most likely it is one of the first two.)

This sounds somewhat reasonable, though I’m used to manual backup for the computer part .... though that was 30 years ago.

My own experience: I had just received my SWO pin on the USS Independence (CV-62) and was standing my first non-supervised watch. It was the Mid-watch (12AM-04AM for those that don’t know). Mid-watch was my favorite watch. One of the reasons was all the engineering drills occurred on that watch.

There are 4 boilers on the Indy. Normally 1 would be down for regular maintenance, 2 were used to maintain normal operations, and 1 would be used to hold engineering casualty drills.

We were in the Persian Gulf driving circles. Bunker Hill a Cruiser was a few nautical miles to my Port driving her own loops.

We were running a low water casualty on one boiler when one of the other two currently operating suffered a high water casualty. With that we dropped all power. 30 seconds later emergency generators kicked in. Engineering was running crazy driving one team to address bringing back on line the drill boiler as quickly as possible, while also responding to the actual casualty...high water is very bad for boilers and turbines.

I was on the horn with the CO explaining the situation, and recommending we ask the admiral if he’d like to transfer Alpha Whiskey to the bunker hill (AW is a command authority for all air control activities) he said he’d consider it, when power went down again. The flight deck patrol had decided it was too dark and turned on some of the flight deck flood lights...that took down the emergency generators. I excused myself from the CO and before I could reach out to the flight deck folks to get his people under control the Cheng (chief engineer an old salty EDO) was already up my backside asking what we were doing. My Junior officer of the deck was an old hat and was already on with the deck folks getting things squared away, sending a messenger as well, while I took my strapping from Cheng. We got the lights back on in good stead.

About that time the Admirals Chief of Staff (COS) came up and I quickly brought him up to date while signaling my JOOD to call the captain. A minute later there’s the CO greeting the COS in his skivvies by first name and chatting with him while I and the rest of the bridge crew got back to our real job. After about 2 minutes they both said seems under control and let them know if there were any further issues.

This all happened about an hour into the watch. By the time 0400 rolled around everything had completely settled down and I was reviewing the deck logs prior to turnover and asking the team what we could have done different. Gave my briefing to the new watch and headed for the rack.

And that is the story of my first solo OOD watch.

Things happen fast and even when you respond appropriately, they don’t always go your way. So yes, I could see how this could have happened as it was explained by this ‘former chief engineer’ Those ships also aren’t manned at nearly the level of the team we had during my little escapade.

Not exactly my line of expertise. I started on a 1200 lb steam plant. I do intimately understand emergency start ship service diesel generators as I was responsible for one. We had three 750kw steam turbine generators in AUX1 forward of the fire-room. My 750kw generator was aft by the steering gear. It was powered by two opposite turning Cummings diesel engines. It was started by a 3000 lb air flask.

What's more, it has the ring of truth. I consider this the current most likely explanation.

Only another ship driver can fully appreciate just how fast things can go to hell on the bridge of a ship, even if you do nothing wrong.

SpyNavy

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)