Posted on 06/19/2017 4:55:31 PM PDT by The Klingon
Per the USNavy's 7th Fleet public affairs office; USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) was involved in a collision with a merchant vessel at approximately 2:30 a.m. local time, June 17, while operating about 56 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka, Japan.
The merchant vessel was the Filipino-flagged ACX Crystal container-ship (IMO:9360611) and she did have her AIS transponder on at the time of the incident.
From the news footage below you'll notice an area of severe damage which looks to me to be from an impact at a perpendicular angle, and not a grazing strike, since there is no scraping or dragging down the length of the USS Fitzgerald. I'm not suggesting the impact was deliberate, only that the vessels would have deflected if they had hit with a glancing strike, where to me it looks like the bow of the Crystal embedded itself for a short period in the USS Fitzgerald. I originally thought the USS Fitzgerald was stationary before the impact, but I've since changed my mind, since I've been told that there would be no operational reason to be stationary near an area of high traffic, on a moonless night. Valid point. Then if she wasn't stationary, why was she crossing the path of the shipping lane and how didn't they notice the 30,000 Ton ship on a collision course with them?
(Excerpt) Read more at vesselofinterest.com ...
As a former naval officer, I approve of this seemingly harsh policy. If you are by definition at fault, you do a lot more to prevent anything preventable. Note: I never worked for anyone as forgiving as Admiral Nimitz, but I’m okay with the hard cases I worked for.
“Realizes from AIS they just passed a USN”
There has been no indication the Fitz had it on from what I’ve found. USN ships track AIS but wouldn’t broadcast it for obvious reasons.
Thanks for your service.
I have always found it interesting that most officers I have talked to feel exactly as you do, and understand it completely. I think that is hard for some people to understand.
Expectations are high for the Captain of a vessel, because in highly motivated people (as most Captains are) they will live up to (or try to live up to) those expectations.
This site is reporting unadulterated bullshit in an effort to get dumb people to click the link.
The DDG was NOT T-boned. It hit at an oblique angle and only the left side of the merchant was damaged.
It also hit at low speed, as evidenced by the fact the DDG was not sunk.
The Captain’s level of responsibility is very much like a parent’s.
If you leave your kids with a sitter, and the sitter messes up while you are gone because the sitter was incompetent or evil, it’s your fault because you should have screened the sitter better.
If a normally good sitter was drunk, tired, or otherwise, should not have been watching your kids, it’s still your fault. You should have noticed the impairment or change in mood/behavior.
If you normally leave your younger kids with an older sibling, and something goes wrong, it’s still your fault. Either you were taking risks all the time, or something was different (whether the older or younger child, or some other conditions) that final time and you were supposed to notice.
If you’re asleep and the kids get into trouble, (1) you should have heard and gotten up, or (2) you should have raised them better.
Even when the kids are in school, at Scout Camp, or otherwise out of your control, you are still pretty much responsible for the decisions they make because you raised them.
That is a very fitting analogy...nice job there!
This is the first time I thought of it that way. I was a naval officer before I was a parent, and I always thought of things in the reverse direction. Parenting is being the ship’s Captain with absolute responsibility for the outcome, and almost no exceptions.
I am glad there is no board of inquiry for parents, at least no external one.
Most people I know definitely have an internal one, and it can be just as harsh as any “long green table”.
Yeah- that long green table.
I would agree. I monitor ship traffic from my house on the BI of Hawaii all the time. You will see AIS IDs of navy ships sometimes, usually near Pearl Harbor, never out at sea.
Watched the RIMPC operations west of here last year on AIS and a number of foreign ships that were part of the execise had theirs on, but no US navy.
The 'fault' lies with the USN ship no matter the circumstances. CO should have been on the bridge, wasn't, those who were porked this up either by incompetence or failure to follow SOP. Failure to supervise, failure to train to proper standards based on the result.
“I’m sure State Farm will get it straightened out as to who did what.”
good luck with that.
Easiest? How about bridge crew failed to follow procedure and were improperly supervised, obviously.
This was one of my father's favorite sayings when I was a boy.
"Ceterum censeo Islam esse delendam."
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)
LOL, as the saying goes, “When you hear hooves in Arizona, think horses, not zebras!”
ALL of them on the bridge as well as the commander.
The navy will want to know how in the hell did they get rammed like that and that AINT THEIR friggan ship they messed up.
Remember Bull Halsey? He was lucky that was in the time of war and they needed him.
So much wisdom we've been blessed with through our parents and their forebears!
I just finished two books on Halsey...great man. Flawed man. However, he is just who I want in that position at that time. We needed him.
His puzzling behavior in both of the typhoons in 1944-45 I attribute to his fatigue. I think he was running on fumes much of the time. He bore the responsibility but it took a toll.
When the surrender was announced, Halsey is said to have whooped and hollered, leaping in the air and slapping the backs of everyone around him. When it calmed down, someone heard him say, almost to nobody in particular “Thank God. I don’t have to send any more men to their deaths.”
He had more sea time than any other four or five star admiral. He was known as a real seaman, knew how to handle ships, how to see weather. That deserted him, and I attribute it to fatigue, and he got caught in a cycle where he was simply overthinking it instead of doing what he surely had the knowledge to do correctly inside him.
It baffled many people around him, including many who knew him well. They either had no idea what he was doing, or assumed he knew what he was doing.
He got of the hook for the first typhoon (mostly) but “Slew” McCain fell on his sword for him, and paid for it with his own life. He had a heart attack and died the day after he got back home from the surrender ceremony.
Lots of zebras around here the last couple of days.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.