Sailors on an aircraft carrier know when the jets takeoff from the deck. BUT, they don’t know where the Jets are going.
The target was not withing VISIBLE range. The crews on the ships would not know WHAT the missiles hit. Those who would know, were sworn to secrecy before this even happened. You can be sure that the top execs were on the hotline to the White House asking what to do the instant they knew what happened.
The ships in this ‘exercise’ were firing various missiles for several days. Who among the ‘crew’ would even notice another one being fired and make the association to the airliner crash ? They wouldn’t even know about the crash until much, much later as communications to the ‘outside world’ during these ‘exercises’ is very limited and mostly prohibited under the strictest of penalties.
The crewmen firing the missile would have known what they hit. You don’t fire a missile and not monitor where it goes. That’s the whole point of a missile exercise. No I can not be sure ‘top execs’ were on the hotline with the white house. The missile crews would have alerted the Captain, who would have alerted his immediate superior, who would have alerted his immediate superior, etc., probably until it reached the Sec of Defense and the Joint Chiefs...then the White House would be notified. Way too many people...and not one person makes an anonymous leak to the press. I don’t think so.