I think the point is the Navy vessel knew (its electronics) but those that were supposed to know how to read them were either crashed on their feet or did not know how to read them due to very poor training. Example: new skippers no longer are sent to boat driving school at Newport but report directly to their boat without any training ... its all OJT.
The something else is the work sched reported in the story as 108 hour wk. Boat driving in the dead of a dark night is very monotonous - we use to have a key we had to turn every 15 minutes or a very load alarm would sound; it is easy to fall asleep.
I can see how that would be a thing. But no alarms going off ship wide when a vessel is being rapidly approached?
A guy who’s article I sometimes read had this to say:
“I’ve been OOD in and out of Yokosuka—USS REEVES (CG-24); about the same displacement—a hundred times; during all times of day, night, adverse weather, and wee hours. In fact, coming into Yokosuka, 4 am in that part of the entry lanes is quite common, so we’d be tied up by the morning’s work day and shipyard workers could get busy.
This sh*t is easy to avoid, even in very heavy choke-point shipping traffic in and out. Surface radar easily has a 30k ton container ship painted 20-30 miles out, and you can see them with your own eyeballs 10-12 miles out. Once you do a minute of scope head plotting with the grease pencil, you can see how close you’ll come to each other if both vessels maintain course and speed. If inside of 10,000 yards (5 nautical miles), all it takes is a 2-5 degree course change, early, to port or starboard, to keep him outside of that envelope.
And, every set of Standing Orders on US Navy ships typically demands that if for some reason it’s unavoidable to keep another vessel outside of 10k yards, you are to notify the Captain immediately.”
https://freetheanimal.com/2017/06/fitzgerald-incident-yokosuka.html