The Fitzgerald happened more or less the way I proposed it happened after the initial reports. The Wan Hai (and one other ship) were the ones the OOD was concerned about to the point where he even thought the reports coming to him about the ACX Crystal were reports of a different ship he was observing. In the confusion, he never realized the Crystal was there until it was too late.
The McCain turned out to be due to a steering problem as some initial reporting indicated, although it wasn’t so much loss of steering as it was confusion over who was steering what backup system, apparently. By the time it was figured out, it was too late to avoid the collision.
The appendix to each report lays out the minute-by-minute, and at times the second-by-second, positions of the ships involved and the decisions being made (or not made that should have been made.) All in all, not good advertising for today’s Navy.
If I had a son or daughter on a Navy ship today, I would be very concerned for their safety given the obvious lack of training, and probable over assignment, of the sailors on those ships.
"...At 0519, the Commanding Officer noticed the Helmsman (the watchstander steering the ship) having difficulty maintaining course while also adjusting the throttles for speed control. In response, he ordered the watch team to divide the duties of steering and throttles, maintaining course control with the Helmsman while shifting speed control to another watchstander known as the Lee Helm station, who sat directly next to the Helmsman at the panel to control these two functions, known as the Ship’s Control Console. See Figures 3 and 4. This unplanned shift caused confusion in the watch team, and inadvertently led to steering control transferring to the Lee Helm Station without the knowledge of the watch team. The CO had only ordered speed control shifted. Because he did not know that steering had been transferred to the Lee Helm, the Helmsman perceived a loss of steering..."
That was the "steering casualty" that had some people blaming the Russians, the Chinese, the North Koreans or the Muslims.
It was just incompetence.