Posted on 06/26/2017 5:56:24 AM PDT by AU72
TOKYO, June 26 (Reuters) - A U.S. warship struck by a container vessel in Japanese waters failed to respond to warning signals or take evasive action before a collision that killed seven of its crew, according to a report of the incident by the Philippine cargo ship's captain.
Multiple U.S. and Japanese investigations are under way into how the guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald and the much larger ACX Crystal container ship collided in clear weather south of Tokyo Bay in the early hours of June 17
Those who died were in their berthing compartments, while the Fitzgerald's commander was injured in his cabin, suggesting that no alarm warning of an imminent collision was sounded.
Still remember the shock we all had seeing a F4-B Phantom that got hit by a 122mm rocket and burned. Nothing left but a pile of ash and two engines. Aluminum does indeed burn well.
Oh come on, buzzkill, that idiot posting about EMP should have been encouraged just for the hilarity factor.........
Thank you!!! That’s exactly what I’ve been looking for!
My suggestion of radio silence would have been only for contributing factors leading up to the collision.
Another suggestion I had is a radar malfunction or operator error could have been a contributing cause.
I read on another blog, that a shift change may have started early since they were in a busy shipping lane and the crew got distracted.
“(Did the Crystal, at the last moment, hit reverse thrust — causing its bow to “dive”? “
FWIW I don’t think a ship that size and power would do much of a nose dive if full reverse was commanded. I like your original thinking that the Fitz was in a hard turn, heeled over and once the Crystal’s bow bulb penetrated the hull then there was no way for the Fitz to roll back down during what was surely a scissor action. I am very curious about how the two ships disengages and really want to see the underwater damage of the Fitz.
Boy, you and I both know that.
But, like I said...sex makes people do insane things that destroy their lives. And for some people, the more dangerous and risky it is, the more they like it.
Just to be clear...I think it is a deviation from standard protocols and procedures coupled with inattention and unclear thinking, wrapped up probably with bad decision making when it all began to come to a head.
I don’t think it is sex or drugs. But I also think sex or drugs are much more likely than a cyber attack. But all are technically possible in this world we live in.
If I could get a penny for every time I have said or thought “I’ll eat my hat” in the last several weeks...
“”When a Prius hits a tractor-trailer truck, does the Prius drag the truck ? The laws of physics would indicate that the much larger ACX Crystal would drag the Fitzgerald.””
A Prius weighs about 3,000 pounds and has about a 200 HP motor. An empty truck trailer weighs about 40,000 pounds and has about a 600 HP motor. So yes, the Prius is not going to do much dragging or pushing on the front end of a mack truck when a mack truck weighs 13 times as much and the mack truck HP is 3 times as much.
Now let us look at the Fitzgerald vs Crystal weight and HP.
Fitzgerald weighs 9,000 tons and has 100,000 HP.
Crystal weighs 30,000 tons (the ship mostly had empty containers) and has 38,000 HP.
So when the Fitzgerald gets hung up on the port bow of the Crystal it drags or pushes the bow of the Crystal starboard. At the same time the Crystal is pushing the Fitzgerald ahead.
I believe all of this pushing and shoving explains how the Crystal executes a 90 degree turn in 3 minutes.
Of course, most of us have no choice to wait. But we can certainly have an educated and reasonable discussion about the facts that ARE known to us presently. When a report is issued, we might find a real "ah ha!" moment, or a sequence of steps that led to this unfortunate event.
Freeper rlmorel offered an explanation that this ship may have been doing the mundane, perhaps month 5 of a 6-month cruise. The OOD might've known the CIC watch officer--perhaps their wives hung out together, maybe their families had barbecues or picnics together; they trusted each other to take action, or tell the other if they were in danger. Maybe the OOD had just been reamed out by the Skipper for something on his fitness report, and was reluctant to wake the Captain for something that the OOD was supposed to do on his own. Catastrophes at sea rarely happen in one, giant mishap, but more so a series of unfortunate events.
The inertia of the Crystal would drag the Fitzgerald (especially if it was temporarily hung up on the anchor) and the higher horsepower of the Fitzgerald would act like a tug boat pushing the bow of the Crystal in a curved arc toward the right.
This would include the presumption then that the Fitzgerald did not reduce power to the engines.
Also, presuming the Fitzgerald was ‘stuck’ to the Crystal, the Fitzgerald would act like a giant rudder attached to the bow of the Crystal.
You are correct in that the difference in mass between the Prius/Truck is much larger than the difference between the Crystal/Fitzgerald, but the principles are the same.
Anyway, there are still many unanswered questions about this incident, and we will probably have to wait until the investigation is complete before we know what happened, and how.
“”we can certainly have an educated and reasonable discussion about the facts that ARE known to us presently””
I agree and reasonable discussions tend to tamp down the tinhat discussions.
So true. Most accidents are human error, though we do occasionally see a tie rod snap on a car or a wheel comes off. But most of the time it is as mundane as someone driving and they drop some piece of food in their lap, or they sneeze, or drink, or text, or adjust their radio, lose track of where they are and go off the highway shoulder into the median, etc.
It is almost never the exciting things that get us, it’s almost always the mundane.
I will say again...I don’t really think it is sex or drugs. I am really rooting against that as a cause, and don’t think it is likely in any case...just to be clear!
See my post at 272...
Did David Copperfield make the cargo ship disappear or did they get their hands on the Klingon cloaking device?
“”But most of the time it is as mundane as someone driving and they drop some piece of food in their lap, or they sneeze, or drink, or text, or adjust their radio, lose track of where they are and go off the highway shoulder into the median, etc. It is almost never the exciting things that get us, it’s almost always the mundane.””
While the mundane may cause the individual to have an accident, how can the mundane cause a fairly large number of sailors to all fall asleep at the wheel?
Between the Bridge, CIC, and Lookouts there may have been upwards of 30 crew whose duty it was to be on the lookout for stuff. And all of them with their sophisticated equipment failed to see anything unusual?
I have seen a lot of innuendo that the Crystal was on autopilot and thus implying no human was in charge.
Well, maybe the Navy is simply deflecting its own bad behavior by accusing the Crystal of doing what the Fitzgerald was doing.
Just maybe the Fitzgerald was on autopilot and none of the 30 or so crew were paying any attention to all of their sophisticated equipment because they were relying upon the computer to give them the right answer.
That's the biggest question I have. How did this tragedy occur with all the backups in place on the Navy destroyer? Sure, the aft lookout could've been asleep. The starboard bridge wing lookout could've been training a new lookout, and could've been drilling them with questions--or, maybe they were discussing how the Cavs would do next year if they drafted traded for Paul George. They're human, and they're young...surely, someone more senior would ask them about any visible contacts before they became a problem.
One surface watch petty officer in Combat might've been re-reading a hot text from his girlfriend, and maybe he saw a surface contact, but this was a busy shipping lane, and there were LOTS of contacts around, but nothing he noticed as a threat. Besides, there were others on watch, too.
Maybe the OOD noticed the contact, or maybe a new JOOD was being trained, and they were busy with questions. Maybe they got a call from the Engineering Watch Officer, asking for permission to take down a generator for unplanned maintenance.
Someone in CIC might've asked the bridge if they had a visual on surface contact bearing 030, and they may have responded in the affirmative, without actually processing its meaning.
The bridge and CIC teams should work in orchestrated unison, each providing backup to the other, should any one player make a small mistake. For all of them to fail simultaneously requires an extreme amount of bad luck or bad decision-making.
Dont the radars on ships have a “Bitchin’ Betty?”
For goodness sake, most cars come with collision avoidance tech on them.
I think, as another poster stated...”all the holes in the swiss cheese line up”.
I personally don’t see anything that unusual with the ACX Crystal...it is a civilian ship, from what I understand, it is the middle of the night, etc. And it was far larger, and by all accounts, would have had the right of way. I don’t really put much in their accounts right now, but even still...
I strongly doubt the Fitzgerald was on autopilot...I have not heard of US Navy ships that size using those, but I could simply be outdated. But, being a warship, they should have had eyes.
My point is that the dozens of Fitzgerald crew who were on duty for the purpose of looking out for stuff were behaving like a computer was steering the ship at the time of the collision and they were all asleep.
I was at a Common Core lecture a couple of weeks ago and a major concern expressed at that meeting is that our educational system is graduating kids with poor cognitive skills.
Some facts that should have been readily known by the Fitzgerald crew.
1. The Fitzgerald had been stationed at Yokosuka for 13 years and every one should have known the traffic lanes approaching/leaving Yokohama are busy and they would have known where the typical turns are located.
2. The Fitzgerald was built to be as undetectable as possible so it may not show up very well on cargo ship radar.
3. The Fitzgerald does not use AIS so unlike other ships whose location is constantly tracked by AIS, the Fitzgerald is a stealth vessel to everybody.
So if the crew has poor cognitive skills, then they would not necessarily factor the above into their behavior.
I assume you mean some kind of advanced collision warning system....something to alert the bridge watch that a collision might be imminent.
To my knowledge, this doesn't exist on Navy ships (probably not many others, either.) I could see such a warning going off so frequently in some locations that it would drive the watch standers insane. Not to mention, you could have a lot of "false positives," alarms indicating the possibility of a collision, when in fact none existed. Such a system could also lead to more confusion--do they trust "Betty," or their own eyes and ears?
The real "Bitchin' Betty" is the organizational structure of the underway watch teams. The Bridge, Combat, lookouts are all supposed to back each other up to form a nearly fool-proof system.
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