Well, I don’t know. with a compliment of 300+, I would think there would be some personnel available where someone could spare a Cryptologist’s Mate without putting too much of a dent in it.
I think they are going go get nailed for lack of communication when all is said and done. What if they couldn’t stabilize her, and they were fighting a losing battle. That hour might make the difference if time becomes an issue.
But I will concede the point. I can see where the argument could get made, and it is likely their defense will make that point. Boards of Inquiry are notoriously tough on things, and I definitely see them being hard-asses on that. If they do, sad thing is it won’t make a difference if it was the right call or not, especially since this lack of communication is giving the Navy a black eye, which as we know, they hate (seemingly even more than the other branches)
We aren’t the only ones asking how this lack of communication could happen on a warship designed around fixing damage if it happens, and state-of-the-art electronics and sensors.
And we definitely aren’t the only ones wondering if all our tax dollars, spent on this rather large class of vessels, has delivered a ship with electronics no more reliable or redundant than the computer in their office.
I get the impression some folks on here think I have a poor estimation of our military and feel they are incompetent dopes, and nothing could be further from the truth. Quite the contrary.
This kind of accident happened 50 years ago, and will probably happen 50 years from now.
I believe it is a combination of the contempt I have for the human ability to be 99.999% perfect in a situation, and the knowledge that .00001 is going to come back in the worst possible way and the worst possible time (Murphy’s Law) to cause damage and loss of life out of proportion to that .00001%
I believe in people, but I also and unequivocally accept without reservation that we are flawed by our nature. We not only cannot make mistakes, it is simply inevitable that we will, and we must design around that as best we can.
And that isn’t just the Navy, or the military, or Medicine, or Industry. We are all prone to failure, even the best of us.
“Well, I don’t know. with a compliment of 300+, I would think there would be some personnel available where someone could spare a Cryptologist’s Mate without putting too much of a dent in it.”
Yes, and no. Most of the radio personnel are junior. They know how to operate the standard equipment, but rigging emergency communications is not something they would have practiced enough to do it without supervision, especially while damage control teams were trying to move through the ship. As for the senior personnel (and Fitz was seriously undermanned), I reviewed where every E-7 and above was on my submarine after an incident, and every single one of them (except the Supply Officer and the Supply CPO) was doing something vital. I would not have been willing to spare even one for something less immediate.
I’m sure they will get nailed for lots of things, perhaps including communications. I don’t know where their communications cables run, but they may all have been cut by the collision, or the backups may have been stored someplace not easily accessible after this incident. The Communications (Radio?) Officer may have to defend this response, but I don’t see it as a career breaker, although it may lead to a ship alteration to reroute some cables or at least change where emergency communications equipment is stored if location rather than manpower was an issue this time around.
I’m not reading your posts as inappropriately critical of our military. My read is that the Captain and the OOD both made multiple, unforgivable errors, and I cannot imagine anyone with military experience disagreeing. Both should and almost certainly will have their careers end. I just have not seen enough detail to criticize the damage control efforts. Having been in charge at the scene for both a serious fire and for flooding (one was bad timing on my part, while the other was by choice), I have trouble faulting their damage control efforts.
You’re right - people are flawed. However, it’s still reasonable to demand 100% perfection from the Captain and the OOD in a ship-handling situation. We’re not blaming them for combat damage where one out of twenty missiles got through - normal wartime events. They are being blamed for a peacetime collision with a slower, less-maneuverable ship, where avoiding that collision was easily achievable (unless there were unreported mechanical problems, and even then it was the Captain’s job to find a solution).