“”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.
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.
I posted a link yesterday about the USS Missouri grounding back in the Fifties.
On that bridge, the Captain had several people who were familiar with the area telling him he was going on the wrong side of a channel marker. When an enlisted man told him the second time, the Captain ignored him. When he said it the third time, the Captain chewed him a new one.
At the trial, when they asked him why he didn't persist, the sailor said something like "I tried and he chewed me out, so I just shut my mouth."