The captain of the Porter was relieved of command three weeks after the 2012 collision, but details of the sequence of events leading up to it were never released to the public AFIK. A year after the fact, they released the bridge audio, but only in response to a FOIA request. People were able to piece together what happened from that. The Fitzgerald accident is probably a lot more complex.
Anyone that thinks there will be a quick investigation or ANY disclosure of what happened by the US Navy is dreaming. They will delay and hide everything possible from the public. This seems pretty routine with them in other accidents. I don't doubt they will act internally to discuss the details to prevent this from happening again, but I doubt we'll ever see any uncomfortable details from the Navy.
A FOIA request might produce a few scraps of information a year from now, but I could see them refusing any requests since the accident resulted in the deaths of sailors.
I'm not begrudging the US Navy their secrecy, but I have to shake my head in disbelief when people on social media insist that everyone simply wait for the 'results of the official investigation' that will never be made public. Maybe we'll hear something from the Japanese Coast Guard, but I won't keep my hopes up for that, either.
>>The Fitzgerald accident is probably a lot more complex.<< (than the Porter accident, that is.)
On another thread, I used the data you provided to illustrate that a scenario similar to the Porter accident might have also occurred here.
In a nutshell, the Fitzgerald might have initially been too close to another containership, the Wan Hai, sailing parallel to the Crystal, and could have been taking steps to get out of its path. That’s essentially what happened to the Porter, where it avoided the first tanker and then was surprised by the existence of the second and collided with it. It looks like that could have happened to the Fitzgerald as well.
Here’s a link to my post on that thread, based on PavewayIV’s comments preceding it and the info he provided. It’s post #104
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3564080/posts?q=1&;page=101
If someone with graphing capability could produce a diagram given the data discussed there, that would be quite helpful, and probably quite illuminating as well, assuming my assessment of the relative positions of the three ships is in the ballpark.