Norseman,
I subscribed to Marine Traffic (two week free subscription. I did the premium version, but I would recommend the PRO or SAT version as you can download data.
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/p/plans
There were two ships nearby the ACX Crystal at the time of the collision.
On its port side the WAN HAI 266 (a container ship) was about two miles directly north of the ACX Crystal and was destined for Yokohama.
On its starboard side the Maersk Evora (a container ship) was about three miles behind and was destined for Los Angeles.
If you look at the paths of the three ships preceding the collision at 1:30 am, there was nothing unusual. The ACX Crystal had been on a 90 degree course for several hours and had recently changed to a 70 degree course to avoid Toshima Island and the Maersk Evora that was on a 60 degree course, traveling at 19.5 knots, and coming up on its starboard side.
What we do not know is the path of the USS Fitzgerald that somehow found a way to get between the Wan Hai 266 and the ACX Crystal and get hit.
PavewayIV posted this in another thread. Note that there’s a link included going to the original translator on another site.
Excerpt begins:
The English Reuters article gives a garbled picture of what happened. Translation issues? Editing? No idea, but I found a better account from a poster estarzinger post #421 on CruiserForum http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f90/us-navy-destroyer-collision-186441-29.html
Perhaps a one-step better translation . . . .* “This is my English translation of the same report by Reuters in Japan in Japanese.
ACX Crystal captain wrote to the company that while cruising to Tokyo bay at 18 knots, TWO watch crews of ACX found the destroyer on 40 degree port side 3NM in distance around 1:15AM. 5 minutes later the destroyer suddenly started moving and continued on their collision course. While manually steering, ACX gave caution to the navy ship by turning on/off the light without any reaction. then decided to take hard starboard turn for collision avoidance but both ships crashed around 1:30AM.* Takeshi from Yokohama”
Probably still not perfectly accurate representation of details from the actual captain’s report
Excerpt ends.
The description of the original location of the Fitzgerald is what I was using to place them ahead of and on the course of the Wan Hai. On examining it further, I just now noted the comment that the Fitzgerald started moving five minutes later. If the Fitzgerald was indeed stationary at 1:15, and two to three miles ahead of the Wan Hai, the Wan Hai could have gotten quite close to the Fitzgerald in those five minutes. Maybe it even got under a mile distant. (All speculation, of course.)
But if that’s close to being the case, the OOD would have had two things to worry about, getting underway and out of the way of the approaching Wan Hai, and wondering whether the captain should be notified. From the description of the captain of the Crystal, it appears the OOD of the Fitzgerald remained unaware of the Crystal right up to the time of the collision. I find it hard to believe that no one on the Fitzgerald was aware of the existence of the Crystal, but whoever knew apparently was unsuccessful in getting the information relayed to, or perhaps just understood, by the OOD.