USS Fitzgerald in Collision, 1 Sailor injured, 7 reported missing

scoutpilot said:
Senior leadership in the Navy continues to shine, at the expense of lives and readiness.

The Navy needs a good house-cleaning at O6 and above, to include the occasional O5 (who I'm guessing commanded this rig).
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That's a terrible thing to say. Sour grapes? There are so many fine senior officers. A good house cleaning? I know some 06s, and a few 07s. They are fine examples of what officers should be. The ones you consider substandard don't represent them all. I'm also pretty sure you don't know all the facts of this tragedy. Your sarcastic rhetoric seems in bad taste to me.
 
Wishful said:
Which ship had the right of way according to maritime rules?
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It isn't possible to tell with 100% certainty. I think a crossing situation where the DDG is a fault was most likely... but there is also some speculation it was an over taking situation, which would have put the Container Ship in the wrong. In either case... see rule #2.
 
the daily mail link has some charts and says;

The ACX Crystal's course shows that it performed a rapid U-turn at speed and then turned to head back to Tokyo - at which point it collided with the USS Fitzgerald.
 
Maplerock said:
That's a terrible thing to say. Sour grapes? There are so many fine senior officers. A good house cleaning? I know some 06s, and a few 07s. They are fine examples of what officers should be. The ones you consider substandard don't represent them all. I'm also pretty sure you don't know all the facts of this tragedy. Your sarcastic rhetoric seems in bad taste to me.
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So when you clean your house you throw away everything? Or only the stuff that needs to go?

It's a shame you don't like hard truths, but between ships running aground, collisions killing sailors, and the scandals across the upper ranks (especially in the Pacific forces) it's pretty evident that there is a problem.
 
I was on a large cruise ship that T-boned a large merchant ship at 0130 in the middle of the English Channel. Weather was beautiful. Both ships had modern equipment and yet it happened. Thankfully, no one was seriously injured. The fact is these sorts of things can and do happen.

In the case of the Fitzgerald, all of us have ZERO knowledge of what occurred, other than what is in the (likely unreliable) press reports. It's really not good to speculate regarding who was at fault and potentially responsible for the loss of seven lives.

There will obviously be numerous investigations and the facts will come out. Let's wait for that to happen, difficult as it is.
 
skismuggs said:
Forgive my ignorance but how does someone miss seeing a boat that big???
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skismuggs said:
Radar? US ship probably jam packed with electronics. Just curious now. Thanks.
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A US Navy destroyer gets t-boned by a container ship?!?!?!?! I thought that a Destroyer's role in a carrier group is to destroy threats to the group.

Can anyone on this forum answer @skismuggs simple question? Do US Navy destroyers carry radar to track potential threats the size of a shopping mall moving at 20 miles an hour within a 10 mile radius? Or do they only track threats the size of an SU-35 moving at 2000 mph within a 100 mile radius? What do they shoot with their artillery? How do they aim it? Line of sight?

It's obvious we'll have to wait for the findings.

If this wasn't such a sickening human tragedy, it would demand an onslaught of mockery.
 
scoutpilot said:
So when you clean your house you throw away everything? Or only the stuff that needs to go?

It's a shame you don't like hard truths, but between ships running aground, collisions killing sailors, and the scandals across the upper ranks (especially in the Pacific forces) it's pretty evident that there is a problem.
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The sarcastic musings of a disgruntled forum member don't constitute hard facts. You don't know all the facts and neither do I.
 
Maplerock said:
The sarcastic musings of a disgruntled forum member don't constitute hard facts. You don't know all the facts and neither do I.
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Sarcasm implies I don't mean it. I absolutely mean it. There is a cancer in the upper ranks of black shoe navy leadership at the moment.

Speaking of forum members, why are you on the forum again? You don't seem to have much of a connection to the service academies. Is this just your place to vent?
 
cb7893 said:
A US Navy destroyer gets t-boned by a container ship?!?!?!?! I thought that a Destroyer's role in a carrier group is to destroy threats to the group.

Can anyone on this forum answer @skismuggs simple question? Do US Navy destroyers carry radar to track potential threats the size of a shopping mall moving at 20 miles an hour within a 10 mile radius? Or do they only track threats the size of an SU-35 moving at 2000 mph within a 100 mile radius? What do they shoot with their artillery? How do they aim it? Line of sight?

It's obvious we'll have to wait for the findings.

If this wasn't such a sickening human tragedy, it would demand an onslaught of mockery.
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Some of your questions, frankly, don't really need to be answered on this forum.

The bottom line is that the best equipment in the world is only as good as the guy running it. A watch team that's just woken up at 2 AM and is still groggy, or bored, or not paying attention, is not going to be saved by a sweet radar (and yes, destroyer radars are pretty sweet).
I have a lot of friends in the surface community. Some of them have had near-misses with other vessels (merchant or military), and almost all have caught themselves falling asleep standing up while on watch late at night. I think it says a lot that most of my Navy friends, while obviously deeply saddened by this tragedy, aren't necessarily surprised that it happened. It's not hard to see how the holes in the swiss cheese can align.
 
scoutpilot said:
Sarcasm implies I don't mean it. I absolutely mean it. There is a cancer in the upper ranks of black shoe navy leadership at the moment.

Speaking of forum members, why are you on the forum again? You don't seem to have much of a connection to the service academies. Is this just your place to vent?
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I won't trade insults. I'm here to support and learn. I like to have fun here too. Connection to service academies? Plenty. I certainly dont want to be a schadenfreude. Rest assured, you can have the last word with your next post.
 
If the ships t-boned.... and there's good visibility and there aren't other factors (thus, I'm assuming they're both power-driven vessels), the Navy destroyer would have been the "give way" vessel, and the container ship would have been the "stand on" vessel. Of course, if the actions of the give way vessel aren't enough, then the stand on vessel takes action.

It's been a good 9 years since I stood watch on the bridge of a ship. It's also been 9 years since I slept below the waterline. I don't miss either. I've also forgotten A LOT!

People ask how two huge ships can possibly run into each other. If you're driving down the street at 10 miles an hour, you have to go out of your way to t-bone a bus.

In reality, these things tend to creep up. Yes, there's one ship that you can watch on radar and can watch the aspect of the navigation lights change.... and you can plot out courses on maneuvering boards (MoBoards) and discuss the decisions with others on the bridge of the ship.... but while you're doing these things, you have many other contacts (ships) that you're also trying to monitor and they're turning and changing speed and getting closer or farther away... and then, in no time.... something is within 2 NM of you.... and getting closer fast.

So, it CAN feel fast.... and sometimes people panic or freeze or really just aren't aware of it until it's too late.

That said, I think the Navy has had too many issues with typical (even basic) navigation issues and the "Rules of the Road." It can be costly in terms of human life and in terms of assets/funding.
 
beyond said:
There were a few SWOs that would teach naval science classes when I was at KP. The disconnect between us and them was huge.
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In my 34 years going to sea in the U.S. Merchant Fleet I found the gap in seamanship and navigation skills between us and the surface navy was significant.. There's an old saying in the merchant marine that goes 'if you see gray, steer away'..

beyond said:
Football Fields is an understatement. For a "controlled," non emergency slow down the rule of thumb is one turn [RPM] a minute on the load program, and then 5 minutes a bell after that. So from 90 turns to stop (You'll still have 5 knots of head way when you ring stop), we're talking about 45-60 minutes. In an emergency there are ways to over ride the program, but even then, you likely won't get enough start air on the engine for an astern bell until you're down the in the 5-7 knot range. It takes a lot longer and is much more complicated than most SWOs who race around on gas turbines understand.
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beyond paints the complications of using the engine pretty well.. One thing I'll add is that the container ship was probably in UMS [unmanned engine room status] when things started going south.. That would further complicate her reducing speed to a point where you could use the engine to help maneuver. A lot of stuff has to happen down below in preparation to 'load program down' to maneuvering bells and engineers have to be down below to make those preparations. At the point of collision it looked like the box boat was about 50 nm from the pilot station at Uraga Suido and doing 17 knots.. So they were roughly 3 hours from arrival and about an hour and a half from being manned up in the ECR.

After seeing the post collision pictures of the two ships I would take an educated guess and say that the ACX CRYSTAL was probably overtaking the FITZGERALD on a converging course..

Once the ACX CRYSTAL's VDR information and whatever the Navy uses for data recording are compared we'll have a more clear picture of what actually happened..
 
Can't wait for the day that cars you don't have to actually drive yourself become a reality. Leave it to a computer to orchestrate a disaster. The commercial used to be " DuPont, better living through chemistry". The new slogan may read "Microsoft, better dog and pony shows through technology".
 
BTCS/USN said:
Can't wait for the day that cars you don't have to actually drive yourself become a reality. Leave it to a computer to orchestrate a disaster. The commercial used to be " DuPont, better living through chemistry". The new slogan may read "Microsoft, better dog and pony shows through technology".
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With all the technology we have at our disposal on ships bridges nowadays, many watch officers have become too reliant on it. Sometimes the end result of that over reliance is the neglect to simply look out the wheelhouse windows..
 
deepdraft1 said:
With all the technology we have at our disposal on ships bridges nowadays, many watch officers have become too reliant on it. Sometimes the end result of that over reliance is the neglect to simply look out the wheelhouse windows..
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Same in medicine: Residents treating the patient's medical chart by clicking on drop-down boxes of chart instead of the patient. Quizzical look on face when asked by attending physician, "Did you go and look at the patient"?
 
Many commercial vessels are equipped with a VDR (Voyage Data Recorder). I don't know if the Crystal is so equipped.
 
cb7893 said:
Thank you @beyond

One last question.

Do USN ships have the equivalents of a flight data and cockpit voice recorder?
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Yes. You can hear the recording from the last one here: http://gcaptain.com/intense-bridge-conversation-porter/. All the talk about seeing a red side light before they get hit makes me cringe.

rjb said:
Many commercial vessels are equipped with a VDR (Voyage Data Recorder). I don't know if the Crystal is so equipped.
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They're required too by law.... soo... I'm gonna say probably so. But based on the fact that there was probably just an officer and a lookout on the bridge... there probably wasn't much discussion prior to the collision.
 
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