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USS Fitzgerald Collision with Container Ship.


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Possible, sure. Anything is POSSIBLE....

 

 

Occam's Razor, People. 

 

That assclown driving the freighter made circles, deviating from his course, wasting company time and fuel for a REASON.

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2 things.    This was no accident.  A container ship doesn't make wild maneuvers like that.   I'm embarassed that the crew of a US destroyer allowed their ship to be rammed by a goddamn container

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40310563   Read the article and look at the tracking maps for the container ship. It made some VERY unusual U-turns in the middle of busy shipping lanes, then stru

Patience and hope for the truth not propaganda

It takes about 2 MILES to turn a freighter! This is NOT a case of a deliberate attack. The Destroyer is at fault. Basic Seamanship was ignored. That is not uncommon for Tin Can Sailors! OOD and lookouts paying NO attention to what they were SUPPOSED to be doing! Probably changing the watch, and not a single pair of eyes on watch.

Not directly related, but this brings back memories of seeing sailors bringing their buddies to colors over their back and then both guys next to him holding him up. Everyone isn't serious about their job, of course, and when I worked on ships there was no shortage of guys running around yelling "F### the Navy!" right here in front of Chief or whoever. These were guys who flunked out of Nuke or Med and ended up in the engine room pulling valves from the bilge while chief was around the corner with a coffee in one hand and his unit in the other taking a piss in it. When I was on the Sara some chiefs got busted selling acid, one overly friendly sailor was trying to spit shine some guys unit while he was asleep (don't ask don't tell days), someone was stashing weed in the bulkhead of 1 Main engine room, and security was letting people on with Ninja Turtle pictures on their IDs. It seemed like every sailor I came in contact with could not wait to get out, grow a beard, grow their hair, and smoke pot, lol. Then there were the guys who were clearly at least in their mid-40s to 50s with one stripe, lol. I wish I had realized how comical it all was at the time. It was a big ship with a lot of guys on it, so the odds there would be some idiots on it were fairly high. I was young and pretty stupid at the time as well. I ended up getting held at gunpoint for a few hours on the McInerney for boarding and working for 3 days with no clearance. Good times. Looking back at some of that, anything is possible.

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-40310563

 

Read the article and look at the tracking maps for the container ship. It made some VERY unusual U-turns in the middle of busy shipping lanes, then struck the Fitz. starboard amidships. Damn-near looks deliberate to me!

With the radar equipment on ships these days, how the heck does this even happen?

 

Captain and others injured, 7 crewmen missing. Thank the Gods of the Seas the Fitz didn't go down!

 

 

Who else here has worked on boats for over 13 years and been involved in a collision of this type?

 

I'll assume it's just me then, until someone else speaks up.

 

That map makes a ton of sense to me. These ships run on autopilot with a guy on watch. Autopilots follow a plot line via compass, gps or whatever. If it is running on compass, anything metal or a microphone can radically turn the ship, and the autopilot will think it is on track. I've had that happen in the fog, and paid to put the other boat back into boat shape. 

 

I'll grant that most of these ships are now satelite driven and that most of their autopilots are getting signal from WWII surplus gyrocompases, but those are analogue signals that can get reversed with a short. 

 

Occam will cut you more than malice. 

 

IMO this was a very bad day caused by some very trivial mistake.

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"Never attribute to malice, that witch can be explained by incompetence".

Destroyers are 'throw away' Ships. NOT sexy duty, not always manned by the best and brightest! They DO, however have radar that can spot a john boat at 300 miles -IF anybody is paying attention!

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It takes about 2 MILES to turn a freighter! This is NOT a case of a deliberate attack. The Destroyer is at fault. Basic Seamanship was ignored. That is not uncommon for Tin Can Sailors! OOD and lookouts paying NO attention to what they were SUPPOSED to be doing! Probably changing the watch, and not a single pair of eyes on watch.

Not directly related, but this brings back memories of seeing sailors bringing their buddies to colors over their back and then both guys next to him holding him up. Everyone isn't serious about their job, of course, and when I worked on ships there was no shortage of guys running around yelling "F### the Navy!" right here in front of Chief or whoever. These were guys who flunked out of Nuke or Med and ended up in the engine room pulling valves from the bilge while chief was around the corner with a coffee in one hand and his unit in the other taking a piss in it. When I was on the Sara some chiefs got busted selling acid, one overly friendly sailor was trying to spit shine some guys unit while he was asleep (don't ask don't tell days), someone was stashing weed in the bulkhead of 1 Main engine room, and security was letting people on with Ninja Turtle pictures on their IDs. It seemed like every sailor I came in contact with could not wait to get out, grow a beard, grow their hair, and smoke pot, lol. Then there were the guys who were clearly at least in their mid-40s to 50s with one stripe, lol. I wish I had realized how comical it all was at the time. It was a big ship with a lot of guys on it, so the odds there would be some idiots on it were fairly high. I was young and pretty stupid at the time as well. I ended up getting held at gunpoint for a few hours on the McInerney for boarding and working for 3 days with no clearance. Good times. Looking back at some of that, anything is possible.

 

 

Those guys sound way too close to an old friend of mine. He got a dishonorable discharge for DUI on coke in ~2002. It was around his 4th or 5th offense on par with that before he was actually out. From what I could tell, he was probably among the more responsible of the guys he ran with, most of whom were on his carrier with him. I always kinda felt sad for the stuff he did to sabotage his life. It doesn't bear thinking of the equipment built by the lowest bidder being handled by guys who spend their career on the lowest rung of the payscale. -- But then I grew up with commercial fishermen, who make all of that look good by comparison. 

 

With my collision, I was tracking the other vessels by radar. They were roughly following my course on a line parallel and a click or two to port. It was heavy following seas, with impenetrable fog. It was during the dark of the night, and a wave most likely bounced a radio mic out of it's bracket when we moved into the lee of a point. We were running at about 14kts, just chugging along, and they were going a little faster. The feel of the boat changed, and while I was trying to figure out what was up (the seas were now perpendicular to me, because I did about a 90* turn to port). Now the other boats were inside the range where radar has a hard time distinguishing them from waves on a small vessel. The courses intersected, and I came over the crest of a wave in time to see bright lights dead ahead, and reach for the controls. I got my hand on them before we hit, but the time between when I saw the boats and when I hit wasn't long enough to even throw it in reverse gear. I was 15 or so at the time, and there's some people who still just think I wasn't paying attention. I still don't think I could have done anything else differently and averted the situation. The GPS barely shows a plot for the course change. The worst of it was that the boat I busted up was a good friend who literally made it possible for us to catch the herring season in time about 4 weeks prior. We paid for it, and most of it came out of my pay.  If this were some international incident with everyone covering their butts and distant detectives trying me via facebook, I am sure my life would be a lot worse. So I am pretty reluctant to declare fault from my computer chair.

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Possible, sure. Anything is POSSIBLE....

 

 

Occam's Razor, People. 

 

That assclown driving the freighter made circles, deviating from his course, wasting company time and fuel for a REASON.

 

I've talked to guys who work on these frieghters. A lot of them don't even generally have direct control of the stearing. The huge companies that run them are remote controlling the ships via satellite real time. They have algorithms that will adapt courses on the fly to save fuel or travel time around weather, etc. The nominal steersman is more like the guy at the front of the train than a pilot. His job is to hit the metaphorical e-stop button, not really to navigate.

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Possible, sure. Anything is POSSIBLE....

 

 

Occam's Razor, People. 

 

That assclown driving the freighter made circles, deviating from his course, wasting company time and fuel for a REASON.

 

I've talked to guys who work on these frieghters. A lot of them don't even generally have direct control of the stearing. The huge companies that run them are remote controlling the ships via satellite real time. They have algorithms that will adapt courses on the fly to save fuel or travel time around weather, etc. The nominal steersman is more like the guy at the front of the train than a pilot. His job is to hit the metaphorical e-stop button, not really to navigate.

 

 

Remember seeing documentaries showing how this was the up and coming thing now that you mention it.

So this could have been done from a hackers basement, possibly.

Still if planned, it would require some co-operation on the DD side either willful or accidental.  

 

Stinks more every day.

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You would also be shocked how few people are on most of those ships. They will fly crew in and transfer them on board via a pilot shuttle boat at the points where they are needed. The rest of the time, it's about the minimum crew legally necessary.

 

Crew cost money and make mistakes. If you have a ship with a billion dollars of crap get held up/ threatened with confiscation, because one of the guys in the kitchen had some drugs, or you get liability because one of the guys has a drinking problem and smuggles extra booze on board it just isn't worth it. (They have vending machines for single serve booze that track how much and when you check it out vs your logged down time on many of these ships.)

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So basically just like the rest of the culture, downhill and accelerating...

 

Hate it but inevitable

 

I'd actually say that errors causing loss of life/property are measurably fewer than ever before, but I suppose if feelings & shrill news reports trump numbers...

Someone's responsible. Find them, charge them, punish them.

If it's an individual, vehicular homicide.

A nation/state sponsor? Military retaliation.

NO ONE fucks with US.

 

Yeah, Let's go invade Spain and win Cuba again!

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All of the small boat accidents I have seen involved alcohol or drugs.  Very few caused by catastrophic machinery failures.

 

The one, (1) freighter collision I eye ball saw was a combination of wind tide currents and stupidity of the helmsman/pilot.

Edited by HB of CJ
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All of the small boat accidents I have seen involved alcohol or drugs.  Very few caused by catastrophic machinery failures.

 

The one, (1) freighter collision I eye ball saw was a combination of wind tide currents and stupidity of the helmsman/pilot.

"eye ball saw". I love it and can't wait to use it.

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So basically just like the rest of the culture, downhill and accelerating...

 

Hate it but inevitable

 

I'd actually say that errors causing loss of life/property are measurably fewer than ever before, but I suppose if feelings & shrill news reports trump numbers...

 

 

 

 

I am saying the men of the Navy can only reflect the culture they serve and originated.

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The track of the container ship makes a lot more sense if the collision occured an hour earlier than originally reported.  The initial reports made it look like the container ship made the bizarre course changes before the collision.  But the revised timeline has the collision happening before the course changes.  The ship collides with the destroyer, turning it off course.  The auto-pilot turns the ship back on course.  It takes the crew some time to realize what's happened and take manual control of the ship and turn back to the point of collision where they presumably make contact with the destroyer crew.  Then they report the collision and return to their original course.  The first news reports had the collision happening at the time of the radio report which was an hour after the collision.

 

We have no way to know just how much of the truth is being reported but the new timeline is simpler and therefore more likely.  However it does put the entire blame on the destroyer crew. 

 

418B654500000578-4621656-This_screenshot

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The ENTIRE blame BELONGS to the Destroyer Captain! The freighter has right of way by THE LAW OF GROSS TONNAGE!

To put this into perspective, the Destroyer is FAST, maneuverable(can turn in it's own length), has amazing RADAR and 'other' sensors.With proper watches set, it can see and avoid anything in the ocean for 300 miles.

 The freighter is HUGE, SLOW (takes about 2 MILES to make a turn), has a crew of 5or 6 people. They seldom even set a watch, and are mostly steered by computer and satellite.

The best analogy I can come up with, is that it is like a ski boat running into a barge under tow.

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Some help here.  What are the recent/current SOPs regarding the USN helmsman?  Is he locked into just severely following orders or does he have some individual initiative regarding collision avoidance?  Does he have access to throttle controls?  Radar screens?  Full rudder?

 

Or ... is he just another machine part with no brain?  Or is there a good reason why the USN may have set itself up for a collision?  Does ALL the responsibility on the bridge rest solely with the OOD?  Bridge watch boss?  Can a Chief Petty Officer override OOD commands?  I dunno.

 

You can see where this is leading.  Why did our USS Fitzgerald not maneuverer?  Why couldn't the bridge watch just say "HOLLY SHIET!"  All it would have taken is a good throttle goose.  Turbines controlled from the bridge.  Just goose it up to 20 knots.  Or am I missing something?

 

But ... it is a 10,00 ton full load ship.  It was dark.  Were the navigation radars even turned on?  Long range, medium range, short range?  Where were the required lookouts?  Were they asleep?  Why was the Captain asleep?  A very busy sea.  Lots of ships.  I do not understand.

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Not familiar with that class of Destroyer, BUT even on a WWII sub, the helmsman has NO view of where he is. He steers a course set by the OOD (officer of the deck), who is in Command of WHAT the helmsman does. The OOD is responsible for EVERY action required to operate the Ship. The OOD answers to the Captain. He cannot stand that watch until certified by the Captain as suitable The Captain is ultimately responsible for EVERY action on his Ship.The SOP for the Ship is the Captain's own. If watches are to be kept, electronic scans - whatever. This is the Captain's FIRST responsibility - the SAFE operation of his Ship. If the night watch is slacking off, it is the job of the Captain to know about and correct the problem. There can be no doubt that the Captain in question FAILED at the most basic level to COMMAND his Ship. He has the power to HANG anyone on board. If you cannot maintain discipline with THAT power you are a TOTAL failure at Command.

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The Captain of the container ship is saying they did try to warn the Fitz of the impending collision.

Don't know if it's true, or just a CYA statement...

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-navy-asia-exclusive-idUSKBN19H13C?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+reuters%2FtopNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Top+News%29

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A major incident complete with our embarrassment.  How much of the truth will we be made aware of?  Some?  All?  Little"  Our USN does not have a good track record of coming clean with truth after a major foul up.  The USS New Jersey Breech explosion, (EDIT: USS Iowa??)  comes to mind.  Airlines blowing up above USN ships?  (No wonder Boeing is "connected" right now) Will we EVER know what happened here?

 

Occam's Razor:  Keep it simple.

 

Murphy's Law:  If it can happen it will.

 

First time an accident.  Second Time happen stance.  Third Time Enemy action.

 

The eyeball saw seen by me was a smallish freighter for some unknown reason trying to enter L.A. CA. San Pedro Harbor from the East heading up the Los Cerritos Channel from Long Beach Harbor and USN base.  About 1965?  Tide was wrong.  Morning wind was wrong.  The freighter tried to make that sharp left hand turn to head West from moving North.

 

About 1 mile East of the Commodore Heinz, (sp?) vertical lift bridge and old the Henry Ford draw bridge.

 

Never made the turn.  Crashed hard into and through a small private marina.  Then hit the channel rocks.  Hard.  You should have seen the tugs racing to the assistance.  8 foot wakes.  Destroyed another marina.  Nobody killed but quite a few smaller private boats sunk/crushed.  Including two I worked on week days cleaning.  I was out of most of my job.  Pissed me off.

 

Long ago far away.

Edited by HB of CJ
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Not familiar with that class of Destroyer, BUT even on a WWII sub, the helmsman has NO view of where he is. He steers a course set by the OOD (officer of the deck), who is in Command of WHAT the helmsman does. The OOD is responsible for EVERY action required to operate the Ship. The OOD answers to the Captain. He cannot stand that watch until certified by the Captain as suitable The Captain is ultimately responsible for EVERY action on his Ship.The SOP for the Ship is the Captain's own. If watches are to be kept, electronic scans - whatever. This is the Captain's FIRST responsibility - the SAFE operation of his Ship. If the night watch is slacking off, it is the job of the Captain to know about and correct the problem. There can be no doubt that the Captain in question FAILED at the most basic level to COMMAND his Ship. He has the power to HANG anyone on board. If you cannot maintain discipline with THAT power you are a TOTAL failure at Command.

The Navy is a different animal to day, that is all I can say from 40 years ago.

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  • 1 month later...

I wonder WHAT they are smoking.....

 They just announced that the last incident, they are charging the Capt., the XO, the COB, and 12 Officers for dereliction.

This shit boggles the mind!

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I wonder WHAT they are smoking.....

 They just announced that the last incident, they are charging the Capt., the XO, the COB, and 12 Officers for dereliction.

This shit boggles the mind!

Maybe they were on that flakka.

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How many of these Officers are a product of the previous Administration promoting 'politically correct' candidates to OCS and the Academies?

 

The Navy is doing a "stand down and investigation".  Have we  been HACKED?  Is this the 'deep state' in open revolt? Have our standards become so low that our fleet has become a bunch of druggies and drunks running around asleep at the wheel?

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^ "Inquiring minds want to know..."  I doubt they've actually been "hacked," but of course it's possible...

Besides that, some or all of the above, I think.  :unsure:

 

Don't we have quite a few Commanding Generals and members of the Joint Chiefs who don't actually have any combat experience?  I really don't know.

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