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Old 12-02-2019, 15:57   #196
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

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For a Naval Academy graduate that should be more than sufficient. They are quite a bit above average intelligence and it really doesn't take that much. The Navy is looking for an excuse for Buffy killing sailors so they don't have to put her down. Secondly you have no idea what midshipmen are taught or you wouldn't have made that statement.

You should maybe read that propublica report - Buffy, as you describe her, graduated from the U of Missouri - not the USNA.

I think you know when I said it doesn't apply I meant the Navy doesn't require CG certification for anything. It really was crystal clear. (pun intended)
The point was that merchant mariners require schooling too. It's not so they have a fancy piece of paper; it's so they know how to do the job - it's irrelevant that the Navy doesn't require a CG cert; they still need to know how to do the job.
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Old 12-02-2019, 16:09   #197
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

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The point was that merchant mariners require schooling too. It's not so they have a fancy piece of paper; it's so they know how to do the job - it's irrelevant that the Navy doesn't require a CG cert; they still need to know how to do the job.
It certainly doesn't appear that way. Diddy will get them promoted and a command.
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Old 12-02-2019, 16:17   #198
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

I thought this thread was closed. What happened?
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Old 12-02-2019, 16:45   #199
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

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OK, sure, but that's a somewhat trivial observation -- you can get a diploma or qualification in just about any field, by cramming or otherwise doing something besides actually mastering the material. So what?


As an aside -- I did some teaching in European universities -- unlike in American ones, you get to give oral exams. A vastly more effective way to separate those who actually achieved some real knowledge and understanding, from those who cram and fake it.



So are you saying with all this, that in your view, it's perfectly fine to train deck officers in the USN, by sending them home with a box full of DVD's? Or deck officers in the merchant marine? Then turning them loose? Surely not.
Where did I ever mention 'cramming'?
By the time you went to school for 2nd mates you would already know all your stuff.... if you didn't then 6 weeks revision wasn't going to help you...
You learnt your stuff at sea from real sailors , not in a classroom from someone who had given up the sea years earlier after a year or so as second mate.. you know what they say

'Those that can...do.
Those that can't... teach
and..
Those that can't teach teach teachers'

Of course there were always the diligent few that sat and passed their tickets without even bothering to go to school for a few weeks.

I am aware of all the courses people have to do these days... to some with no seagoing experience it may all look hard ... its not.... I've done them all....well not 'Oil and Gas' or 'DP' and some other specialised stuff ... my time in those industries predated the requirement.....does the expression 'don't try and teach your grandmother how to suck eggs' sound familiar?

Some of the courses have value... some do not.... the first GMDSS course I did ( first course to be run in Australasia) was of the latter type ... we had been sailing with the gear for a year or more... the lecturer had never even seen the kit, was teaching out of the book, and learnt more from us than we did from him.

Last course I did was BRM.... now that was good.... not that we learnt anything... we didn't ... we had been doing that stuff for years....

But a week in a fancy hotel in KL followed by three days on a cruise liner was pretty good.... this is my bridge team plus the C/E on the right .. dunno why he was there...

I think I gave my employers about another 8 weeks work before retiring..
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Old 12-02-2019, 17:15   #200
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

.It’s a diffrent way of doing things. I don’t know or understand Navy training methods or carear path.
I got a bit of a surprise by the “SWOS in a box” as described.

Merchant training has changed dramatically over the years. In particular the minimum time required has been reduced drastically here with STCW 95 and STCW 2010.
For a hawse pipe route it’s increased again 36 months Sea time. Minimum.
While today’s cadet program graduates only require 12 months Sea time but get a lot more academic instruction with nearly 3 years in school. Compared to my eras 1 year in school.

Different countries had different ways of doing it.
A big difrence is the climbing the jaws pipe or the cadet or maritime school accademy route.

The system I went through was a Cadet program through a maritime school.
It was an old system long established. Well reputed.
Leagal I was an indentured apprentice. I wasn’t old enough to sign a contract under English law at the time. My dad had to sign it and the shipping company actually became my legal guardian. Until I turned 18.

Two weeks pre sea training. Learning interesting nautical terms like bow. Basic fire fighting and survival and how not to catch exotic diseases in exotic ports.
Then off to sea with absolutely no clue.
The first year. Consisted of doing every crap job on the vessel. On the basis it was good experience. All I had to hear was it will be good expierience to know it would be in some way horrible, dirty, nasty, extremely hot or freezing and nobody important wanted to do it.
I was also involved in every interesting job. I was the Mate, Bosun or PO’s go for for. To some extent the traditional hazing etc that went on is best gone. Some of the jobs I was given were just hazing. On the whole I was treated well and those guys taught seamanship which has come in handy and earned me the respect of many crews.

By the end of the first year I had progressed for a useless kid who knew nothing to a slightly older kid who was actually useful. Was considered a lead hand on a par with an AB often tasked to take charge of and lead major operations. like tank cleaning, ballasting deballasting, repairing, overhauling replacing, any deck gear on the ship. I had painted, chipped, scrapped, greased, stripped, lubed, rigged, unrigged just about everything there was.
Then.
I went back to school. I completed my EDH lifeboatman and began the acedmeics of navigation, stability, construction etc. With a few add ones like radar observer.
Then back to sea.
Some times I acted as a PO. Or depending where we were made the mates coffee and did most of his menial tasks on the bridge.
I had actually done quite a bit of time on the bridge from day 1 learning to steer keep a look out. Or keeping the movement book or log while on stand by entering or leaving port. Or in fog, I stood look out on the focsle in fog, heavy rain in snow from day 1.

My second year when on the bridge i started helping the mate navigate, kept a look out. Then took the con.

We were short a mate and working coastal. I did standby a couple of times with the old man while the chief Mate was busy.
The old man was a tough grumpy old SOB WW2 vet. Who didn’t like young punks like me. And made it quite clear on a regular basis.

To my surprise just after we dropped the Pilot. He pointed at the wheel and said what’s that sonny. Got really pissed when couldn’t figure out what he was mad about this time. I finaly figured out he was pointing at the wheel and telegraph.
He asked me if I knew what they were for. I confirmed I did.

His next words “good you know what they are for” “f ing use them if you have to.” “Then Call Me”.
No certification required back then I had the watch.
I would relieve up and down to take the watch or act as a PO.
Until I went back to school for the last of the acedemic stuff and to write my certificate.
By which I had two full years before the mast. From then on insailed as a 3rd or 2nd Mate. I had no intent in moving up. I liked being a 2nd Mate. Nobody ever bugged me just the old man. He was ussualy my buddy.

I moved here. To a different system. Most Canadians are haws pipe, coast guard, navy or from some place else like me. Learning on the job here is harder. It takes longer. They don’t get the help I got.

I was happy as a 2nd Mate until one day the Mate got sick.

Much to my displeasure I was told your the Mate. At first I didn’t think I had a clue. I definitely didn’t want to.
Then I realized I did.
I knew how to do almost everything. I had done almost everything. What the deck crew didn’t know. I knew. All I had to do was show them what needed doing and how to do it. When I did they appreciated it and thanked me for showing them.

Other systems in other countries. A guy would go to a maritime school and get a degree before joining a ship. They are mostly much better educated than someone who came through my route or up the haws pipe.
Some of them very good.
Some not so much. There good at the books but when **** goes wrong don’t really know how things work.

Difrent ways of doing things. When I was a 3rd Mate. Port Warden might ask me stability stuff or regulatory stuff I didn’t know. In some countries they would be annoyed junior guys from there did.
My system didn’t cover this stuff until I went back to school for a chief Mate.
Other systems they learn it all in the beginning.

90% I learned on the job at sea. I had a corspondance course I was supposed to do but I preferred chasing girls and drinking beer.

What’s the best way? A bit of both.

More recently. Rules change, technologies change, I can’t program a VCR. VCRs are long gone. I am confused by computer systems. The requirements change new add on courses are required.
They are ussualy short add on you just have to attend and get the stamp.

BRM every one has to take it. 5 day course. Most go back to sea and business as usual.
Company has to train BRM. It takes a long time to get it to happen we are still working on it.

Does the Navy need to change. Results would suggest they do.

Oddly we refer to Navy studies for closed loop communication and bridge resource Managment. And leadership Which is a big part of where they failed.

I am old and from a different back ground and era. Today’s Cadet graduates are well educated and hopefully get good Sea time experience. Good experience opertunity is hard to come by. For a young Canadian there are so few ships. Many go overseas.

The American system is diffrent and the opertunties greater.

Other funny thing. We have difficulty finding certificated crew. We hire ex navy from time to time.
I ussualy am quite well impressed.
To date I cant think of any who I rejected.
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Old 12-02-2019, 19:05   #201
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

Jack, are you sure you aren't an old phart as well?

Very similar career path.... No pre sea - 2 ships, 18 months, then MAR with EDH and Radar Observers, back to sea for 14 months.... then 2nd mates with a short 'Gyro Maintenance' course on the side. King Teds correspondance course pre MAR... A Warsash one afterwards which I considered rollocks so I went my own way - got in a bit of strife with the coy. over that but still passed first time.

Too much book learning these days.... not enough practical.

They need all that STCW stuff these days because many shipowners would simply shake the tree and take what fell out...

As they say... no such thing as a good shipowner some are just a little better than others...
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Old 12-02-2019, 19:08   #202
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

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Jack, are you sure you aren't an old phart as well?

Very similar career path.... No pre sea - 2 ships, 18 months, then MAR with EDH and Radar Observers, back to sea for 14 months.... then 2nd mates with a short 'Gyro Maintenance' course on the side. King Teds correspondance course pre MAR... A Warsash one afterwards which I considered rollocks so I went my own way - got in a bit of strife with the coy. over that but still passed first time.

Too much book learning these days.... not enough practical.

They need all that STCW stuff these days because many shipowners would simply shake the tree and take what fell out...

As they say... no such thing as a good shipowner some are just a little better than others...

Definitely an old fart
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Old 12-02-2019, 21:34   #203
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

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Where did I ever mention 'cramming'?
By the time you went to school for 2nd mates you would already know all your stuff.... if you didn't then 6 weeks revision wasn't going to help you...
You learnt your stuff at sea from real sailors , not in a classroom from someone who had given up the sea years earlier after a year or so as second mate..

Sure, but navigation, pilotage, radar plotting, and all that, are quite involved skills. You think you should learn all that just by doing it?



Methinks you have forgotten how much there was to learn and understand, before you were able to do it effectively.


It's true that budding lawyers used to "read law" as an apprentice to an experienced lawyer, rather than going to law school. There's something to be said for one-on-one learning from a person in actual practice, but I think it's clear, at least in this profession, that you get people with deeper and better rounded knowledge if they actually study first. I guess being a good mariner doesn't require quite as much book learning as being a good lawyer, but I do not think that the knowledge involved is trivial. Navigation is a serious art of mankind, developed over centuries by some awfully good minds.


And getting back to the thread topic -- I think the folks driving the Fitz were clearly deficient in all of this knowledge -- both theoretical and practical. They were not trained, not capable, had no situational awareness, and didn't know what they were not aware of, and didn't know how to handle the crisis once it arose. The captain didn't know himself, what the watchstanders needed to know. The Navy, apparently, didn't know, what the captain needed to know, in order for him to ensure that the ship was being driven properly. We can quibble about where that knowledge needed to come from, but I think everyone will agree, that wherever it needed to come from, they didn't have it.
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Old 12-02-2019, 22:23   #204
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

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Sure, but navigation, pilotage, radar plotting, and all that, are quite involved skills. You think you should learn all that just by doing it?



Methinks you have forgotten how much there was to learn and understand, before you were able to do it effectively.


It's true that budding lawyers used to "read law" as an apprentice to an experienced lawyer, rather than going to law school. There's something to be said for one-on-one learning from a person in actual practice, but I think it's clear, at least in this profession, that you get people with deeper and better rounded knowledge if they actually study first. I guess being a good mariner doesn't require quite as much book learning as being a good lawyer, but I do not think that the knowledge involved is trivial. Navigation is a serious art of mankind, developed over centuries by some awfully good minds.


And getting back to the thread topic -- I think the folks driving the Fitz were clearly deficient in all of this knowledge -- both theoretical and practical. They were not trained, not capable, had no situational awareness, and didn't know what they were not aware of, and didn't know how to handle the crisis once it arose. The captain didn't know himself, what the watchstanders needed to know. The Navy, apparently, didn't know, what the captain needed to know, in order for him to ensure that the ship was being driven properly. We can quibble about where that knowledge needed to come from, but I think everyone will agree, that wherever it needed to come from, they didn't have it.
At the risk of drifting.
And being at odds with many ex navy opinions I’ve seen.
The term “SWOS in box” is comment on a system which is the result of cutbacks.
My guess the officers who went through the previous system are not impressed with some of the results.
No doubt there are problems with it. Not being familiar with it I can’t really say. I will take other word for it.

The problems on this particular vessel leading to this particular incident go deep. Yes initial training is most likley a significant factor and the cut backs may even be a root cause.

You can and should learn the academics of the theory and mathematics of navigation in school. In a class room environment.

My opinion. You can get an introduction. To radar observation. ARPA ECDIS and other electronic aids. They are all add on courses.
Even Bridge Resource Managment course is at best just an introduction to the subject.

The real learning is on the job on the ship with an expierenced mentor trainer or instructor.

So like Elpingo I learned how to navigate by navigating. How to asses risk of collision by assessing risk of colision, to Pilot by piloting, I learned the very basic technics at school, I learned the mathematics at school.
I developed the skills by doing on the ship with the help of the officers insailed with.
There is a lot to learn and skills to learn. Most of which just can’t be replectated in a class room.
Simulators help, they don’t replace sea time. Or maybe the maritime simulators just aren’t good enough yet.

I think you might be shocked and surprised how poorly a significant no of current professional certified maritime shool graduates are at some of this basic stuff.
It’s not just a navy problem. Don’t forget thier were two ships involved in this incident.

“SWOS in a box” may be a problem. Lack of hands on learning experience under a good experienced mentor is key part of the problem to.

The BRM was so poor it was virtually non existent.
The communication between the Bridge and the control center was non existent.
The BRM in the control room was virtually non existent.

It’s the senior officers role to promote, encourage and train good BRM practices.

At this point all I can say is WTF.

Particularly since, We used to refer to Navy studies policy and procedure about this stuff.
They used to be the leaders in this.
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Old 12-02-2019, 22:36   #205
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

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........
You can and should learn the academics of the theory and mathematics of navigation in school. In a class room environment.

My opinion. You can get an introduction. To radar observation. ARPA ECDIS and other electronic aids. They are all add on courses.
Even Bridge Resource Managment course is at best just an introduction to the subject.

The real learning is on the job on the ship with an expierenced mentor trainer or instructor.

So like Elpingo I learned how to navigate by navigating. How to asses risk of collision by assessing risk of colision, to Pilot by piloting, I learned the very basic technics at school, I learned the mathematics at school.
I developed the skills by doing on the ship with the help of the officers insailed with.
There is a lot to learn and skills to learn. Most of which just can’t be replectated in a class room.
Simulators help, they don’t replace sea time. Or maybe the maritime simulators just aren’t good enough yet.

I think you might be shocked and surprised how poorly a significant no of current professional certified maritime shool graduates are at some of this basic stuff........ '
Exactly....
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Old 12-02-2019, 23:03   #206
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

I think Jack has spelt it out rather well however...

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Sure, but navigation, pilotage, radar plotting, and all that, are quite involved skills. You think you should learn all that just by doing it?
No more 'involved' than many other skills we master without going to school to learn. No... not just 'by doing it' but as I have said ... 'doing it' is the important part... not getting lectured at by some bloke who hasn't seen the sea in 20 years.

Coastal Navigation... learn't whilst the junior on a watch and doing it under the supervision of a qualified officer. ( the company I was with whenever the ship was in coastal waters the cadets were in watches )

Celestial navigation.... ditto ( deepsea after your first year you were expected to take sights ever day. Last year or so you would be on the 4 to 8 with the mate taking stars.

Radar plotting and collision avoidance.... ditto

Pilotage... learnt as C/O under the supervision of the master and also from the get go whenever on watch in pilotage waters with a pilot embarked or an exempt master...

Shiphandling....ditto

( there is no shore based training with even the remotest merit for the last two..... )

I know quite a bit about seafaring but very little about the law.... which is why you never see me banging on about legal matters.... despite having spoken to quite a few lawyers over the years....






Methinks you have forgotten how much there was to learn and understand, before you were able to do it effectively. Are you implying that I don't what I am talking about and that my memory is shot??


It's true that budding lawyers used to "read law" as an apprentice to an experienced lawyer, rather than going to law school. There's something to be said for one-on-one learning from a person in actual practice, but I think it's clear, at least in this profession, that you get people with deeper and better rounded knowledge if they actually study first. I guess being a good mariner doesn't require quite as much book learning as being a good lawyer, but I do not think that the knowledge involved is trivial. Navigation is a serious art of mankind, developed over centuries by some awfully good mindsAnd learnt and practiced by the officers of the British Merchant Navy in the manner I have described right up to its demise in about 1990ish .... the British Merchant Navy had left the building before STCW had arrived... OK so there is still the oil industry and some ferries but the true MN is long gone......
And also...while chaps who had done fancy pre-sea training of a year or more at Pangbourne or similar may have had the legs on those who had gone directly to sea there was never any difference to be seen at the far end when they were up for second mates..
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Old 12-02-2019, 23:07   #207
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

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They were not trained, not capable, had no situational awareness, and didn't know what they were not aware of, and didn't know how to handle the crisis once it arose. The captain didn't know himself, what the watchstanders needed to know.

Not necessarily correct. We don't know what they didn't know, either the junior officers, or the Skipper--after all what does it do to one's self confidence to have one's work orders basically ignored? Surely, not enhance it.

The moment when he learned he had competence, Uricanejack already had gained it in advance. He was taught by modeling first, academics later, to give the reasons after he had acquired self-discipline. Maybe, he was not worth anything to them before hand. Sort of brutal, but hazing is used to motivate people to do their best, and keep on doing it. Whatever those youngsters learned conspired in creating junior officers who did not know some pretty critical things, or chose for personal reasons to ignore the command.


The Navy, apparently, didn't know, what the captain needed to know, in order for him to ensure that the ship was being driven properly.
No, my feeling is worse than that, actually. My sense of it is that that poor guy, seriously injured, is being scapegoated by whoever is on up the line that didn't like him or wanted to get preferencce for someone else or somehow gain something for himself. Someone who was possibly chosen for scapegoathood by someone for his own benefit. Someone up the ladder .

We don't know what he knew, only that he didn't count for much.

Apologies for my long windedness. I am struck with the parallels with some of the politics shown in real life, vs. the ones in the Kent and O'Brian series, both written according to historical events of the times.
Where there is greed, many ugly manifestations occur. Now, that is ironic to me, that the kind of corruption mentioned by kmacdonald may be what is actually happening, versus the squeaky clean picture that errors up the chain of command at first presents.

Another thing, to me, is that equality of good ships has to be almost impossible to accomplish: even good, well trained skippers will vary in accordance with their own personality, when both training and academics are involved. There is more than one way of showing excellence.

I am slowly coming to the frame of mind that these problems are happening now at a time when the USN budget has been overstretched, for some years--big, fancy ultra expensive fighting machines are believed to be more necessary than qualified crew people, who slowly get the message that they are only cannon fodder, morale has plummeted, and the higher up you are, the harder you fall, so everyone's threatened all the way up AND down the chain of command. I'm saying the problem may have nepotism somewhere in its genesis and expression, but also the navy doesn't want to go away, and are trying to substitute academics for training, and the situation has deteriorated, for me, to where they may have ensured its doom. Call this doom & gloom from a taxpayer.

Who benefits? most?
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Old 13-02-2019, 02:24   #208
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

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I think Jack has spelt it out rather well however...



And also...while chaps who had done fancy pre-sea training of a year or more at Pangbourne or similar may have had the legs on those who had gone directly to sea there was never any difference to be seen at the far end when they were up for second mates..



OK -- thanks for all these explanations.



I sense there is something cultural involved in these points of view -- a basic hostility to book learning, or something. Something like the barracks view that all officers are useless because they learn from books and don't do, or something. But anyway, that's all fine, that's one point of view, and the long tales from real experience from you and Jack are really interesting and really valuable.
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Old 13-02-2019, 02:41   #209
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

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Apologies for my long windedness. I am struck with the parallels with some of the politics shown in real life, vs. the ones in the Kent and O'Brian series, both written according to historical events of the times.
Where there is greed, many ugly manifestations occur. Now, that is ironic to me, that the kind of corruption mentioned by kmacdonald may be what is actually happening, versus the squeaky clean picture that errors up the chain of command at first presents.

Another thing, to me, is that equality of good ships has to be almost impossible to accomplish: even good, well trained skippers will vary in accordance with their own personality, when both training and academics are involved. There is more than one way of showing excellence.

I am slowly coming to the frame of mind that these problems are happening now at a time when the USN budget has been overstretched, for some years--big, fancy ultra expensive fighting machines are believed to be more necessary than qualified crew people, who slowly get the message that they are only cannon fodder, morale has plummeted, and the higher up you are, the harder you fall, so everyone's threatened all the way up AND down the chain of command. I'm saying the problem may have nepotism somewhere in its genesis and expression, but also the navy doesn't want to go away, and are trying to substitute academics for training, and the situation has deteriorated, for me, to where they may have ensured its doom. Call this doom & gloom from a taxpayer.

Who benefits? most?





Well, creating effective teams is something within my professional experience -- the last of my several careers, the one I've pursued for the last 25 years, is running companies, organizations with up to 200 people.


So the challenges of making a ship work from the point of view of team work, from the point of view of having people with the right skills doing the right things and working together in an effective way to achieve defined goals with effective processes -- is something I do every day, although of course businesses and ships are different in many ways too.


Of course we don't know everything which went on, on the Fitz, but I think we know plenty enough, to say that this team was not functioning at an adequate level. Watchstanders did not have adequate skills to achieve the goal of safe navigation, and were not properly organized even to use what skills (and common sense) they did have. We do absolutely know that they lacked situational awareness -- they disastrously lacked situational awareness -- they failed to be aware of the presence of a vessel on a collision course before it approached to within something like a mile, an in extremis situation, that is unacceptably late by even the laxest collision avoidance processes. They said that ship was a "pop up" -- there should be no such thing as a "pop up" on a vessel with powerful military radars and dozens of crew, even in conditions of bad visibility, and this incident occurred in perfect visibility.



A competent leader would absolutely understand that and have awareness of such a situation, would know what the crew needed to know, would know what level of procedure and process is necessary to achieve the goal, and would know what the equipment needed to be able to do in order to achieve the goal, and so I have to disagree about the captain's being made a scapegoat. That captain obviously screwed the pooch, and to such an extreme extent that I guess he possibly belongs in jail, even.


But the Navy heirarchy also screwed the pooch, because their job is to know that there are captains in charge of every USN vessel that can be trusted to be in control of the processes on board the vessels, and the resources on board those vessels. If their appropriations are cut, they have to work around the problems caused and find some other way to achieve the goal -- it is not acceptable that they just allow captains to be in charge of vessels who allow their ships to be driven willy nilly through sea lanes with crews who don't know how to do collision avoidance, don't communicate to each other, don't know how to detect collision risks, and don't know how to maneuver to avoid a collision.



It's not for nothing, I guess, that the term "cluster f***", originates in the military -- that's what this is.


This is a failure of management, from my point of view. It's a top down problem, starting probably with the Secretary of the Navy, but with a lot of responsibility of the captains too. It has almost nothing to do with the poor girl who was actually driving the ship -- it was the Navy's responsibility to invent adequate processes and procedures, backed up with appropriate training, and the responsibility of every captain to understand those processes and implement them. None of that took place.
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Old 13-02-2019, 04:33   #210
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Re: USNavy Report on Fitzgerald Collision.

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Originally Posted by Dockhead View Post

And getting back to the thread topic -- I think the folks driving the Fitz were clearly deficient in all of this knowledge -- both theoretical and practical. They were not trained, not capable, had no situational awareness, and didn't know what they were not aware of, and didn't know how to handle the crisis once it arose. The captain didn't know himself, what the watchstanders needed to know. The Navy, apparently, didn't know, what the captain needed to know, in order for him to ensure that the ship was being driven properly. We can quibble about where that knowledge needed to come from, but I think everyone will agree, that wherever it needed to come from, they didn't have it.
Very good Dockhead. The big question is "was it intentional?" Is the top navy brass trying to get rid of the surface warship? Is the stealth destroyers failure and extension of this or just navy incompetence?
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