US Navy destroyer collision

[Randy]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

"Often" does not seem to be enough. If they had been broadcasting AIS, this collision is very unlikely to have happened. To my non-professional eye, this area qualifies as a heavy traffic zone, and AIS would have been appropriate. I do not know if it meets your definition of "approaching port". From what others have said, vessels in the area are setting up their approaches to various destinations, so course and speed changes should not be surprising

I would be interested in the logic that says that their broadcasting would materially reduce their mission effectiveness in such an area. Attack by a foreign power is unlikely in a state of peace, such an attack would be unlikely to depend upon AIS info, and they were a bit far offshore to worry about a terrorist in an explosive laden inflatable.

This is all outside my personal expertise, and I too am most interested in following the developments as they unfold. I hope to learn from this unfortunate accident.

As a cruising sailor who occasionally traverses port entrances and other heavy traffic zones, I'm glad that I am broadcasting AIS, and place some trust that large vessels in the area are doing the same.

Jim

I think it's a mistake to think AIS is a magic tool. It just facilitates communication that should have been occurring already.

The problem is:
1. Fitzgerald has multiple layers of sensors chief among them being many sets of eyes looking out the window. Enough dedicated radar observors to have an individual tracking every relevant target (though the area could have been filled with non-AIS fishing boats).
And somehow all of this failed.

2. We take for granted that the commercial ship is at best undermanned and also didn't respond as directed by COLREGS even if it was "stand on" to take action in time to avoid the collision.

[sailpower]

[QUOTE=Pelagic;2417766]

Originally Posted by sailpower

Why is it important to get this information out now?

I can think of reasons why the navy would be more interested in investigating what will be a legal proceeding...QUOTE]

This is how I see it .....

Navies are allowed to decide what rules they shall follow (AIS)(VHF-Contact) in the interest of security.
OK....I can accept that..... but it also follows that they should be held to a higher standard of watch keeping and alertness, if they are in dark mode

They Failed and Failed terribly to keep out of PADS! (Planned Areas of Danger)

Why does the public deserve to know the readily available track of Fitzgerald, before the Naval Lawyers do their internals?

1 It could have been them hitting a smaller vessel with loss of life

2 Friends and Family of those lost deserve to know immediately how the collision happened.

3 The Crew of the CS are being blasted by the US media

4 There would be a good chance that Nations will now demand that Naval Ships broadcast AIS in certain high traffic areas

If the report of Fitzgerald's physical track is withheld for a few months, the impetus to change that broadcast condition will be much delayed and it could happen again.

No point in going over and over on this.

You want to see the track so that you can decide what happened. You don't need no stinking investigation. I get it.

But, as to your reasons, It wasn't the USN hitting a smaller ship with loss of life.

The track won't tell the families why it happened.

The MSM is no different than the internet when it comes to a rush to judgement. Is what it is.

I doubt that nations will be demanding anything until a determination is made but that is just my unfounded opinion. Do you suppose the USN is not going to do anything fleetwide in the interim?

There are three countries involved here. Will there be three investigations? Subsequent law suits?

Maybe the USN wants to get their ship home before the floodgates open? Maybe not?

We will know when we know. From what I have seen these things take some time because they are very detailed.

However, look at some of the postings in this thread.

It was Trump's fault.

CO was airlifted off so he might have been all ready relieved of command.

It might be sinister that the destroyed radio room didn't transmit sooner.

All USN ships should be moth-balled at once.

Etc, etc.

Somebody get a rope!

[hpeer]

Once I unexpectedly found myself amidst an off shore racing fleet. It was coming on dark, squally, cold, and i was motoring into a head wind, I was very tired. The Canadian CG had taken a Mayday and had a helo and a surface vessel running a Pattern in my area. The damn sailboats were bunched up as they had just left an intermediate point (Ouebec to France, Malo? with a stop in St Pierre). Apparently they were required to have AIS, but the range was 1 mile or under. So they would just pop up out of the fog. I've been told they stick the antenna in the bilge so the competitors don't know where they are. CG was totally unaware of the race and totally confused by the activity in a otherwise quite spot. They could not get the French Captains to describe what was going on. I tried to explain but not sure I helped.

Just an observation.

[Snowpetrel]

A lot has been made in the MSM about the delay alerting the authority's of the incident. There is no requirement in most countries to report straight away. Certainly down here in australia a report should be made as "soon as possible" and within 4 hours of the incident.
https://www.amsa.gov.au/vessels/ship...port/index.asp
In this case I think the CS could be said to have complied. The 50 odd minutes between the incident and the call is reasonable given the first priority would have been their own ship and crew safety.

They would have had to muster, check all crew are accounted for and do a damage assesment before turning.

Any idea what the wind and sea states were? If they had crew forward they might have been reluctant to turn into the weather, especially with bow damage. Where was the moon? Pretty hard to spot a weak light in bright moonlight.

Does the warship have any unusual light positioning. Its quite common for warships to have exemptions to the annexes light positioning requirements. Eg forward masthead light not within 25% of the LOA from the bow. For that matter it is more and more common for cargo ships to be granted the same exemptions these days.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Randy

I think it's a mistake to think AIS is a magic tool. It just facilitates communication that should have been occurring already.

The problem is:
1. Fitzgerald has multiple layers of sensors chief among them being many sets of eyes looking out the window. Enough dedicated radar observors to have an individual tracking every relevant target (though the area could have been filled with non-AIS fishing boats).
And somehow all of this failed.

2. We take for granted that the commercial ship is at best undermanned and also didn't respond as directed by COLREGS even if it was "stand on" to take action in time to avoid the collision.

No claim that AIS is a magic tool from me, but it does do more than facilitate communications. For us, with a low height of eye it alerts us to the presence of ships well before visual acquisition and allows us more time to plan our maneuvers if they are required and this actually REMOVES the need for ship to ship comms. Rarely we do want confirmation of a ships intentions, and then the AIS does indeed facilitate contact. Not magic, but a damn useful tool for us. Oh... it also may alert a ship that there's a WAFI lurking nearby, and gawd knows what we will do, so be alert!!

In the case under considerations, one hypothesis is that the CS was not aware of the destroyer's presence and maneuvered as if alone in the area. No way yet to know about this, but should it be true, it's likely that AIS would have helped.

We agree that in the distribution of blame, both vessels will bear some burden. We don't know anything at all about the track and speed of the WS as yet, and not much about that of the CS. So, your second point is kinda premature, and it will take a lot of info and deliberation on the parts of the investigating bodies (whoever they turn out to be) to evaluate how badly the CS failed to follow COLREGS.

Jim

[Yowieboy]

Originally Posted by TwoBlocked

But the MV Crystal may have been assuming that the USS Fitzgerald would be following the regular traffic route north of Toshiba Island.
[...]
In the meantime, the OOD and QMOW on the USS Fitzgerald are waiting until they are, say 12,000 yards from Toshiba Island to alter course to port. They are looking more ahead rather than on the starboard quarter. Or perhaps to kill time for port entry they turn starboard to go south of Toshiba Island. Or perhaps they just continue due east, until - bang!
.

As a complete amateur, I am not making any comments on the rest of the message, but just for the sake of correctness, the name of the (rather small) island you are talking about is Toshima, not Toshiba.
And while passing between Toshima and Oshima definitely is a possible route, passing south of Toshima seems somewhat unlikely as the gap between Toshima and the next island to the south (Udone) is relatively narrow, and there are often fishing boats in that area. I'm not saying it's impossible though...

[Three Sisters]

Originally Posted by Delancey

Simulation in attached video bears out my observations that the impact damage suggested the Fitzgerald was in fact overtaking the Crystal at the time of the collision NOT the other way around.

Names and images of 7 deceased sailors released Video - ABC News

I shouldn't have watched that. The father from Maryland received word on Father's Day, knew as the Chaplain was approaching his door, of his son's fate. His only child that he raised as a single parent: "...he's all i have..."

[estarzinger]

Originally Posted by Snowpetrel

Any idea what the wind and sea states were? Where was the moon?
.

Calm, clear and dark (almost new moon).

My take (from the track and damage pattern) is that the container ship did an emergency last minute "hard to starboard", as is correct for a stand on vessel (which we don't know if they were), but obviously not in time enough.

[estarzinger]

This somewhat interested posted on another forum:

"As a plank owner on the USS Arleigh Burke and the first enlisted man to qualify and stand watch as an OOD on the Arleigh Burke Class ships I'll share some of my insight.

First after what I have heard this was not an overtaking situation. Crossing for sure. Fitzgerald was give way and the merchant was stand on. Very concerning that the fundamentally clear cut rule of the road and Fitzgerald collided . Colregs was introduced to educe collisions at sea and as we all know from not on ship handling but boat handling and our racing rules that ultimately in extremis both vessels are obligated to avoid risk of collision...

Fitzgerald- a SIGNIFICANT failure in situational awareness and total breakdown in internal comms and procedures. The Commanding Officer has standing orders and as the Senior Chief Quartermaster Asst. Nav and an OOD I generally wrote the CO's Night Orders for night time steaming . The Standing Orders require that the OOD has to notify the Captain at 10 yds when the CPA of a vessel is 2 yds or obviously less. A maneuvering recommendation is made based on the situation. Most CO Standing orders will allow the OOD's to maneuver + or - 5 degrees and speed increase/decrease of 3 knots to maintain CPAs greater than 10 k with out CO notification.

On USN ships, a CIC watch depending on defense posture will be manned with a CICWO , and 5 OS watch standers strictly watching the surface picture with all available surface search radars and passive sonar. The bridge will have a minimum on a AB class ship 6-12 watch standers.

Tragically the cargo ship struck the Fitzgerald where the CO's cabin is located, Weapons berthing , Radio Central and the Repair 2 Battle locker. An immediate decision after the collision would have been to set material condition zebra which clearly isolated the berthing compartments thus not being able to search for injured where if those 7 sailors not immediately killed after impact, drowned in the flooded berthing compartment.

Again loss of life 100 Million in repairs to Fitzgerald and 100 % avoidable. Now that region DOES not have a traffic separation scheme and heavy busy sea lanes which requires total vigilance, rested watch standers. My fear is lack of training, crew fatigue and worse EPIC failure in command by the Fitzgerald's CO. "

[Snowpetrel]

^^ very interesting. I take it they are talking in 1000 yard units, ie 2000 yard cpa or a bit over a nautical mile or so.

I am very surprised about the +/- 5 degrees and +/- 3 knots to maintain CPA. This would seem to contravene rule 8. Any action should be positive and substantial, and readily apparent to an observer both visually and by radar?

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by sailpower

... We will know when we know. From what I have seen these things take some time because they are very detailed.

However, look at some of the postings in this thread.

It was Trump's fault.

CO was airlifted off so he might have been all ready relieved of command.

It might be sinister that the destroyed radio room didn't transmit sooner.

All USN ships should be moth-balled at once.

Etc, etc.

Somebody get a rope!

Lol....I agree that some of the political posts are stupid as are the media conjectures, but that is not where I am coming from.

Unless it is deemed classified, the public has a right to know the black box details as soon as they are available, so that the crazy conjectures stop.

The fact that the US Navy witholds that historical information on their ship, while those other countries and the public only has the CS track smacks of arrogance in a 'Few Good Men' kind of way.
[emoji6]
https://youtu.be/9FnO3igOkOk

[TwoBlocked]

The longer the Navy can put off giving out info, the more people will forget. Since time is on their side, don"t expect to hear anything from the Navy soon.

As far as AIS, well call me old fashioned. When a vessel is within a mile or two, you need to watch it like a hawk. If she changes course, you may have very little time to start your own maneuvering to avoid a collision. By far the worse situation is where one vessel is sloooowwwly overtaking another, which I bet is the case here. A few degrees of convergence and nobody thinks anything is wrong because nothing is obviously changing - until - bang!

This happened to me outbound at night in the Houston Ship channel on the mid watch as Captain on a smaller vessel with a pilot on board. We were in a long straight stretch near Texas City. The pilot arranged for us to overtake a tug pushing a barge on it's starboard side a couple miles ahead. As we got close, I noticed the lights on the tug were staying in line with the distant lights on shore - steady bearing and decreasing range! I mentioned to the pilot that I was not comfortable with the situation - twice - with no response from the pilot. Then, taking my career into my own hands, I altered course to starboard a few degrees and suddenly realized we were almost on top of him and closing much quicker than I imagined! Put the rudder over right full (in a narrow ship channel!) and as soon as we got some swing countered with 20 left and then eaasssed it off. This swung the first the bow and then the stern clear. The mate on the bridge wing could not tell how close we came... The wash probably kept us apart. One thing I did notice as we passed the tug was thick black smoke coming from the stack. I then realized what had happened. The tug eased off on the throttle to let us by quicker, but a light wind drifted her toward the center of the channel. He hooked her up when he realized the danger.

Then came one of the most difficult things I ever had to do. Instead of kicking the pilot's butt over the side, I very formally asked him for the course to regain the center of the channel. I still needed him to get to the sea buoy, you know.

My point is the same that Yogi Beara made: You sure can observe a lot just by looking. But you first have to look! These gadgets can give you a false sense of security. Remember the Andrea Doria!

[TwoBlocked]

Originally Posted by Yowieboy

As a complete amateur, I am not making any comments on the rest of the message, but just for the sake of correctness, the name of the (rather small) island you are talking about is Toshima, not Toshiba.
And while passing between Toshima and Oshima definitely is a possible route, passing south of Toshima seems somewhat unlikely as the gap between Toshima and the next island to the south (Udone) is relatively narrow, and there are often fishing boats in that area. I'm not saying it's impossible though...

Thanks for the correction. Where I now work we used quite a bit of Toshiba equipment...

And I appreciate your local knowledge. I hadn't researched the possibility much. It leads me to believe that this was even more likely an overtaking situation with 0 CPA, but neither vessel realized it. Time will tell. Other ships in the area surely had radar recordings.

[Randy]

Originally Posted by Snowpetrel

^^ very interesting. I take it they are talking in 1000 yard units, ie 2000 yard cpa or a bit over a nautical mile or so.

I am very surprised about the +/- 5 degrees and +/- 3 knots to maintain CPA. This would seem to contravene rule 8. Any action should be positive and substantial, and readily apparent to an observer both visually and by radar?

That guideline is the freedom this theoretical Captain gives his OOD to maneuver freely without calling down to him for his permission to execute a maneuvering plan to handle whatever traffic that exists.

Seemed to me that there was a typo in that "by 10 yd distance have a plan if less than 2 yd CPA" 10nm for <2nm is more normal.

[sailpower]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Lol....I agree that some of the political posts are stupid as are the media conjectures, but that is not where I am coming from.

Unless it is deemed classified, the public has a right to know the black box details as soon as they are available, so that the crazy conjectures stop.

The fact that the US Navy witholds that historical information on their ship, while those other countries and the public only has the CS track smacks of arrogance in a 'Few Good Men' kind of way.
[emoji6]
https://youtu.be/9FnO3igOkOk

Not sure that I see 2 day old information as yet being historical.

So far there is no truth. I guess the track will come out well before the inquiry. It will be inconclusive without the actual context of events. I seriously doubt that will stop any conjecture

I am following this on another site mostly comprised of retired USN Surface Warfare Officers many of whom have commanded these vessels. They pretty quickly shut down the Wild Ass Guesses that we are seeing here.