US Navy Destroyer Collision Again!!!

[hpeer]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Lets take another look at where the ships were at the time of the collision....

The lane at that point is 1.1 miles wide ( the red line ), the Alnic MC is 180 metres ie 1 cable long , the Guang Zhou Wan is the same length, The Oslo Bulk is possibly a bit shorter but that is neither here nor there. The ship astern, Long Hu San , is about 2 cables in length being over 300,000 dwt. ( you can actually see the 'ship shapes' for the larger ships )

Now just by inspection without printing stuff out it would appear that the stern of Team Oslo is 3 cables clear ahead of Alnic MC and there is maybe the same amount of water between the Alnic MC and the Guang Zhou Wan.....

So along comes the McCain... overtakes the Alnic MC with less than a cable clearance both to port and to starboard.... and thats after the Guang Zhou Wan has decided to give herself a bit more room by going to starboard.

She then has to come to port and slide between OsloBulk and the Alnic MC with about a cable clear ahead and the same astern...... the outcome should not come as all that much of a surprise.

Given that 3 of the 5 ships within a mile of her were tankers she is very lucky there wasn't a 'Royston Grange' outcome.

Heads should roll for this one... a courts martial for causing death by reckless navigation.

Re the 'hacking' post just above ^^^ I wonder if the poster actually read it to the end...

Thanks for that analysis. Putting in dimensions was very helpful for me to visualize. That's the best scenario I've heard, excepting for mine of course.

[Alan Mighty]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017...-shortcomings/

[TwoBlocked]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

A loss of steering is not an excuse for this collision... but possibly a reason.

We practice 'loss of steering' drills often and I would expect the military to do even more so.

In reality it is extremely rare as two separate sets of steering pumps are usually available

The pumps and tiller feedback alarms are immediate and loud

It takes a duty crew about 30 seconds to man the emergency steering and accept a gyro heading to steer by via a dedicated intercom.

For that 30 seconds the WK officer is steering by twin propellers at reduced speed on the Bridge and definiteley should be able to avoid other ships.

"For that 30 seconds the WK officer is steering by twin propellers at reduced speed on the Bridge and definiteley should be able to avoid other ships."

If the rudder swung over even 15 degrees, you wouldn't have much luck steering with engines. And since they got hit from astern, slowing down wasn't a good option, either.

Lots of different kinds of steering failure, but there is a specific sequence the helmsman is drilled on regardless of what the failure is. The final one is transferring control to after steering. In a close quarters situation it may be too late by then.

Ha! Just remembered on my first buoy tender there was a hand grab on the overhead at the bottom of the half-ladderway leading down from the bridge. We rarely actually used the ladder going down, just grabbed and swung to the next half-deck down. Well, my second buoy tender, a sister ship, didn't have that hand grab. One night we had a steering failure, so I headed to after steering in a hurry, opened the door to the half-ladder way, reached for where the hand grab was on my last ship in order to swing down, but grabbed nothing but air - boom! Down I went, but made it to aft steering OK. I don't think we were in any real danger. Can't remember why we lost steering...

[Pelagic]

I forgot, initial reports said she got hit from the Stern, but I don't remember seeing damage there???

Again, without the track of the McCain, it is all conjecture!

[TwoBlocked]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

I forgot, initial reports said she got hit from the Stern, but I don't remember seeing damage there???

Again, without the track of the McCain, it is all conjecture!

Well, it is obvious she got hit from aft, well aft the beam, that is.

[Pelagic]

Found this article on how much shipping passes thru the Straits and its strategic importance.

https://tradevistas.csis.org/trade-maritime-security/

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

Just watched the Vid.... ouch.... I must say that looked a bit T-bonish around the 3.00 mark....

Once the Norwegians on the port side departed, PRO went full astern - which swings the bow to stbd in that class. Even with that, it was hardly what you could call a T-bone. McCain had virtually no damage along the hull beyond what the bulbous bow did.

[El Pinguino]

Take a look at how the skin is folded back in this photo..... that is not a T- boning.... that is an intrusion made at quite a fine angle where both ships are doing much the same speed.

You get T- boned ( ie 90* ) by 15,000 tons of metal doing 10 knots and you would be near cut in half.....

Originally Posted by Three Sisters

No comment

Attachment 154484

[hpeer]

It's just amazing how forgiving mild steel is.

[Alan Mighty]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Found this article on how much shipping passes thru the Straits and its strategic importance.

https://tradevistas.csis.org/trade-maritime-security/

Excellent find, Pelagic.

Other than conflating the Singapore Strait with the Malacca Strait, that story (and especially the story to which it links, see: https://chinapower.csis.org/much-tra...uth-china-sea/ ) shows clearly:

* why China finds USN "freedom of navigation operations" in the South China Sea so threatening and irksome; and

* the costs imposed on world trade if the Strait of Malacca AND the Sunda Strait AND the Lombok Strait were to be closed.

That's why Thailand and, separately, Malaysia have been exploring or re-exploring alternatives, such as rail transport of goods across the Kra peninsula. And why China has both a Belt and a Road strategy to ensure and increase its economic integration with the rest of Eurasia (and Africa).

And it helps explain why polities in S and SE Asia, and Australia, are prepared to throw so much money into the sea in the form of submarines (such as the famous two subs that Malaysia bought from France in a transaction that may have been corrupt, only to discover that the two subs could not submerge in tropical water. Many Aussies find it alarming that the knuckleheads providing "strong" and "agile" leadership in AU decided to throw AU gold at the same French sub builder).

I guess you cannot blame the Chinese for thinking that the Fitzgerald and McCain incidents are karmic retribution on the USN for its FONOPs in the South China Sea.

[Pelagic]

Glad you enjoyed it Alan.
..Off topic but a good overview of the economics

[SecondBase]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Glad you enjoyed it Alan.
..Off topic but a good overview of the economics

Good find and Pelagic gets added to the short list of people really adding to this thread. I gotta say some of the underlying pretexts are 15 years out of date. US signed up for freedom of navigation back when it was critical but midsize US manufacturing probably better off NOT paying for to secure goods movement for other countries during a trade deficit.

The petro argument was valid right up until the US hit energy independence. "We're lowering petroleum energy security costs for Chinese manufacturing" doesn't have quite the same ring to it. After this accident, and before it is spun into a budget increase, rechecking priorities may make more sense.

Ask a machine tool shop foreman in Dayton Ohio how he benefits, or loses, from the particular patrol through the straits that he and his workers pay for each year out of pocket. Obviously there are Selfish Interest Groups with an existential argument for keeping the straits open but the updated national interest needs to be retested using today's reality.

[justwaiting]

Something that will suprise few of us

THE PENTAGON – A Navy investigation has turned up little evidence supporting the idea that USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) was a victim of a cyber attack, making it more likely that mechanical failure or crew error is to blame for the Aug. 21 collision between the destroyer and a chemical tanker.

Operation Orion Hammer, the Navy tasking to investigate potential cyber interference in the operation of the guided-missile destroyer, has not uncovered any indications that a cyber attack affected the ship’s control systems just prior to the crash, three Navy officials confirmed to USNI News on Thursday. McCain reportedly lost control of its steering just moments before the collision with tanker Alnic MC in a busy shipping channel.

https://news.usni.org/2017/08/25/nav...e-cyber-attack

[davefromoregon]

Originally Posted by justwaiting

Something that will suprise few of us







https://news.usni.org/2017/08/25/nav...e-cyber-attack

As pointed out in one of the comments, it is unlikely the navy would admit to a successful cyber attack.

[SailingFan]

Originally Posted by Snowpetrel

I think the ships are too complex these days (and in the past)for any one individual to be fully across all areas. A decent general understanding of all departments would be important but if they are an OOW you would think they would specailise in the seamanship/navigation side. If the officer is engineering that would be their specialisation? I am guessing you would also have electronics and warfare officers who specailise in these areas? Maybe not. Are the officers shuffled around and expected to be able to quickly adapt to what should probably be specailised tasks?

If you go to hospital you generally hope you'd get treated by a specailist doctor with extensive experiance in the relevant field of medicine relating to your condition, rather than a GP with a very broad general knowledge of medicine, but little specialist training.

I agree about getting rusty. After a few years without much seatime I find it takes a while to get back into the groove.

Snowpetrel, the USN uses a split in the officer corps specializations for sorting officers and determining which has rank in decisions based upon the specialization of the officers in question.

There are ships command-eligible "Line officers" (who have command potential over the vessel), and then there are the other officers (the doctors, dentists, weapons officers, supply officers, specialists in Naval Intelligence, and the various vocationally trained college specializations) who don't really know much about running a ship or navigation, but really are just college grads who the Navy needs for ancillary non-nautical things.

As a result only actual Line Officers seem to even see the bridge of a vessel unless they are checking in for duty on arrival or are getting something signed by the Captain for departure of the ship or for their needs within their own specializations (which is damned rare). The most interactions I witnessed between these two groups was when the officers met in the Officers' Mess for breakfast. After that, they went separate ways for the day until the next meal time (and breakfast was the main meal-time, it seemed - only the captain himself was not there, but he had a private dining situation, and two armed Marines at his door).

Line officers tend to be Engineering, Operations, Navigation, and the like. In fact, when it comes to command on the ship, a Line officer with rank of Ensign (0-1) outranks a Rear Admiral who is not a line officer. The Rear Admiral is just along for the ride if the Ensign pushes it, and the Ensign CAN push it if s/he decides it is worth the political fallout that could happen later, but the Ensign will not be subject to mutiny claims by the Admiral for pushing a point relative to the safe operations of the vessel unless the Admiral can clearly prove that the more "senior" opinion was correct and offered properly. At least that is how it is SUPPOSED to work. In today's political Navy? Who knows...