How the **** does a Cargo ship ram an US Destroyer even by accident?

[CrusaderFrank]

7 U.S. sailors unaccounted for after destroyer, ship collide off Japan

7 sailors dead too?!! How can that happens, was everyone asleep? were there no sensors? What an Iowa Class **** up!

 

[JoeMoma]

I suspect someone will be court martialed over this.

 

[eagle1462010]

Clearly they were not paying attention. That ship has sophisticated radars.........phased array..............Combat is operated 24 hours a day with multiple people watching the screens tracking everything.

So yeah......many people were probably screwing around for this to happen.

 

[eagle1462010]

I suspect someone will be court martialed over this.

The Captain will be relieved...............OOD.............and others will be slammed if they are alive................

 

[Freewill]

I am going to guess this is a spy ship. It had it radar off sitting dead in the water. It was the middle of the night and maybe the cargo ship isn't manned by the best of staff.

Still hard to make sense of it, unless the cargo ship can be on autopilot.

What I do know is, that we will never know exactly what did happen.

 

[Pete7469]

Huge embarrassment to the navy.

 

[Billo_Really]

7 U.S. sailors unaccounted for after destroyer, ship collide off Japan

7 sailors dead too?!! How can that happens, was everyone asleep? were there no sensors? What an Iowa Class **** up!

Maybe the cargo ship was flying a conservative flag?

 

[eagle1462010]

U.S. sailors missing, injured after Navy destroyer Fitzgerald collides with merchant ship

The incident occurred around 2:30 a.m. about 50 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka, Japan. The Fitzgerald suffered extensive damage above and beneath the waterline when, according to U.S. officials, it struck the Philippine-flagged merchant vessel ACX Crystal, a ship that displaces nearly 40,000 tons and is roughly the size of an amphibious assault ship such as the Wasp or Iwo Jima. That's more than four times the size of Fitzgerald.

Initial reports suggested that Auxiliary Machine Room 1 and two crew berthings were completely flooded. Given the late hour, most crew members not standing watch would be in the berthing.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Command failure.

 

[eagle1462010]

The discussion on that site from the Navy times is pretty much the discussion.........read the comments from that site.

It happened on the mid watch...........and the main damage flooded berthing compartments in the middle of the night...........which would almost definitely be the ones missing.....

 

[guno]

And where was and is trump? That's right..... playing golf in his resort in Florida!

This would have been the bagger response if it was on Obama's watch

 

[eagle1462010]

And where was and is trump? That's right..... playing golf in his resort in Florida!

This would have been the bagger response if it was on Obama's watch

 

[Wry Catcher]

Hard to imagine with the technology of today. In my day we would have had port and starboard lookouts on the bridge, at sea without fog or other weather issues, a lookout can see the horizon during day light, but conditions such as moonlight or weather can effect their vision at night; without a moon and only starlight vision can be problematic for stationary objects, but all ships have running lights and the color of the light - red or green - allows the observer to determine the ships course.

However radar and sonar operators are on station 24/7. I have no clue as to the technology of today, but it is clearly far and away better than it was in the late 1960's.

 

[guno]

And where was and is trump? That's right..... playing golf in his resort in Florida!

This would have been the bagger response if it was on Obama's watch

 

[Flanders]

To CrusaderFrank: It ain’t easy. Having sailed both it will be interesting to learn which ship gets the blame? Merchant ships do not post lookouts between sunup and sundown; so my first question is “Was a lookout posted on the ACX Crystal?” It should have been with Navy ships in the area.

7 sailors dead too?!! How can that happen

My heart goes out to the families of the 7 missing sailors:

The USS Fitzgerald, a 505-foot destroyer, collided with a Philippine container vessel at approximately 2:30 a.m. Saturday local time (1:30 p.m. ET Friday), about 56 nautical miles off Yokosuka, the U.S. 7th Fleet said.​

7 U.S. Sailors Unaccounted for After Navy Destroyer Collides With Ship Off Japan
by Courtney Kube, Arata Yamamoto and Phil McCausland

7 U.S. sailors unaccounted for after destroyer, ship collide off Japan​

If anyone is interested I was a Tin Can sailor during the Korean War.

Parenthetically, I was surprised to learn that today’s destroyers are over 500 feet in length. Complement. 33 commissioned officers, 38 chief petty officers, 210 enlisted personnel.

In my day Destroyers (DD) were 375 feet. The Destroyer Escort (DE) I was on was 306 feet. Compliment: 8 officers, 201 enlisted.

I doubt if the USS Fitzgerald has anything in common with the old Tin Can Navy except the name Destroyer. Even there, the name Destroyer Escort is no longer used.

Knox-class frigates were United States Navy warships, originally laid down as ocean escorts (formerly called destroyer escorts), but were all redesignated as frigates on 30 June 1975 in the USN 1975 ship reclassification and their hull designation changed from DE to FF.​

Knox-class frigate - Wikipedia

 

[longknife]

This makes absolutely no sense to me. All the photos and videos I've seen show damage to the SIDE of the ship just where the pilot house should be. In other words, the other ship ran into the navy ship indicating total ineptitude by BOTH ships.

 

[Mr Natural]

This never would have happened had Obama not decimated the military.

Right, Trumpsters?

 

[eagle1462010]

This makes absolutely no sense to me. All the photos and videos I've seen show damage to the SIDE of the ship just where the pilot house should be. In other words, the other ship ran into the navy ship indicating total ineptitude by BOTH ships.

Read the comments on the Navy Times article...................Rules of the Road are that the Merchant ship had the right of way as it was crossing from the right................even though both will have some blame........the Maritime Rules favor the Merchant ship.

There are factors unknown................did the ship have an engineering casualty..................did it lose power...........was it dead in the water..............These are factors unknown to me at this point......................

I tend to believe that it was towards the end of a mid watch........The Sailors and officers on watch were sleepy and tired.........hopefully not asleep on watch.......but might be the case..........and they were preoccupied with Bull shitting or playing some video game............or hanging around the coffee pot.................

The weather conditions are unknown...........was it foggy........and if so were port and starboard lookouts on watch or hanging out in the pilot house...................

The 12 to 4 a.m. watch sucked...........from experience............I think they just were not performing their duties.

 

[Weatherman2020]

New manual added to the US Navy required reading list:

https://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Huge-Ships-John-Trimmer/dp/0870334336&tag=ff0d01-20?tag=usmb-20

 

[Flanders]

were port and starboard lookouts on watch or hanging out in the pilot house...................

To eagle1462w010: Merchant ships only post one lookout from sundown to sundown, and when weather conditions diminish visibility. The accident occurred at 2:30 am so a lookout should have been posted.

Navy ships post two lookouts 24 hours a day.

That makes running lights a big question, since lookouts report lights in the distance —— not ships. The question is: How could those ships come so close without the lookouts on either ship fail to report them long before the collision.

NOTE: A lookout knows a ship is coming straight at him when he sees the range light, and both running lights. If only one running light is seen in the distance the bridge knows which way the other ship is crossing ——Red for Port, Green for Starboard.