Posted on 06/22/2017 6:39:56 AM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
Got out 3 mos. after that CF
Civilian here. I seem to recall reading once that military aircraft do not carry BB because in the event of shoot down or crash, they don’t want the enemy to get hold of the data.
Navy ships may be the same way, but this is an Ageis ship. So sensor logs for its own position and those of any and all airborne, surface, and sub surface contacts will be recorded.
Just my .02¢
From another report: “James “Ace” Lyons, who commanded the Pacific Fleet during the 1980s, it appears deliberate, he says, citing the 180-degree u-turn that occurred before the collision”
If it was deliberate, why didn’t they finish the job?
Heck LS, the way things are nowadays, we can’t even do effective satire anymore, because there is nothing far fetched enough not to be simple reality!
After 9/11, I don’t rule anything out, but sometimes...a cigar is just a cigar!
I think it is an offshoot of everything we see nowadays.
When a van mows down a bunch of people, we don’t think accident anymore, we think jihad, and to a degree, rightly so.
When two people (or sometimes even one) are stabbed or shot, instead of thinking gang violence or robbery now, we think jihad. Lately, we aren’t often wrong.
But this...it is so unlikely to me. An intentional ramming on the high seas by a vessel, everyone on the vessel part of the plan, all the work to time it...and why choose a containership? Why not choose a faster boat like a nice yacht capable of 30 knots and maneuverable, packed to the gills with a fertilizer and diesel fuel bomb?
It is too far fetched, and to be honest, looks a little silly. The jihadists probably love that we are all worked up about it.
Your theory sounds reasonable. I would like to add my thoughts to that.
If the container ship was running on a parallel course and on autopilot, as some have suggested, the autopilot could have altered course to the North at a preprogramed waypoint with no human input and no personnel on the bridge. No personnel on the bridge equals no lookout and no one to monitor the ship to ship radio. Could be that the Navy ship tried radio contact but was unable to get a response.
That the Navy ship was not aware of the developing conflict with the container ship is beyond belief. I spent 12 years aboard ships in the Navy and as a civilian, in the Far East, in unlicensed and licensed positions, and I know that there are numerous eyeballs on the bridge, especially in areas of high costal ship traffic such as the area in concern.
It is my humble opinion that the OOD, of the Navy ship, was
getting appropriate input for him/her to have good situational awareness. Could be that the OOD was unable to see the mental picture that the information input was giving. Hesitated in making the decision for evasive action. Hesitated in calling the Captain to the bridge out of fear of criticism of his/her inabilities. In the end no action was taken and the collision occurred.
There are many more professionals on this thread that are much more qualified than I to comment, but I just wanted give my thoughts.
Regards
Yes, absolutely. I’m just concerned cuz it’s the SECOND collision in near Japan in two months.
Nope, wouldn’t matter.
Suicidal treason from a member of the crew or an extremely improbable series of errors by several members was the cause.
Obama made discipline much harder to accomplish.
They don’t record just course and position, they record a lot of mundane (and other important but seemingly mundane) things in those logs, such as “Relieved the watch” “Pumped bilge #1” or whatever...:)
You would want to corroborate the data and interviews with watchstanding personnel on both ships. A detailed timeline will be produced, down to the second. We'll know the story soon enough.
As far as we know, we don't know where the point of collision was with respect the headings and courses of both ships. We've seen data that suggests the Crystal did some kind of loop back, but the Fitzgerald's course and speed were not made public.
I generally agree with you. It will be interesting to compare the CIC and bridge logs. Did lookouts report the Crystal as a contact? Did they measure bearing drift and report it, were these reports logged? When did CIC report the contact? Did they give CPA estimates? Did CIC warn the bridge about this contact? (Surely, the CIC surface watches were calling out ranges in yards, and people could see that the two vessels were closing on each other.) Were the warnings logged? What decisions were being made on the bridge? Was there any discussion about the contact?
Maybe a U.S. Navy helmsman who has converted to Islam, going jihad on his Infidel shipmates?
I think it unlikely. If that were the case, I think certainly someone else on the bridge would have asked why the course was being changed, either the OOD or the JOOD...or someone.
Speculation is that nobody was on the bridge of the container ship, that it was on auto-pilot, and that after the collision it took the crew almost 15 minutes to get to the bridge and turn off the auto-pilot.
Sure, it would be noticed- but noticed in time?
Or a failure of the engine at a critical moment.
I see mere incompetence as a very unlikely cause.
Trust me. It is NOT an unlikely cause, as a matter of longstanding history and fact, it is OVERWHELMINGLY (and it isn’t even close) the primary, secondary, and tertiary cause in things like this. Sometimes it is initiated by a minor mechanical failure of some kind, but the human reaction to it often compounds and snowballs things.
Trust me.
I know...I don’t know what you do for a living, and to most civilians, non-maritime or aviation related people, when you look at this as an isolated incident, it seems utterly and completely impossible.
Impossible.
How does this state of the art, billion something dollar vessel, with a highly trained crew, sensors that can spot a ballistic warhead the size of a medicine ball, streaking thorough the stratosphere at ten times the speed of sound, with state of the art SPY-1D radar that can detect surface and air contacts for hundreds of miles, bristling with sensors...how does it run into a ship in the middle of the night.
I am here to tell you it not only happens, but every single time it happens, it is for depressingly the same reasons nearly every, single time.
Procedures not followed. Procedures ignored. Lack of awareness. Fatigue. Simple mental errors. And that is when you get a ship, with all these wonderful, amazing, and capable things, manned by smart people, steaming at speed at 0200, compounding each minor contributing factor, ending up having a collision.
Nobody ever walks out the front door of their house in the morning to go to work and says “Well, today I am going to get T-Boned by a tractor trailer, and this is the last time I am ever going to go out this door.
No Lieutenant in the Navy ever climbs up a ladder to the bridge at 2330 to assume the deck, and thinks “Well, tonight, people are going to be dead because of me, and my career will be over and my life changed...”
Nobody ever thinks these things. It is all routine.
Course...setting...hey...no big deal. We have been doing this for months now, our deployment is over in two months, nothing ever really changes. Same routine...red lights for night vision...hatches open and close...people walk in and out...someone shoves a clipboard in your hand for a signature...your JOOD tells you there is a contact on a parallel course 5000 yards away heading in the same direction...we are overtaking her. What’s her course? Ah...okay. Shouldn’t be a problem, keep an eye on her....the phone rings. It is the engine room. What? What kind of electrical issue? Smoke? Ah. Okay, is the system still functioning? Well...power it down, we don’t need it tonight and we can look at it tomorrow morning. The Captain said what about it? Why would he say that? Do you think we need to wake him up and tell him? I know, I know we got dinged on it during the last engineering inspection...
And so on.
Then someone says something that catches your attention, and you look over. Someone has a puzzled look and their voice is a question. You walk over and agree. Check that for me. A few seconds later, someone says “Sir!” and all the little things, little contributing factors, mishearing a course correction, or thinking the contact is moving at NINE knots, not NINETEEN knots, or thinking her course is FOUR degrees, not FORTY degrees, not picking up on something innocuous while you were engaged in a minor problem, and you now have a 30,000 ton ship close aboard bearing down on you.
Believe me. This happens over, and over, and over again with depressing and predictable regularity.
That is how these things happen. Not just in ships. In aviation...industry...nuclear power plants...when you read them, there is a sameness to them. It is like a seasoned homicide detective who is called to the scene of a murder, and as they walk in, see the blood, the bodies, the first thought they often have is “Yeah. This is typical. I have seen this before, over and over and over again.” And some junior detective says “What do you think?” And they just spit out the narrative, because...they have seen it all before.
In the case of the collision, it could be terrorism, hostile intent. It could have been a major engineering casualty. It could even have been a meteor that hit the ship’s radar putting it out of commission. But we are going to find out, in all likelihood it is none of those things. It is going to be human failing.
Because of all the things that we depend on to be constant, turbines spinning, radars providing information, and computers functioning, the one thing above all others that is ALWAYS constant, and we can ALWAYS depend on, is that people get bored, tired, lazy, distracted, and make mistakes.
Because it is in our nature.
Sure, that’s what’s expected. It’s the drive behind the Navy’s training and discipline.
Barriers to that training or discipline cannot be allowed. A failure, malignant or incompetent, by ANY member of a crew can be disastrous.
After my brief Army stint I had a female worker who bragged to us how she simply refused a dangerous duty in the Navy ( something about securing a supply ship alongside). She was amazed at the disgust with which I regarged her story.
I will have to be convinced that pure incompetence of the crew caused this, though, sure, that could be.
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