US Navy destroyer collision

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Whitewash..

It is being washed by something more brown and smelly in nature!

Captain orders WK to maintain speed of 20 knots in those busy channels at night, with no working Radar and goes to bed...... Unbelievable!
Reinforces the idea of not to be disturbed when other ships are nearby.....WTF!

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

with no working Radar

I don`t believe there was no working radar - the issue mentioned was with the surface search radar in the CIC; there would have been one or two navigational radars on the bridge.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by Lodesman

I don`t believe there was no working radar - the issue mentioned was with the surface search radar in the CIC; there would have been one or two navigational radars on the bridge.

I believe you are right .....but in a few reports, they seem to make an issue about it for some strange reason??

So why... if they had operational radars and doing 20 knots, would they not be able to stay well clear of the bulk carrier who was probably doing only 12kts?

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

I believe you are right .....but in a few reports, they seem to make an issue about it for some strange reason??

So why... if they had operational radars and doing 20 knots, would they not be able to stay well clear of the bulk carrier who was probably doing only 12kts?

Just my 2¢ - the OOD used the "inefficiency of the CIC" as a mitigating factor in her guilty plea. This is a bit of a red herring as the CIC radar watch makes up part of the "all available means" in lookout, but this is meant to complement the Bridge lookout, not supplant it. IMO, the USN has long had very poor watchkeeping standards (predating SWO in a box). The various pressures on these standards has been previously discussed, but it comes down to demanding of their officers to achieve a broad exposure to every facet of the Navy within a short time-frame, rather than becoming fully-competent in their specialization.

[Bigjim]

Originally Posted by Lepke

On destroyers in my day (1967 to 1973), the OD usually was a LTjg and the JOD an ensign. Rarely was the normal steaming OD a full Lt. At GQ, docking or refueling the OD was a Lt or Lcdr. They learn by doing. While there is usually training before ship assignments, it's not usually in the ship type they eventually are assigned and classroom only goes so far. After that it's the captains responsibility to ensure training.
Most captains try to have officers trade off on the various ship handling functions. Critical operations like refueling at sea or docking is under the captains watchful eye. An OD usually has spent a year or more as a JOD. Typical new captains get about 4 hours sleep a night, so they can't be everywhere. Standing orders and especially night orders require the captain to be called in circumstances like approaching ships, major weather or tide changes and so on.
I was on a destroyer in 1969 involved in a collision. And like this one, the OD failed to follow the night orders. But also like in this one, the captain lost his job.

I have the exact opposite experience. On my destroyer, 1974-78, the OOD was always a full LT. The JOOD was either a LTjg or Ensign. Many Ensigns had to qualify before they could stand alone. So, we would often have three officers.

[Bigjim]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Likely funding the 2nd Atlantic Fleet being set up to counter the Putin Threat..

Budgets often have nothing to do with threats. They have to do with lobbying in Congress. Congress resists cutting weapons systems but they cut other things that are not big ticket items and that are not sexy, like spare parts and maintenance.

One thing I read about recently was that they closed the surface warfare officer school. One of the big topics taught at that school was "ship driving". So, could that be a reason? I'm sure.

As for having a LTjg as OOD, that sounds suspicious. One has to wonder what the justification was for that. We often stood port and starboard watches when we were shorthanded. But modern ships should have full complements with senior LTs in charge. Perhaps they were stretching out the staff to permit fewer watches per transit. In other words, "lazy" officers.

That being said, I was very qualified for my job and allowed to stand full QM watches within a day of training. It would take longer to train an OOD or JOOD but if they are qualified I would not criticize them. The real question is: Are they really qualified?

Seems not.

[Bigjim]

Originally Posted by Lodesman

Just my 2¢ - the OOD used the "inefficiency of the CIC" as a mitigating factor in her guilty plea. This is a bit of a red herring as the CIC radar watch makes up part of the "all available means" in lookout, but this is meant to complement the Bridge lookout, not supplant it. IMO, the USN has long had very poor watchkeeping standards (predating SWO in a box). The various pressures on these standards has been previously discussed, but it comes down to demanding of their officers to achieve a broad exposure to every facet of the Navy within a short time-frame, rather than becoming fully-competent in their specialization.

Our ship used CIC as a backup. Any surface or air contact was tracked and plotted. If a collision course was possible, the bridge and CIC kept an eye on them constantly. We had a Skunk board on the bridge and in CIC where all contacts were plotted. The bridge was constantly talking to CIC on problem contacts. A destroyer can turn on a dime. I could believe that the destroyer could crash into the freighter, but hearing that the freighter crashed into the destroyer was unbelievable to me. Even in shipping channels, we never allowed civilian ships to get that close to us.

I hope they find the real reasons and publish them. Often that search takes years. Often it depends on how high rank the guilty person is or how many connections he/she has to protect them.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by Bigjim

A destroyer can turn on a dime. I could believe that the destroyer could crash into the freighter, but hearing that the freighter crashed into the destroyer was unbelievable to me.

Hi Jim, Your experienced observation, confirms a great deal to me.

I am pretty sure the Navy and the Japanese Maritime Department have a clear picture of events, but it is so embarrassing to the "professional" image of the US Navy, that the facts have been squashed .

The bulk carrier sounded the danger signal and turned to starboard.... The Fitz panicked, lost the plot, then tried to use superior speed and maneuverability to dodge the deep sea and instead crashed into the bulk carrier.

All of this would now be old news if the Navy had not tried to smother the facts and blame the Filipino crew, which has upset a lot of the professional mariners around the world.

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by Bigjim

Our ship used CIC as a backup. Any surface or air contact was tracked and plotted. If a collision course was possible, the bridge and CIC kept an eye on them constantly. We had a Skunk board on the bridge and in CIC where all contacts were plotted. The bridge was constantly talking to CIC on problem contacts.

They don't need skunk boards anymore, and not just because AIS (even Rx only) could ID every contact within 20 miles.

It's still supposed to work that way, but this article suggests the key players on Fitz didn't play well together: https://news.usni.org/2018/05/10/uss...atal-collision

While Coppock admitted she should have talked with CIC during the watch, she “had low confidence in certain [CIC] watch standers.”
“Coppock did comment that she had received poor information from [Woodley] before,” Fort said in testimony.
However, the ship’s executive officer, Cmdr. Sean Babbitt, admitted to the Coast Guard during its safety investigation that he didn’t completely trust Coppock and that the inclusion of Woodley in the CIC was to provide backup for a bridge watch team he said wasn’t the strongest.

[Bigjim]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Hi Jim, Your experienced observation, confirms a great deal to me.

I am pretty sure the Navy and the Japanese Maritime Department have a clear picture of events, but it is so embarrassing to the "professional" image of the US Navy, that the facts have been squashed .

The bulk carrier sounded the danger signal and turned to starboard.... The Fitz panicked, lost the plot, then tried to use superior speed and maneuverability to dodge the deep sea and instead crashed into the bulk carrier.

All of this would now be old news if the Navy had not tried to smother the facts and blame the Filipino crew, which has upset a lot of the professional mariners around the world.

I cannot imagine a situation where a container ship could collide with a destroyer. So many things had to go wrong for this to happen.

One thing that was hard at sea at night was the fact that merchant vessels don't usually practice light management. They often have tons of lights turned on which makes visual observations difficult. Obviously, the Navy would have a surface search radar and probably a short range system used by pleasure craft.

Light pollution has been cited in many Navy collisions in the past. But those usually involved fast moving ships like aircraft carriers, not merchantmen.

One thing that I can imagine is that the bridge crew was goofing off and not paying attention to their duties. This could obvious be an issue with the fact that they allowed a JG to be OOD. Often, senior officers don't like and don't want the night watches so they dump them on the junior officers.

In almost every case in the past collisions were universally based on human error or inattention.

[Bigjim]

Looking at a photo of the Fitzgerald makes me even more confused by what happened. The ship has some of the latest constant array radar systems. They watch the area around the ship constantly without having the typical sweep one was used to by rotating radar systems.

On my WWII Gearing class destroyer we had two main radars. An air search and a surface search system. The antennas would rotate every 5-10 seconds or so. It was possible for fast moving contacts to "beat" the system by jumping from one location to another each time the antenna turned that you could miss them. But we're talking about jets or missiles, not merchantmen.

After reading the limit info in the article here: https://news.usni.org/2018/05/10/uss...atal-collision

To hear that the CIC crew had no idea the container ship was even in the vicinity is mind boggling. My fear is that the watch standers may not have been doing basic visual observations. They may have been relying too much on technology and not doing rudimentary sitings and plotting.

There's no information on whether the ship was even using lookouts. We always had two to three lookouts who reported to the bridge on any contacts in the vicinity or that suddenly would appear in the distance. It would not be surprising to me that the Navy was forgetting basic seamanship in favor of technology. The results are obvious, like the recent fatal crashes of Teslas and other self-driving cars.

[hpeer]

Forget CIC, red herring. Yes they were negligent, more is going on here.

The bridge radar had nearly 200 targets on the SPS-73. Presumably the Crystal was one of them. I can not imagine trying to track a screen that cluttered. They must hve had the range set long distance. IOW they were not using the radar intelligently, they should have set on a shorter range tracking more closely the near term risks. They made the radar and themselves useless by swamping themselves with irrelevant data, they could not pick out the real threat.

But secondly, with that many targets, why the heck were they steaming at 20 knots?

This is not bad seamanship, this is a total lack of situational awareness and plain common sense.

Could it possibly be that the bridge crew were not ALLOWED to adjust the radar? It blows my mind it requires a technician to change the CIC radar pulse length. Every radar I’ve seen this was automatically set according to the range selected. It alsmost aounds like CIC was also set to look for distant objects.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by hpeer

Forget CIC, red herring. Yes they were negligent, more is going on here.

The bridge radar had nearly 200 targets on the SPS-73. Presumably the Crystal was one of them. I can not imagine trying to track a screen that cluttered. They must hve had the range set long distance. IOW they were not using the radar intelligently, they should have set on a shorter range tracking more closely the near term risks. They made the radar and themselves useless by swamping themselves with irrelevant data, they could not pick out the real threat.

But secondly, with that many targets, why the heck were they steaming at 20 knots?

This is not bad seamanship, this is a total lack of situational awareness and plain common sense.

Could it possibly be that the bridge crew were not ALLOWED to adjust the radar? It blows my mind it requires a technician to change the CIC radar pulse length. Every radar I’ve seen this was automatically set according to the range selected. It alsmost aounds like CIC was also set to look for distant objects.

Your observations are right on point!

I am only familiar with the commercial IMO standard S and X Band radars and each of them has on the keyboard, the ability to switch from short to long pulse and tune for required discrimination based on conditions and range.

Is it different with Navy Radars?

[anacapaisland42]

Doesn't anyone look out the window? !!

Originally Posted by Pelagic

Your observations are right on point!

I am only familiar with the commercial IMO standard S and X Band radars and each of them has on the keyboard, the ability to switch from short to long pulse and tune for required discrimination based on conditions and range.

Is it different with Navy Radars?

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by hpeer

The bridge radar had nearly 200 targets on the SPS-73. Presumably the Crystal was one of them. I can not imagine trying to track a screen that cluttered. They must hve had the range set long distance. IOW they were not using the radar intelligently, they should have set on a shorter range tracking more closely the near term risks. They made the radar and themselves useless by swamping themselves with irrelevant data, they could not pick out the real threat.

I saw that quote in the article, but it doesn't state how that information was determined. From what I've been able to suss out, the SPS-73 can automatically acquire and track 200 contacts, irrespective of the range set. I gather it will also assign priority to them based on preselected criteria, so the bridge team was not necessarily swamped with data. This particular radar is a militarized commercial set, not entirely dissimilar to a Pathfinder. The radars in CIC are very different beasts, with many eyes potentially having access at any given time - there could be a dozen or more operators at their own displays, who may switch between the surface search and air search radars. The nature of its use, is that for early detection of surface threats it would normally be set at the default for long range. Obviously in peacetime steaming, the call should have been made to optimize it for the traffic they were experiencing - it looks like the SWO is getting blamed for that.