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Seven US Sailors are missing after a US Navy destroyer collided with a 21,000 ton cargo ship 56 miles off the coast of Japan. Login/Join 
I believe in the
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At night, the CO and XO would not be on the bridge routinely. Also, I don’t know about “CONN” separate and apart from the OOD. “CONN” refers to the officer giving orders to the helm and lee helm. The OOD is normally CONN especially when the Captain is off the bridge. “CONN” can be passed off to another, by announcement entered in the ship's log acknowledged by the new CONN.

Not having lookouts seems awfully casual.

A LTJG seems awfully junior to be night OOD in a high speed transit of a very busy shipping lane. Maybe this is why. One wonders who the other choices might have been.




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
Posts: 48369 | Location: Texas hill country | Registered: July 04, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
wishing we
were congress
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night time
20 knots
heavy traffic area
cutting across a shipping lane
shipping lane not marked on charts provided
no bridge wing watchstanders
didn't rely on help from CIC
inexperienced search radar operator
and no commercial AIS

bad combination. most of us never thought a DDG-51 would be operated like this
 
Posts: 19502 | Registered: July 21, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Go ahead punk, make my day
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Yeah, fast and loose with a nearly $2BN warship is no way to go through life.

Glad they are handing out some justice here.

Hopefully the buck stops with the CO.
 
Posts: 45798 | Registered: July 12, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
Yeah, fast and loose with a nearly $2BN warship is no way to go through life.

Glad they are handing out some justice here.

Hopefully the buck stops with the CO.


3 months of reduced pay and a punitive reprimand, hardly seem like justice.
 
Posts: 21335 | Registered: June 12, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Go ahead punk, make my day
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by jimmy123x:
quote:
Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
Yeah, fast and loose with a nearly $2BN warship is no way to go through life.

Glad they are handing out some justice here.

Hopefully the buck stops with the CO.


3 months of reduced pay and a punitive reprimand, hardly seem like justice.

I should have emphasized "some", but it's not much justice, for sure.

I'm hoping the CO gets the book thrown at him.

I doubt he'll see jail time, but he should be separated in lieu of retirement, with zero benefits.

But I see another plea deal coming for that as well.
 
Posts: 45798 | Registered: July 12, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
His Royal Hiney
Picture of Rey HRH
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quote:
Originally posted by JALLEN:

A LTJG seems awfully junior to be night OOD in a high speed transit of a very busy shipping lane. Maybe this is why. One wonders who the other choices might have been.


It could have been just luck of the draw as far the watch rotation is concerned. If you're qualified as OOD, then you're qualified as OOD. It does seem the punishment meted takes into account some mitigating factors that the prosecutor even brought up.

I'm expecting the skipper to pay the full price.

I don't want to see anyone's career ruined but there has to be consequences when sailors die.



"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, 1946.
 
Posts: 19582 | Location: The Free State of Arizona - Ditat Deus | Registered: March 24, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
semi-reformed sailor
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-night time
-20 knots
-heavy traffic area
-cutting across a shipping lane
-shipping lane not marked on charts provided
-no bridge wing watchstanders
-didn't rely on help from CIC
-inexperienced search radar operator
-no commercial AIS

with all those things going on during one evolution should have triggered big red flags in the OOD's head and she should have called the Captain and advised all of these items and asked for help. PERIOD.

She, the OOD, is just figuring out the meaning of scapegoat



"Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.” Robert A. Heinlein

“You may beat me, but you will never win.” sigmonkey-2020

“A single round of buckshot to the torso almost always results in an immediate change of behavior.” Chris Baker
 
Posts: 11246 | Location: Temple, Texas! | Registered: October 07, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
wishing we
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BTW, USS Fitzgerald is now at Pascagoula Mississippi for restoration.

http://www.public.navy.mil/sur...n-.aspx#.WvNpoaTRV6s

The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) arrived in Pascagoula, Mississippi, Jan. 19, aboard heavy lift vessel MV Transshelf inward bound from Yokosuka, Japan.

Fitzgerald is expected to spend several days in the Port of Pascagoula as the heavy lift ship will commence the reverse operation of unfastening, lowering and guiding the ship off the platform. The ship will then be taken to its designated pier space at Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard.

Work on the ship is expected to occur on a land level facility throughout 2018 and one to two quarters of 2019, followed by an extensive test and trials period to ensure all systems and spaces are restored to full functionality and operational capability. The entire restoration and modernization effort is expected to complete approximately 24-months post work commencement on the ship.
 
Posts: 19502 | Registered: July 21, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Go ahead punk, make my day
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quote:
I'm expecting the skipper to pay the full price.

I don't want to see anyone's career ruined but there has to be consequences when sailors die.

Hopefully he'll pay the price and he should have no career to speak of when it's all over.
 
Posts: 45798 | Registered: July 12, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
I believe in the
principle of
Due Process
Picture of JALLEN
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Rey HRH:
quote:
Originally posted by JALLEN:

A LTJG seems awfully junior to be night OOD in a high speed transit of a very busy shipping lane. Maybe this is why. One wonders who the other choices might have been.


It could have been just luck of the draw as far the watch rotation is concerned. If you're qualified as OOD, then you're qualified as OOD. It does seem the punishment meted takes into account some mitigating factors that the prosecutor even brought up.

I'm expecting the skipper to pay the full price.

I don't want to see anyone's career ruined but there has to be consequences when sailors die.


Your experience likely exceeds mine. I have heard of some Captains having designated OODs for certain kinds of evolutions, unrep OOD, GQ OOD, etc.

It’s one thing to have LTJG Ringnocker standing his first few watches, or a few months, in day or evening, light traffic situations, but in bad weather, night, busy shipping areas, etc., the CO may sleep better with a more proven officer in charge.

My guess is that this CO is history, career, very likely worse.




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
Posts: 48369 | Location: Texas hill country | Registered: July 04, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
wishing we
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more negative news on Fitzgerald operation

note this report says Fitz CIC had AIS

https://news.usni.org/2018/05/...onds-fatal-collision

WASHINGTON NAVY YARD – The sailors who were manning the combat nerve center of USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) did not know they were on a collision course with a ship almost three times their size until about one minute before impact, according to new information revealed in the preliminary hearing for two junior officers accused of negligent homicide for their role in the collision that resulted in the death of seven sailors

Lt. Natalie Combs, the tactical action officer, and Lt. Irian Woodley, the surface warfare coordinator, were both on duty in the windowless combat information in the belly of the guided-missile destroyer on early on the morning of June 17 as the ship moved southwest from the coast of Japan less than a day out of port.

“[Based on the interviews] the general consensus was it was a quiet night in CIC with four to five tracks and nothing within 10,000 yards,” said Rear Adm. Brian Fort, the lead investigator into the admiralty investigation following the collision, said at Woodley and Combs Article 32 hearing on Wednesday.

Then, shortly after crossing into a busy shipping channel, the merchant ship ACX Crystal popped up on the CIC’s commercial ship automatic identification system dangerously close to Fitzgerald. The container ship was bearing down on the warship, bow pointed toward the middle of the warship. Woodley ordered the camera used to spot targets for the ship’s 5-inch gun toward the bearing of Crystal. Fire Controlman Second Class Ashton Cato, who manned the camera, saw the flared bow of the ship fill up his monitor just seconds before the fatal crash.

Prosecutors argued during the Wednesday hearing that the fact that Woodley and Combs did not know the ship was at risk from Crystal, did not see other nearby contacts and were not in contact with the bridge crew was evidence of criminal negligence and hazarding the ship.

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.

************

if CIC saw a collision developing from AIS, wouldn't they immediately notify the bridge ?

they may have wasted valuable minutes worrying about the camera

Crystal was closing about 600 1100 yards per minute

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sdy,
 
Posts: 19502 | Registered: July 21, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
I believe in the
principle of
Due Process
Picture of JALLEN
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by sdy:


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.

************

if CIC saw a collision developing from AIS, wouldn't they immediately notify the bridge ?

they may have wasted valuable minutes worrying about the camera

Crystal was closing about 600 yards per minute


Let’s go through that closing rate again. That is a mile every 3 minutes or so, about 20 mph. I recall we figured the ships were not going the same direction, but heading towards each other, but I don’t now recall how it happened that the big ship struck the destroyer starboard forward of amidships.

The bridge and CIC weren’t talking? Jeepers!




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
Posts: 48369 | Location: Texas hill country | Registered: July 04, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Probably on a trip
Picture of furlough
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As a guy who flies airplanes for a living, this whole lack of confidence and lack of communication scares the hell out of me.

Does the Navy need some aviation-like CRM training or are they already doing it and this ship just had a complete breakdown?

It is always a shame that people have to die before the spotlight gets put on defects like these.

ETA: thanks for updating this thread guys.




This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears above ground he is a protector.
Plato
 
Posts: 1768 | Location: Texas! | Registered: June 13, 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by sdy:
BTW, USS Fitzgerald is now at Pascagoula Mississippi for restoration.

http://www.public.navy.mil/sur...n-.aspx#.WvNpoaTRV6s

The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) arrived in Pascagoula, Mississippi, Jan. 19, aboard heavy lift vessel MV Transshelf inward bound from Yokosuka, Japan.

Fitzgerald is expected to spend several days in the Port of Pascagoula as the heavy lift ship will commence the reverse operation of unfastening, lowering and guiding the ship off the platform. The ship will then be taken to its designated pier space at Huntington Ingalls Industries shipyard.

Work on the ship is expected to occur on a land level facility throughout 2018 and one to two quarters of 2019, followed by an extensive test and trials period to ensure all systems and spaces are restored to full functionality and operational capability. The entire restoration and modernization effort is expected to complete approximately 24-months post work commencement on the ship.


Yep, I see her every time I go to work
 
Posts: 663 | Registered: August 23, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
I believe in the
principle of
Due Process
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posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by furlough:
As a guy who flies airplanes for a living, this whole lack of confidence and lack of communication scares the hell out of me.

Does the Navy need some aviation-like CRM training or are they already doing it and this ship just had a complete breakdown?

It is always a shame that people have to die before the spotlight gets put on defects like these.

ETA: thanks for updating this thread guys.


What was described in the article about the courts-martial, the actions and interactions of the officers on watch, defies everything I have seen or heard of in what goes on in the operation of Navy ships. My training and experience is all 40-50 years ago. I can’t begin to imagine the atmosphere in the wardroom for something like this. Hopefully its an aberration, not systemic.




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
Posts: 48369 | Location: Texas hill country | Registered: July 04, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by Rey HRH:
quote:
Originally posted by JALLEN:

A LTJG seems awfully junior to be night OOD in a high speed transit of a very busy shipping lane. Maybe this is why. One wonders who the other choices might have been.


It could have been just luck of the draw as far the watch rotation is concerned. If you're qualified as OOD, then you're qualified as OOD. It does seem the punishment meted takes into account some mitigating factors that the prosecutor even brought up.

I'm expecting the skipper to pay the full price.

I don't want to see anyone's career ruined but there has to be consequences when sailors die.

Just because you're qualified doesn't make you competent. It should be however, as we've seen this JO froze during the moment of truth. Failed to call the CO and allowed all hell to break loose. The other two JO's in CIC were also equally useless with their own inaction. As one commentary posted elsewhere: It's as if, the parents left one of the kids to watch the other children, and when something bad happened, they all conspired to not say anything when the parents show up responding to the loud noise. Not a single LPO or, CPO stepped-in to do something.

There's a lot of training problems, much of it likely points back to the school house, personal manning, and over-bearing amount of admin bureaucracy vs training. The decision makers that led to this are long gone unfortunately, a few more stars should be added to the fire.
 
Posts: 14571 | Location: Wine Country | Registered: September 20, 2000Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Age Quod Agis
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a few more stars should be added to the fire.

This, absolutely.

This entire clusterfuck is a command level problem, and from the number of accidents, and the number of high profile command relief actions for major surface combatants that we have seen over the past few years, it is apparent that the problem is systemic, and not localized to a particular ship.

Something is seriously culturally amiss with our navy, and that cultural problem has manifested itself as problems with manning, training, communication and basic competence.

I am utterly convinced that nothing from a training standpoint will rectify this problem. Only a wholesale change in the command climate to emphasize ship handling and warfighting skills, followed up with appropriate training, mentoring and effective communication will create the environment where these disasters will be a thing of the past.

The vast numbers of asshole COs, and the serial failures of leadership, both practical and moral, at the officer and senior chief levels is a product of selection criteria and process, not a failure of training or a lack of standards.

Stars need to burn, and a new leadership cadre put in place that will focus on command climate, team development, ship skills, and warfighting. I hope we figure this out fast, and get it fixed, for the sake of our sailors and our country.



"I vowed to myself to fight against evil more completely and more wholeheartedly than I ever did before. . . . That’s the only way to pay back part of that vast debt, to live up to and try to fulfill that tremendous obligation."

Alfred Hornik, Sunday, December 2, 1945 to his family, on his continuing duty to others for surviving WW II.
 
Posts: 12743 | Location: Central Florida | Registered: November 02, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Go ahead punk, make my day
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So yeah, my gut was right.

The Fitz crew was incompetent as fuck, from top to bottom - with the sole exception being the Damage Control Assistant and her DC team which kept that tin can from sinking.
 
Posts: 45798 | Registered: July 12, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
His Royal Hiney
Picture of Rey HRH
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by corsair:
quote:
Originally posted by Rey HRH:

It could have been just luck of the draw as far the watch rotation is concerned. If you're qualified as OOD, then you're qualified as OOD. It does seem the punishment meted takes into account some mitigating factors that the prosecutor even brought up.

I'm expecting the skipper to pay the full price.

I don't want to see anyone's career ruined but there has to be consequences when sailors die.

Just because you're qualified doesn't make you competent. It should be however, as we've seen this JO froze during the moment of truth. Failed to call the CO and allowed all hell to break loose. The other two JO's in CIC were also equally useless with their own inaction. As one commentary posted elsewhere: It's as if, the parents left one of the kids to watch the other children, and when something bad happened, they all conspired to not say anything when the parents show up responding to the loud noise. Not a single LPO or, CPO stepped-in to do something.

There's a lot of training problems, much of it likely points back to the school house, personal manning, and over-bearing amount of admin bureaucracy vs training. The decision makers that led to this are long gone unfortunately, a few more stars should be added to the fire.


Except are you coming at this from a military point of view?

To qualify for a watch station, you have a qual card that lists the specific items that must be signed off by the individual instructors training you. For some stations, there's even a final board/test. You're either qualified or not. If someone is signed off as qualified, they are.

Besides which, there are other members in the team who are also qualified for their stations. So, it's not like the OOD was just by herself. This allows for integrating newly qualified people into watch teams. They're still qualified but they have also more experienced people on the team.



"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, 1946.
 
Posts: 19582 | Location: The Free State of Arizona - Ditat Deus | Registered: March 24, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Let’s go through that closing rate again


ok, I was off by factor of 2

Fitz was 20 knots at 190 deg

Crystal 18 knots at 68 deg

(picture in the navy report is poorly drawn. I am using the very stable AIS data for Crystal)

So 5 minutes before the collision the two platforms were about 5500 yards apart.

closure rate would be about 1100 yards / minute


Crystal made that turn to port (85 deg to 68 deg) at a little after 0115 local time.

The collision was at 0129 local.
 
Posts: 19502 | Registered: July 21, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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