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Originally posted by VBVAGUY:
It makes me wonder how older naval warships would have fared against these types of collisions. I was reading that a lot of these modern warships are more lightly built compared to the warships of WW2.

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Originally posted by VBVAGUY:
It makes me wonder how older naval warships would have fared against these types of collisions. I was reading that a lot of these modern warships are more lightly built compared to the warships of WW2. During WW2 ships had to be armored to be able to endure naval gunfire from naval guns. Instead of heavy armor, modern warships more have to worry about missiles and have counter measures and weapons to protect themselves from the missiles. God Bless

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KNM Helge Ingstad received several clear warnings from the tanker before the accident

The frigate KNM Helge Ingstad received clear warnings from the tanker Sola TS over the radio before the crash right into the front of the tanker. This is shown by the audio log that [newspaper] VG has received.

Per Annar Holm
Eirik Husøy
NTB

VG has published an audio log of the radio contact between the ships.

Fedje VTS is the Coastal Administration's watch center, which is responsible for the ships in the heavily trafficked fjord.

Three minutes before it strikes, the pilot on board the Sola TS asks the watch center which ship this is coming into the fjord.

Ten seconds later they answer:

"No, it's one, eh. I have not received any information about it. It has not reported to me. I just see it appear on the screen here," says Fedje VTS over ship radio.

Frigate came in at 17 knots

Radar images show that KNM Helge Ingstad goes south with 17 knots of speed, which equals 31.6 kilometers per hour. It had no deck lighting on, so it was hard to see, and it has features that make it difficult to detect on radar.

At the same time, Sola TS is coming up northwards at six knots.

The two ships are now on a collision course.

Fedje VTS to Sola TS:

"It is possible that it is Helge Ingstad. She came in from the north a while ago. It is possible that she is going there."

VG has informed the Armed Forces that they have sound logs and radar images from the accident. They do not want to comment on this.

"There will be a collision here."

So - one minute before the collision becomes fact - the tanker and warship have radio contact:

Without being sure if it's the frigate that comes against them, Sola TS asks if Helge Ingstad is coming towards them.

The warship confirms this five seconds later.

In the time that follows, the tanker asks the frigate repeatedly to change the course to starboard.

The answer from the frigate is: "Then we get too close to the shoals."

"Turn starboard if it's you coming. So you have ... ", Sola TS replies among other things.

Later, the tanker gives the following message: "Helge Ingstad! Turn!", before saying three seconds later:

"There will be a collision here."

The contact with Helge Ingstad will be sporadic after this, and with a lot of sound from the frigate's alarms. "We have given the alarm. Trying to get control of the situation", they say to the watch center, according to VG.

Although KNM Helge Ingstad before the collision had several radio exchanges with Sola TS, the frigate reports that they have collided with an unknown object and are adrift.

Then they ask for immediate assistance.

[...]

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US officer was on frigate’s bridge

November 21, 2018

Norwegian media were reporting Wednesday morning that a US naval officer was on the bridge of the doomed Norwegian frigate Helge Ingstad when it collided with a tanker off Norway’s West Coast two weeks ago. The frigate, meanwhile, remains mostly underwater but has been stabilized.

Newspapers Dagens Næringsliv (DN) and Bergens Tidende (BT) reported that the American officer was receiving training from a Norwegian officer when the frigate collided in the early morning hours of November 8 with the fully laden oil tanker Sola ST. The tanker was sailing from a nearby oil terminal in Øygarden, an island community northeast of Bergen. The frigate was under NATO command at the time, returning to its home port in Bergen after participating in NATO’s huge Trident Juncture exercise off Trondheim.

DN reported that the American officer was learning how to become a vaktsjef (duty chief) on the bridge when the collision occurred shortly after 4am. NATO itself has confirmed that navigation training was being conducted on board the frigate, which has been accused of being on a collision course with the tanker. Audio logs of maritime traffic in the area at the time reveal that the frigate received several warnings from the tanker that it was getting much too close and should immediately turn or “do something.”

As DN noted, all the communication was conducted in Norwegian, even though an American officer was on the bridge. She was reportedly under the leadership of a Norwegian officer.

Now subject to diplomatic channels

Norwegian defense department officials have consistently declined to answer questions about the collision, pending results of an official probe by Norway’s state accident investigations board (Havarikommisjon). Those results may not be available for months, however, leading to complaints that the Navy is not being open enough about what happened. Naval officials have, however, confirmed to BT that an American officer was on board.

Commander Torill Herland, communications chief for the Navy, told DN she could not confirm the role of the American naval officer on board the Helge Ingstad. “This is information we will come back with when the results of the investigation are presented,” Herland told DN. She noted that local police are also investigating the collision “and we have not looked at who was where on board.”

The case also is subject to diplomatic channels. “This involves a foreign citizen, and then we have to seek permission to conduct questioning,” Herland told DN.

Frode Karlsen of Norway’s West Police District, which covers the area where the collision occurred, told DN that it had to refer to the Navy and defense department “for comments around countries they train with.” It’s earlier been reported that the state accident investigation board has sent a letter to US officials at NATO, but its contents were not disclosed.

Defense officials, meanwhile, reported on Tuesday that the wreckage of the frigate is now more stable that it has been. Efforts were continuing to hoist it onto a barge, drain it of water and empty it of ammunition and other sensitive military material, before attempts will be made to transport it to the Haakonsvern naval base in Bergen.

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Human error likely in frigate collision [no shit]

November 29, 2018

Norway’s state accident investigation board issued a preliminary report on Thursday in which it found “no indications that technical systems did not function as expected,” prior to the dramatic collision between a Norwegian frigate and a tanker earlier this month. That suggests human error, investigators acknowledged, while noting that “no single act or incident” was behind it.

The collision in the early morning darkness of November 8 can only be explained, the board believes, by a “series of factors and circumstances” that are still being examined. The accident investigation board (Havari-kommisjonen) could not or would not answer most of the questions from reporters at a press conference Thursday afternoon, repeatedly saying that “we will come back to that after further investigation.”

One thing was made clear, however, by investigator Ingvild K Ytrehus: Norway’s frigate KNM Helge Ingstad mistakenly thought the deck lights fully lit on the tanker Sola TS were coming from “a stationary object,” and not the fully laden tanker that it was sailing towards at fairly high speed. That turned out to be a serious mistake that will cost Norwegian taxpayers billions of kroner.

Clear weather and calm seas

It was a clear night when the frigate sailed south in the Hjelte Fjord at a speed of “17-18 knots,” and the lights of the Sture oil terminal were visible from a great distance, according to the report. Ytrehus said that when the terminal first became visible to the crew on the bridge of the frigate, however, the tanker Sola TS was still at the terminal’s pier with its deck lights ablaze as it prepared for departure.

“It was hard (for the frigate crew) to see the difference between lights from the tanker and lights from the terminal,” Ytrehus said. Even after the tanker started sailing from the terminal, the frigate crew thought its lights were coming from a stationary object, not a tanker in motion.

More details emerged in the report itself. The tanker announced its departure over marine radio (Fedje VTS) at 3:45am, right when the frigate was undergoing a duty shift on its bridge. The investigators also confirmed that navigational training was being conducted on board the frigate. It’s unclear whether the frigtate’s crew heard the radio report of the tanker’s departure. The tanker, which had been berthed in a southerly direction, made a broad swing onto its northerly course. Since its decklights were still on, the frigate reportedly couldn’t see the Sola TS’ navigation lanterns.

At approximately 3:57am, two minutes after a new duty chief had taken over on the bridge of the frigate, the pilot on board the tanker could see signs of a southbound vessel on radar, just north of the tanker. The frigate’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) was set in receiver modus (only receiving information about other vessel, while withholding its own identity), prompting the tanker’s pilot to call the marine traffic radio at Fedje and ask for the name of the vessel that was rapidly approaching it. When it wasn’t made immediately available, the pilot and captain of the tanker then tried to contact the frigate by other means, according to investigator’s report, “blinking at it with an Aldis lamp” while the pilot asked the captain to turn the tanker 10 degrees starboard (right).

Drama at sea

At 4am the marine radio traffic informed the tanker that the vessel approaching it was probably the warship KNM Helge Ingstad, prompting the tanker’s pilot to call the frigate directly and ask it to swing starboard itself immediately. As revealed on tapes of the radio communication published by newssite VG earlier, the frigate responded that it couldn’t turn right until it had passed an unidentified object it had on its starboard side. The report issued Thursday notes that the frigate’s crew thought it was speaking with one of three other northbound vessels in the area, not the tanker with which it was on a collision course.

Just after 4am, the frigate found itself just 400 meters from the heavy tanker, which heaved its engine into full reverse to slow its speed. When the frigate still failed to change course, the tanker’s pilot and the marine traffice central at Fedje demanded the frigate “do something,” but it was too late, and the two vessels collided. While the tanker sustained only minor damage, the frigate was knocked out of control, started filling with water and drifted towards land where it later grounded. The crew was evacuated.

The accident investigators called the collision “complex,” involving a chain of events that are “demanding” to sort out. “Our goal is to determine how this could happen,” said William Bertheussen, director of the investigation board. Its decision to issue a preliminary report was made, he said, “out of consideration for the public’s need for information,” and to both improve safety and hinder such accidents from happening again.

Even though the board has been able to quickly retrieve an unusually large amount of information, secure voyage data recorders and interview key personnel on board both vessels, investigators now must carry out “thorough examinations” of cooperation among those on the bridges, “human factors,” routines, traffic monitoring and management, language and communication and the technical, operative, organizational and strategic choices made by those on board. Investigators won’t determine any civilian or criminal liability, leaving that to the police and, eventually, the military.

[...]

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The probe exposes how personal distrust led the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock, to avoid communicating with the destroyer’s electronic nerve center — the combat information center, or CIC — while the Fitzgerald tried to cross a shipping superhighway.

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When Fort walked into the trash-strewn CIC in the wake of the disaster, he was hit with the acrid smell of urine. He saw kettlebells on the floor and bottles filled with pee. Some radar controls didn’t work and he soon discovered crew members who didn’t know how to use them anyway.
...
Since 2015, the Fitz had lacked a quartermaster chief petty officer, ...
...
When Fort arrived at her (LT Natalie Combs) CIC desk, he found a stack of abandoned paperwork: “She was most likely consumed and distracted by a review of Operations Department paperwork for the three and a half hours of her watch prior to the collision,” Fort wrote.
...
“Procedural compliance by Bridge watchstanders is not the norm onboard FTZ, as evidenced by numerous, almost routine, violations of the CO’s standing orders,” not to mention radio transmissions laced with profanity and “unprofessional humor,” Fort found.
...
About three weeks after the ACX Crystal disaster, Fort’s investigators sprang a rules of the road pop quiz on Fitz’s officers.

It didn’t go well. The 22 who took the test averaged a score of 59 percent, Fort wrote.

“Only 3 of 22 Officers achieved a score over 80%,” he added, with seven officers scoring below 50 percent.

The same exam was administered to the wardroom of another unnamed destroyer as a control group, and those officers scored similarly dismal marks.

The XO Babbitt, Coppock and two other officers refused to take the test, according to the report.

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Originally posted by ArtieS:
^^^^ I read all 4 of those articles that you cite, and I will re-iterate my position that everyone in the chain of command should be removed, up to, and including the CNO. This is cascading serial failure, and it is evidence of a command culture in the Navy that is so completely broken, there is simply no hope without a thorough hosing out of the Augean stables of higher command.

This is beyond unsatisfactory, people are dead because of it, and from the reports there have been plenty of other near misses that could have killed sailors. Unless sufficient pain is inflicted on the senior participants of the system that allowed these conditions to exist, they will never be fixed.

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A little after 1:30 a.m. on June 17, 2017, Alexander Vaughan tumbled from his bunk onto the floor of his sleeping quarters on board the Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald. The shock of cold, salty water snapped him awake. He struggled to his feet and felt a torrent rushing past his thighs.

Around him, sailors were screaming. “Water on deck. Water on deck!” Vaughan fumbled for his black plastic glasses and strained to see through the darkness of the windowless compartment.

Underneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, 12 miles off the coast of Japan, the tidy world of Berthing 2 had come undone. Cramped bunk beds that sailors called coffin racks tilted at crazy angles. Beige metal footlockers bobbed through the water. Shoes, clothes, mattresses, even an exercise bicycle careered in the murk, blocking the narrow passageways of the sleeping compartment.

In the dim light of emergency lanterns, Vaughan glimpsed men leaping from their beds. Others fought through the flotsam to reach the exit ladder next to Vaughan’s bunk on the port side of the ship. Tens of thousands of gallons of seawater were flooding into the compartment from a gash that had ripped through the Fitzgerald’s steel hull like it was wrapping paper.

As a petty officer first class, these were his sailors, and in those first foggy seconds Vaughan realized they were in danger of drowning.
...

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Excellent graphics help put the USS Fitzgerald collision into perspective, a lot of effort went into this.

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Originally posted by RAMIUS:
Another collision, luckily no deaths.

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Originally posted by corsair:

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Originally posted by RAMIUS:
Another collision, luckily no deaths.

The pair were conducting a planned turn together during an underway replenishment when the sterns of the two ships brushed together
Minor side-swipe, not terrible or, unusual, helmsman probably turned beyond the requirement.

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Originally posted by SpinZone:
Now the last lime the Leyte Gulf hit something it was a different story.