quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
...BOTTOM LINE is a NAVY destroyer, shouldn't let ANY ship or boat within a mile of it.

unless you're transiting the STRAIT OF MALACCA.

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
Jimmy, you are a real hoot.

You realize that the radar consoles on Navy warships are not items you can just saunter down to West Marine and plop your plastic on the counter to buy.

JAllen, the maven has spoken, and you have the chutzpah to contradict him?

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by JALLEN:
Jimmy, you are a real hoot.

You realize that the radar consoles on Navy warships are not items you can just saunter down to West Marine and plop your plastic on the counter to buy.

JAllen, the maven has spoken, and you have the chutzpah to contradict him?

When you have 4 major accidents in an organization on ships that supposedly have the best technology on earth, something is seriously wrong within that organizations crew and training methods. It's about equivalent to having a NFL linebacker getting taken out by a 400lb fat kid on an open field with nobody else covering him. You cannot even argue the fact.

It's about equivalent to you taking down 4 F18 fighter jets with your V tail.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
.....


I'm going to conclude this by saying, if you're in a smaller, much nimbler, much faster, much more maneuverable ship, with a heck of a lot more crew on watch, getting hit by a cargo freighter is going to be partially your fault in almost any collision.

If you look at the AIS, two ships overtook the ALNIC. I can guarantee that all 3 ships were in VHF radio contact and the 2 overtaking ships discussed their intentions with the ALNIC, both overtaking vessels executed their maneuvers without issues at a safe distance from the ALNIC and this is standard procedure on the Merchant Marine side of things.

Being a Captain of a ship, you cannot take a 4 year break off of the water and then go right back to running a ship. You forget a lot of things, you honestly really have to work at it to be proficient again. Some things are like second nature, but a lot of things you have to relearn, you have to have them become second nature.

Beautifully argued!

The career path is not 4 years on shore, 4 years at sea. The Captain of the Fitzgerald took command in May after a tour as XO. Assuming he was in a normal tour, he had 3 years to learn every nook and cranny, every system, every nut and bolt. Somehow, the collision occurred when he was in his cabin. That is one as yet unexplained anomaly.

We do not know if the ships were in radio contact, or whether the McCain was as well, or monitoring, or what.

We don't know the track of McCain, the maneuvers, speeds, lighting, before the collision. There is no word whether the Captain was on the bridge. As in the Fitzgerald incident, he should have been, either as part of the entering port process, a high volume traffic area, or summoned by the OOD for some situation.

It is inconceivable to me that the other traffic was unobserved on radar and by lookouts on the destroyer. We just don't know at this point. Odds seem overwhelmingly to point to misjudging known information rather than being smacked out of the blue by a ship nobody had any idea was there. It is entirely conceivable that radar picked up the traffic, the display was competently interpreted and made known to the bridge, with the usual recommendation for action, and the situation got out of hand, multiple ships, going different directions, one ship did something unanticipated, or maybe attention fixed on some other situation and this one forgotten about.

Actually, except for the overriding principle of doing everything possible to avoid collisions, we don't know which ship, in either case, bears responsibility. We take known facts, a few assumptions, mix in some hopefully well conceived speculation, shake well, and try to draw reasonable conclusions about what happened and why, very entertaining while we wait for the investigation to conclude so we can argue about its findings.

Jallen, Balzé Halzé, sdy, Captain Mike and everyone else thank you for your contributions to this thread. I know a lot about airplanes and almost nothing about ships, so I appreciate the informative posts.

But please, just don't engage the all-knowing you-know-who. He jumps into aviation threads as well and takes things off the rails.

Unless you are just having fun, which Jallen I suspect you may be! Stay dry up in the Hill Country!

quote:

Originally posted by furlough:
don't engage the all-knowing you-know-who. He jumps into aviation threads as well and takes things off the rails.

He emits enough hot air to make global warming a real thing.

quote:

Originally posted by furlough:
Jallen, Balzé Halzé, sdy, Captain Mike and everyone else thank you for your contributions to this thread. I know a lot about airplanes and almost nothing about ships, so I appreciate the informative posts.

But please, just don't engage the all-knowing you-know-who. He jumps into aviation threads as well and takes things off the rails.

Unless you are just having fun, which Jallen I suspect you may be! Stay dry up in the Hill Country!

Except for the fact that what I am writing is from a professional mariners perspective with over 20 years of experience. I have accrued on average 200 days of seatime for the past 20 years, every single year. I have not had any accidents and certainly not any loss of life.

If you interpret the AIS timeline, the destroyer has many options for staying out of all 3 ships way, the easiest would be to simply increase speed and maintain heading.

The AIS timeline posted earlier does not lie. It shows all 3 ships and their speeds and courses. They're all going the same direction, their speeds are very moderate at 10-11.3 knots. A destroyer does over 3x that speed at cruise.

Bottom Line is the only excusable explanation would be if the destroyers steering had a major malfunction. But considering only 6% of all ship accidents over history are the result of an equipment failure, the chances are slim. But even in that situation it should have been far enough out of the paths of the freighters behind it, that it could have come to a complete stop and they would have slid right by it. Remember how everyone pointed out a destroyer comes to a complete crash stop from it's cruise speed in less than 440 yards.

4 accidents in 4 months is something nobody can argue. Their is a serious issue in regards to training. I'm not here to blow hot air up anyones skirt. But, everyone wants to defend the Navy, "they have the best technology" "the best trained personel" etc. etc. Navy guys always come up with reasons something happened (other than what really happened), shift facts around, and cover up various items. It's the Navy way.

Out of 51,000 merchant ships plying the seas 24/7, there are less than 100 accidents every year, usually much less than that.......Yet out of 438 Navy vessels, they have 4 in 4 months.

BUT, what about the dozens of crewmen that have died over the past 4 months? What about them. They died needlessly. 3 years experience is nothing to run a ship the size of the destroyer. The Captain of the Alican is most likely going to have 20 years or more of continuous experience without any shore breaks. He most likely started his career in the merchant marines, worked his way up to Captain and has been a Captain continuously for decades.

In fewer words Captain Mike summed it up as:


posted August 25, 2017 11:51 PM
Hide Post
1. Lack of adequate seamanship/ship-handling training and experience.
2. Loss of situational awareness. (see item 1)

The end.


And Balze Haze posted an excellent article about the issues with the Navy's way of training compared to the Merchant Marines way.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
...BOTTOM LINE is a NAVY destroyer, shouldn't let ANY ship or boat within a mile of it.

I love it when the armchair historians with no military experience expound on how the military is or should be.

Hey JimmyBoy, I found your sign.



Or maybe Jimmy is cool with the DDG69 lighting his shrimping boat up when the distance gets to .99 nautical miles.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by furlough:
don't engage the all-knowing you-know-who. He jumps into aviation threads as well and takes things off the rails.

He emits enough hot air to make global warming a real thing.

Hey, wait a second. I never participate in aviation threads.

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
...BOTTOM LINE is a NAVY destroyer, shouldn't let ANY ship or boat within a mile of it.

I love it when the armchair historians with no military experience expound on how the military is or should be.

Hey JimmyBoy, I found your sign.



Or maybe Jimmy is cool with the DDG69 lighting his shrimping boat up when the distance gets to .99 nautical miles.

No ship Navy or otherwise will pass a ship in less than 1 NM on the open seas intentionally. But guess the Navy loves playing bumper boats with Destroyers.

If I had a shrimping boat, I'd have no fear with them lighting me up, they'd run into me long before they even knew I was there!!!!!!!!!!

Military experience HAS NOTHING to do with this accident. It is a maritime accident plain and simple, whether or not the John Mccain is a destroyer is irrelevant in this situation. It all boils down to a ship getting hit by another ship and a lack of situational awareness and maritime training by the crew of one ship or both ships. The fact that the Mccain is a destroyer, whose sole function is a war ship, makes it getting hit by a slow moving, slow maneuvering gigantic cargo ship even worse. Destroyers that cannot evade cargo ships.


Below is the synopsis of the Fitzgerald accident. I highly doubt that the Mccain investigation will state much different:

While the leadership have not been separated from the Navy, Moran said being detached for cause because of this incident sends a message.

“Several junior officers were relieved of their duties due to poor seamanship and flawed teamwork as bridge and combat information center watchstanders. Additional administrative actions were taken against members of both watch teams,” read the statement.

“The collision was avoidable and both ships demonstrated poor seamanship. Within Fitzgerald, flawed watch stander teamwork and inadequate leadership contributed to the collision that claimed the lives of seven Fitzgerald sailors, injured three more and damaged both ships.”

According to a timeline of events, neither a collision alarm nor general quarters were sounded ahead of Crystal hitting the ship at about 1:30 a.m. on June 17, and the first indication to most of the crew that the ship had hit anything was the lurch they felt in their bunks.

http://www.marinelog.com/index...lieves-co&Itemid=229

One thing that would reduce loss of life is not having crews quarters along the sides of the ship. That location can easily be damaged by both ships and missiles.

Perhaps I missed it in all of the arguing and conjecture. Were the missing sailors located?

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
Perhaps I missed it in all of the arguing and conjecture. Were the missing sailors located?

Good question. I haven't heard yet that they have.

Save for one sailor's body who was recovered. Last I heard, nine were still missing.

quote:

Originally posted by jimmy123x:
When you have 4 major accidents in an organization on ships that supposedly have the best technology on earth, something is seriously wrong within that organizations crew and training methods. It's about equivalent to having a NFL linebacker getting taken out by a 400lb fat kid on an open field with nobody else covering him. You cannot even argue the fact.

It's about equivalent to you taking down 4 F18 fighter jets with your V tail.

My experience during my 26 years in the Navy gave me a totally different view of things. With budget cuts and years of decreased military spending, it didn't leave us with the "best technology on earth". It may be better than any other military on earth but certainly not new or the most currently technology.

During my 26 years on active duty in the Navy I was always surprised at how old the technology we were using actually was.

7th fleet

2 of 10 recovered

CHANGI NAVAL BASE, Republic of Singapore – U.S Navy and Marine Corps divers recovered and identified remains of 26-year-old USS John S. McCain (DDG 56) Sailor, Electronics Technician 3rd Class Dustin Louis Doyon, of Connecticut, on Thursday night.

More divers and equipment arrived overnight to continue search and recovery operations for eight missing Sailors inside flooded compartments of the ship.

Earlier Thursday, divers recovered the remains of 22-year-old Electronics Technician 3rd Class Kenneth Aaron Smith from New Jersey.

Still missing are:

Electronics Technician 1st Class Charles Nathan Findley, 31, from Missouri
Interior Communications Electrician 1st Class Abraham Lopez, 39, from Texas
Electronics Technician 2nd Class Kevin Sayer Bushell, 26, from Maryland
Electronics Technician 2nd Class Jacob Daniel Drake, 21, from Ohio
Information Systems Technician 2nd Class Timothy Thomas Eckels Jr., 23, from Maryland
Information Systems Technician 2nd Class Corey George Ingram, 28, from New York
Electronics Technician 3rd Class John Henry Hoagland III, 20, from Texas
Interior Communications Electrician 3rd Class Logan Stephen Palmer, 23, from Illinois

quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:
One thing that would reduce loss of life is not having crews quarters along the sides of the ship. That location can easily be damaged by both ships and missiles.

Yes the sides would be a much better storage location for missiles ammunition and the ships vital components. The crew would be much safer.

quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:
One thing that would reduce loss of life is not having crews quarters along the sides of the ship. That location can easily be damaged by both ships and missiles.

Where would you put them?

Do you have any idea how many crewmen are on board and how tiny the crew quarters are now?

I think they like to put the ammo in the middle.

Maybe we could have a large crew freighter trail each warship at a suitable distance with adequate living spaces, game rooms, gym, etc. and the watch standers could commute to the ship, 12 on 12 off in accordance with the IMO regs, by small boat, or helo. When the warship hit any vessel, there would be almost nobody aboard to get hurt.

quote:

Originally posted by kimber1911:

quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:
One thing that would reduce loss of life is not having crews quarters along the sides of the ship. That location can easily be damaged by both ships and missiles.

Yes the sides would be a much better storage location for missiles ammunition and the ships vital components. The crew would be much safer.

Kidding aside, considering the size of the crew and limited space onboard a ship like this, it would be difficult and frankly impractical to design the quarters in any other way.

quote:

Originally posted by LBTRS:


During my 26 years on active duty in the Navy I was always surprised at how old the technology we were using actually was.

Not only technology.

In early 1969, I was sitting in a 5" gun turret as "safety officer", shooting ammo older than
I was!

quote:

Originally posted by c1steve:
One thing that would reduce loss of life is not having crews quarters along the sides of the ship. That location can easily be damaged by both ships and missiles.

Individual military members are not at the top of the list of things that need to be protected on a warship, aircraft or other military equipment. Normally the equipment itself needs to be protected first to make sure it can survive and fight. Losing some crew is an acceptable loss to keep the platform fighting with the rest of the crew (or a replacement crew).

It is the military and "personnel safety" isn't the primary focus of any military service. Those that have served in the military understand this.

This is exactly the reason hatches are closed on flooding compartments with crew members still inside. If the safety of the crew was the top priority they would leave the hatches open and let them flood and the entire crew would abandon ship. They sacrifice some crew members to save the ship.