USS Fitzgerald

I do not know for sure anything! But the news said it was a accident. But if it matters it is on a lot of youtube videos that it was not. Some are saying the cargo ship was hacked! Who knows for sure. But supposedly the cargo ships can be hacked and then taken over. Possiably by N. Korea.
 
i would think a super defense ship would pick it up on it's radar long before it hit.then they didn't do anything after it hit?something seems off!!!
 
The reports that i have seen is that the cargo ship was on auto pilot, and after the wreck went around the ship and then went back on course. for 30 minutes until it was turned around and went back to the scene, as outlined in the GPS tracking of the cargo ship.

Those things are run by GPS, one degree of deviation on course costs money. But, this also indicates the cargo ship had no one awake on the bridge. Which is a no-no
A new report says the captain of the container-ship flashed lights to show they were closing on them, and states they tried to avoid contact and then impacted the ship.
http://news.trust.org/item/20170626101937-6xsul

There should have been at least 10 people on the bridge of the navy ship at night. The reporting is that the ships crews was trying to take action and was given an override by the officer of the deck, someone that appears to have little experience and didn't realize the situation they were in and failed to react properly in time.

There are times when the crew, who I am sure that had much more experience on the bridge than this officer, were trying to do the right thing (move) and were overridden by the bridge officer.
Someone clearly messed up and my money is on the junior Officer in command at the time.
 
2 martyrs paddled up to the USS Cole in a rubber raft and then detonated, I thought preventative measures became SOP to prevent anything like that happening again... now this? What an embarrassing cluster..
 
Rock Knocker, it appears your video is just more fake news
blush.gif
. Read about it:

http://www.snopes.com/military/lighthouse.asp
 
Obviously somebody SCREWED UP BIG TIME! You're in a multi-million dollar ship, with state of the art electronics, and something as big as a container ship runs into you, in the middle of the ocean, someone was asleep at the wheel on the destroyer.

Quote:What Happened Aboard the USS Fitzgerald?

Posted at 11:59 pm on June 28, 2017 by streiff


It has been nearly two weeks since the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, USS Fitzgerald, was rammed by the container ship ACX Crystal near Fitzgerald’s homeport of Yokosuka, Japan. The Fitzgerald was extensively damaged–probably putting it out of service for at least a year–and seven sailors were killed.

Initial reports based on tracking data from ACX Crystal showed it made a sharp right turn before impact. This led to a lot of speculation about a deliberate ramming because the crew of ACX Crystal is all Filipino and it had made previous stops in Pakistan. As it turns out, the sharp turn is actually the container ship broadsiding Fitzgerald and being forced off course, which the autopilot corrected when the two ships separated.

Right now, however, the emphasis seems to be focusing on what was going on in the bridge and combat information center aboard the Fitzgerald.


There should have been lookouts on watch on the port, starboard and stern of the destroyer Fitzgerald — sailors scanning the horizon with binoculars and reporting by headsets to the destroyer’s bridge. At 1:30 a.m. last Saturday, off the coast of Japan south of Tokyo, they could hardly have failed to see the 730-foot freighter ACX Crystal, stacked with more than 1,000 containers, as it closed in.

Radar officers working both on the bridge and in the combat information center below it should have spotted the freighter’s image on their screens, drawing steadily closer. And under standard protocol, the Fitzgerald’s captain, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, should have been awakened and summoned to the bridge to assure a safe passage long before the ships could come near each other.

But none of that happened. The Fitzgerald’s routine cruise in good weather through familiar, if crowded, seas ended in the most lethal Navy accident in years. Seven sailors lost their lives.

As investigators try to figure out what many veteran seamen describe as an incomprehensible collision, they have plenty of mysteries to unravel. In addition to the questions for the destroyer’s crew, there is the peculiar course of the Crystal after the accident, recorded by ship-tracking websites. It raises the possibility that no one was awake, or at least aware of their surroundings, when the two ships hit.

Under strict orders not to talk about what they saw that night, the crew of the Fitzgerald is mostly keeping its counsel while grieving the loss of its shipmates. But one sailor, contacted via social media, offered what may endure as an epitaph for the accident.

“All I can say is,” the sailor wrote to The New York Times, “somebody wasn’t paying attention.”

This is the kicker:


There are many signs that the Fitzgerald had almost no warning of the approaching collision: the fact that the captain was in his cabin and that no shipwide alarm had rousted sailors from their bunks. “As to how much warning they had, I don’t know,” said Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, commander of the Seventh Fleet, at a news conference on Sunday. “That’s going to have to be found out during the investigation.”

“It looks horrible,” said Gary E. Meyer, owner of a tech company in New Jersey, who served on the Navy ship San Diego and posted a YouTube commentary on the accident that got much attention. “You have three lookouts and you’re running radar,” Mr. Meyer said. “That ship can really accelerate and maneuver. It doesn’t mean they caused the collision, but they’re at fault for not avoiding it.”

Steven M. Morawiec, of Sparta, Wis., who spent 22 years in the Navy and many times took charge of his ship at night as the officer of the deck, said the failure to summon the captain was incomprehensible.

“On my ship, if another ship was expected to get within 4,000 yards, you had to have the captain there beside you,” he said. “If you didn’t wake the captain when you were supposed to, you were toast.”

I don’t pretend to be an authority on the day to day operations on the bridge and CIC of a surface combatant, but these statements comport with conversations I have had with Navy officers. The fact is that being asleep in your bunk will not prevent you from being relieved if something happens, most skippers are on the bridge anytime there is any danger of anything going wrong.

As a commander, I had a couple of “misadventures” that could have ended my career had the dice rolled a bit differently and I’m reluctant to second-guess a man in command in an environment in which I’ve never served. There are questions about the actions of ACX Crystal as well but the major focus right now has to be why no one on the Fitzgerald saw anything either visually or on any of the systems available to them to track surface ships.


http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2017/06/28/what-happened-aboard-the-uss-fitzgerald/

 
So our ship with all its technology did not detect a slow moving cargo ship? I guess they should be thankful some bad actor didn't shoot a Exocet ship to ship missile at them!!!

Maybe everyone was in the mess hall having a gender diversity and sensitivity training session... Hay its the Navy,"a global force for good"......
 
With all it's technology AND lookouts port, starboard, and stern! And, at least 2 people supposedly watching the technology!! One on the bridge, and one in the control room below.

This is not to mention that they put alarms on 25 - 30 thousand dollar cars to alert you to the fact that you are about to impact something; I can't believe that with the technology on that ship, there wasn't an alarm of some nature going off somewhere on that ship.

Maybe everyone was in the mess hall having a gender diversity and sensitivity training session...
 
"I guess they should be thankful some bad actor didn't shoot a Exocet ship to ship missile at them!!!"

They nearly sank the Fitzgerald simply by ramming her. The way the cargo ship steered around the Fitzgerald and then came back to ram her it makes me wonder about a terrorist attack. Maybe they saw the U.S.S. Fitzgerald as a 'soft target'?
 
Originally Posted By: semo97In aviation we have the mile high club, the Navy may have banging in the wheel house. Someone was preoccupied.

Texting?

Regards,
hm
 
Originally Posted By: ADK"I guess they should be thankful some bad actor didn't shoot a Exocet ship to ship missile at them!!!"

They nearly sank the Fitzgerald simply by ramming her. The way the cargo ship steered around the Fitzgerald and then came back to ram her it makes me wonder about a terrorist attack. Maybe they saw the U.S.S. Fitzgerald as a 'soft target'?



Satellite tracking and reports now place the accident nearly an hour before reported. The U-Turn seen in tracking earlier is believed due to the Merchant Vessel being on auto-pilot. It bounced off the Fitzgerald and resumed course. Took awhile before anyone got their shoes on, got on deck, determined they had hit another vessel, and got the ship turned around to return.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/18/world/asia/path-ship-hit-uss-fitzgerald.html?mcubz=0

The biggest question remains, where was everyone on the Fitzgerald? Why didn't the lookouts see the Container Ship coming? Why didn't radar see the ship coming? Why was there NO attempt to avoid the collision? Why was there no alarm issued? The Fitzgerald's Commander was still in his quarters, they had to pry the door off to get him out, according to reports.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/world/asia/destroyer-fitzgerald-collision.html?mcubz=0
 
Originally Posted By: ADK"I guess they should be thankful some bad actor didn't shoot a Exocet ship to ship missile at them!!!"

They nearly sank the Fitzgerald simply by ramming her. The way the cargo ship steered around the Fitzgerald and then came back to ram her it makes me wonder about a terrorist attack. Maybe they saw the U.S.S. Fitzgerald as a 'soft target'?


My point was, that they did not pick up a large ship going relatively slow, vs a missile going at mach whatever..
It just does not inspire confidence that when one puts it in the context of a potential ICBM strike on the homeland!
 
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