Navy At Fault in Fitzgerald Collision

According to YAHOO News, preliminary investigation shows the Navy is at fault in the collision of USS Fitzgerald with a Philippine Container Ship.

Here is one published report:

"What caused the bizarre June 17 collision between a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer and a Philippines cargo ship that killed seven U.S. sailors off the coast of Japan?

It looks like some answers may finally be forthcoming.

An initial investigation has found that the USS Fitzgerald’s crew did not respond adequately to signals, did not understand that the other ship was drawing near, and may have failed even to summon the commanding officer, according to CNN.

“They did nothing until the last second,” said one defense official.

“There were many people who should have spoken up,” another official told Fox News.

The far larger cargo ship hit the Fitzgerald on its starboard side at 1:30 am after veering sharply in a failed attempt to avoid it, gouging out a deep gash that left the Navy destroyer listing to one side. After the deadly collision, the Fitzgerald was towed to the U.S. naval base at Yokosuka. Three Navy sailors, including the commanding officer, were evacuated to medical facilities in Japan. Divers salvaged the bodies of seven American sailors.

It was the deadliest U.S. naval event since the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

Multiple investigations have been launched to figure out how a radar-equipped, sophisticated vessel like the Fitzgerald was apparently unable to avoid a much larger ship.

International navigation guidelines state that “the vessel which has the other on her own starboard side shall keep out of the way.”

A Navy spokeswoman warned that no conclusions should yet be drawn from the initial probe.

“We are in the early stages of the investigation process to develop a comprehensive picture of what caused the collision and do not have any definitive information to release at this time,” Rear Adm. Dawn Cutler, U.S. Navy Chief of Information, said in a statement.

“It is premature to speculate on causation or any other issues,” said Cutler. “Once we have a detailed understanding of the facts and circumstances, we will share those findings with the Fitzgerald families, our Congressional oversight committees and the general public.”

This is not a surprise.

I still want to know exactly how it came about. I now have enough information from this news report to make a guess. 

My guess is that the Officer of The Deck that night may not have been looking out the window. He should have been. USS Fitzgerald was equipped with the latest, most automated radar, the AN/SPY-1D radar. It should have automatically established radar tracks for ships and aircraft in the ship's vicinity. But the scale of the display may not have been right for nearby surface ships. 

In any event, no matter how automated the ship's sensors may be, the Mark I Mod 0 eyeball (otherwise known as seaman's eye) is still necessary for safe operation of ships at sea.

That's why I want to know more about what happened that night.

In any event, one thing is certain: one person is responsible for the safe operation of the ship - the Captain. Others may also be responsible, but there is no doubt about the Captain.

More News About USS Fitzgerald Collision

Last week the navy moved the damaged destroyer USS Fitzgerald into dry dock 4 at the Naval base at Yokosuka, Japan, in order to more carefully inspect the damage from the ship's collision with a container ship. The main question is whether the ship can make it back to a shipyard in the states or whether she must be towed or otherwise transported.

So far, it looks like the damage is more extensive than originally thought. The hull was twisted in the collision, much like you twist a wet rag to get the water out. Torsional damage of that kind can make repairs more difficult.

A good CNN article spells out how the navy will investigate and what the probable consequences will be. In a word - there will be responsibility and accountability. This is the way government should work. http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/17/opinions/uss-fitzgerald-this-much-we-know-kirby/index.html

And here's another article worth reading: http://conservativewahoo.blogspot.com/2008/07/accountability-navy-style.html

I have long believed the world could be improved by being more like the navy. At least in the matter of people in responsible positions taking responsibility.

A Collision (Or Grounding) At Sea Can Ruin Your Whole Day

Last month, after the USS Fitzgerald collision with a container ship and resulting loss of life, US Navy spokesmen pointed out that such collisions are extremely rare.

I promised to explain the collision based on my own knowledge and experience, but only after the Navy investigation completes its work. Until then, any analysis would be just guesswork.

I am rethinking those assurances. I still think it best to wait until the investigation is over, but it has occurred to me that we can learn a lot from some of the prior rare examples from the 20th century. I know a bit about some of these earlier incidents.

Here are some cases:

September 8, 1923 Honda Point, California

The fourteen ships of destroyer squadron 11 were steaming from San Francisco to San Diego simulating wartime operations. All fourteen ships were Clemson class destroyers less than five years old. The squadron was commanded by Captain Edward Howe Watson, an 1895 graduate of the US Naval Academy, embarked in the flagship USS Delphy. 

The flagship was responsible for navigation, the other ships of the squadron followed in Delphy's wake in a column formation at a speed of twenty knots. The flagship was fitted with a new electronic navigation device, a radio direction finder (RDF), which detected a signal from Point Arguello at the entrance to the Santa Barbara Channel. The ship's officers had no experience with RDF and distrusted its bearings.

As a result, the ship was navigating by "dead reckoning," - calculating the ship's progress along its track using rpm to estimate speed. A week earlier, Japan was hit with the Great Kanto earthquake, which devastated Tokyo and generated unusual swells and currents all across the Pacific. These swells and currents may have retarded the squadron's progress down the coast.

Shortly after 9:00 p.m., in dark and foggy weather, the navigator calculated it was time to turn to enter the Santa Barbara Channel. Delphy was actually several miles northeast of the calculated position and ran aground on the rocky shore at 20 knots. The following ships attempted to turn away, some turning to port and others turning to starboard, but seven destroyers were lost. This was the largest peacetime loss of US Navy ships. 

Captain Watson accepted full responsibility and argued against any court-martial of other officers.

1950 USS Missouri Grounding, Chesapeake Bay

On January 17, 1950, USS Missouri (BB063), the last of the Iowa class battleships to be commissioned, ran hard aground in Chesapeake Bay near Thimble Shoals light in plain view of senior Army and Navy officers quartered near Old Point Comfort. The ship ran aground during an unusually high tide, making salvage difficult. She was refloated 1 February and towed back into drydock for repairs. The incident greatly amused the press, because of President Truman's personal interest in the ship, and greatly amused Army and Air Force officers because of Navy discomfort.

The ship's commanding officer, Captain William D. Brown, had taken command on December 10th as the ship's three month period of repairs was drawing to a close. Brown, a veteran of thirty years of naval service, had a distinguished career commanding submarines and destroyers, but had never commanded such a large ship.

The investigation uncovered a number of shortcomings in shipboard organization as stipulated in U.S. Navy Regulations. The principal organizational shortcoming was the subordinate position of the ship's navigator, who lacked direct access to the ship's captain.

After the Missouri grounding, Navy Regulations were changed to stipulate that the ship's navigator, no matter how junior, would be designated as a department head.

On a personal note, in 1955 I went aboard my first naval ship on a training cruise out of Norfolk. The ship was USS Iowa (BB-61), a sister ship of Missouri.

Another personal note: when I was about to be commissioned, I was asked what job I wanted. I indicated I wanted to be navigator. In 1958, I became navigator and department head at the age of 21. After that time, I was always at least a department head at sea.

More To Come

Amelia Earhart Update

In May 1937, a month after I was born, Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, took off in Amelia's Lockheed Electra, headed Eastward on a projected circumnavigation. On June 28, after flying over Africa,Southeast Asia and Western New Guinea, they crossed the towering Owen Stanley mountan range of Papua New Guinea, landing at the airfield at Lae, on the north coast. They spent the next four days preparing for the most critical phase of the Pacific crossing, the flight from Lae to a refueling stop on Howland Island. She took off from Lae July 2 1937 and was last heard from July 3. She never reached Howland and no trace of her flight was discovered, despite a vast air/sea search.

From the outset of the disappearance, events stimulated speculation that Japan was somehow involved. It was already clear that Japan was readying her Trust Territories in the Pacific to be used as bases in a planned war with the United States.

Five months later, in December, 1937, Japanese army aircraft involved in military operations in Nanking attacked and sank the USS Panay, a Yangtze River gunboat, with loss of American lives. Japan apologized and paid an indemnity, which the US accepted. Nevertheless, it appeared to be a deliberate attack.

Meanwhile, back to Lae.

Recently a photograph discovered in the classified section of the National Archives seems to show Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan at Jaluit Island and Earhart's airplane on a barge being towed by a Japanese ship. The ship's name is the same as the ship reported by natives to have salvaged the Earhart aircraft. Native reports also claimed that Earhart was imprisoned on Saipan and later executed. These details have not been verified.

The Japanese Army in 1937 may already have been planning an invasion of the North Coast of New Guinea to establish bases from which to march over the Owen Stanley Range and capture Port Moresby. This would allow them to attack Northern Australia by air.

Five years later, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, on March 8, 1942, Japanese marines waded ashore at Lae and the nearby village of Salamaua. A joint naval task force of Australian and US vessels raced to counter the Japanese invasion. The force included US aircraft carriers Lexington and Yorktown, who launched 52 aircraft from each carrier at dawn March 10. The aircraft flew over the mountain range and caught Japanese ships by surprise as they were unloading.

The final score was four transport ships sunk, one cruiser out of action, requiring repairs in Japan, two Japanese destroyers out of action. The US carriers lost only one aircraft.

So Lae, the airfield that Earhart left from on her next leg, proved important to Japanese plans.

Clues

I used to read Pravda (Truth) and Izvestia (News) in Russian. Not to learn either truth or news directly, but to uncover clues as to what the truth or the news might be, or at least what the rulers of the Soviet Union wanted their readers to think was the truth or the news.

It was a more complex task than it might seem.

In October, 1962, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, announced that the Soviet Union had placed offensive nuclear missiles on Cuba, a mere 90 miles from military targets in the United States. The Soviet Union denied it.

The world chose to believe the United States even before Ambassador Stevenson displayed aerial photos of the missiles.

The world believed the United States because in the past our official statements had been true, even when lies might have seemed advantageous.

In most cases, the truth turned out to be stronger than lies.

In May 1960, President Eisenhower admitted that he had known about and approved of U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, correcting an earlier CIA cover story.

So the world often gave us the benefit of the doubt and a great deal of credence.

But what will happen when the world comes to believe our president and the people around him never tell the truth?

This last weekend the New York Times compiled and printed a comprehensive list of lies - at least one a day - that President Trump has told since he was inaugurated.

This matters.

I have many anecdotes.

Forty-Five Years Ago: Committee To Reelect The President And Undo Rule Of Law

Forty five years ago, a band of burglars perpetrated what was later referred to as a "third rate burglary."

The target: Democratic Party Headquarters. The customer: Committee to Reelect The President (AKA "CREEP). The purpose: to collect information on the Democrats. The goal: reelect President Richard Nixon.

What exactly did Nixon hope to find? It still isn't clear. What is now clear in the aftermath of Russian cyber attacks on the democrats is that even innocuous information can be manipulated to seem ominous.

What is even more clear is that the burglary was an attack on democratic norms. It was also a attack on the rule of law.

This wasn't Nixon's first burglary. There was an earlier burglary on the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. That didn't glean much useful information, either.

I learned several things from the incident:
1. Richard Nixon was dishonest;
2. Richard Nixon was unscrupulous;
3. Richard Nixon did not trust democracy;
4. In 1972 the attack on rule of law did not succeed because:
5. There remained a degree of integrity in the Republican Party;
6. Professional Civil Servants continued to do their jobs in service to the country.

In 1972 as a nation, we still believed in democracy and endeavored to make it better.

USS Fitzgerald - What Happened?

Earlier today I was asked several times if I could explain what happened to bring about the collision between USS Fitzgerald and a large container ship three times her size.

The truth is, I don't know. It should never have happened.

Neither should the sinking of the Titanic.

At 2:00 a.m. I imagine Commander Bryce Benson, who had taken command of Fitzgerald about a month earlier, had no idea that his ship was in peril. Sailors sleeping below decks on the starboard side forward had no idea that they were in peril.

The ship was operating only about 56 nautical miles from their home port of Yokosuka, Japan, an easy two hour steam. The sea was calm, the night was clear.

We don't yet know who had the conn. We don't know whether Captain Benson was on the bridge or in his sea cabin.

Some of these details won't come out until after the navy completes the investigation.

We only know that something went badly wrong.

Fitzgerald bristles with lethal weapons, with sensors probing the air, sea and ocean depths surrounding the ship. Everything moving in the ship's vicinity is detected, tracked and recorded by her many digital computers. Everything said over the interior telephone systems, every radar or sonar contact, every radio transmission or received signal is digitally recorded to be played back and analyzed.

I can speculate as to the cause, but even though I helped design the ship's equipment and have operated similar ships at sea very near the site of the collision, it would only be a guess.

Rather than engage in guesswork, I would rather remind us of what is certain - USS Fitzgerald is a mighty warship, whose crew willingly encounters the hazards of operating at sea. This is well expressed in the first verse of the Navy Hymn:

Eternal Father, strong to save,

Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,

Who bidd'st the mighty ocean deep

Its own appointed limits keep;

Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,

      For those in peril on the sea!

For the rest of it, I'll wait for the investigation report.

Catastrophe At Sea: USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62)

About 0230 the morning of June 16, 2017, USS Fitzgerald, a 20 year old guided missile destroyer of the Arleigh Burke class, operating near the volcanic island of O Shima, about fifty miles southwest of Yokosuka, Japan, collided with a Philippine-flagged container ship on the way from the port of Nagoya, to the port of Tokyo  in a calm sea on a clear night.

Damage to Fitzgerald was extensive both topside and below decks, she took on a lot of water, a number of sailors were injured, and seven sailors are missing. Two crew members were evacuated by helicopter to a hospital ashore, including CDR Bryce Benson, her commanding officer, who took command last month. The ship's executive officer has assumed command.

There is no information as to what caused the collision, but one report indicates that the Philipine vessel reversed course in a u-turn about 25 minutes before the collision. Fitzgerald has returned to her base at Yokosuka under her own power, flooding is under control, and the ship is in no danger of sinking. Commander Seventh Fleet has promised updates as soon as more information is available.

USS Fitzgerald is one of fifteen guided missile destroyers and three guided missile cruisers designated as anti-ballistic missile ships.

Admiral Arleigh Burke was the most distinguished destroyer squadron commander of World War II, who went on to become Chief of Naval Operations. He brought about many improvements in the capabilities of the navy and was an inspiration to my generation of officers.

I had the great pleasure of meeting him and working with him at annual Naval Academy foreign affairs symposiums. A great man.

I also had the honor to work on the design of USS Arleigh Burke (DDG-51) at RCA after I retired from the navy.

Very sad to learn of USS Fitzgerald's collision.

The sea is a demanding task master.