[casparwhittey]

Thanks to CaptStash for the insightful comments and perspective from the merchant's point of view. Interesting to hear some behind-the-scenes challenges on the cargo ships.

As a former submarine officer, with plenty of time on the surface transiting in/around Yokosuka, I'll add my thoughts..

The surface guys do things a bit differently from us, so I'm hesitant to speculate on particulars, but a few things come to mind here:

-the Fitz is homeported in Yokosuka, so it could have been out doing routine training or local ops. This happens pretty frequently, and at night, when it's usually pretty quiet (no drills, minimum shipboard evolutions, etc) it's a good time to station lesser experienced folks working on qualifications, with a qualified watchstander supervising them. I wonder if the Officer of the Deck (in charge for driving) had an Under Instruction watchstander he was looking after. In my experience, focusing on training the UI on something can sometimes have a tendency to distract the over instruction from keeping big picture awareness that he/she would normally exercise.

-Agree with Captstash's comments on AIS and roles of the radar operator. I haven't heard any info on whether the AIS was on - folks on here were saying it was off - but I'm used to seeing it used regular by the surface guys (especially in local waters not on deployment/forward ops). Usually they'll just ID themselves in general terms. Regardless, I can't see why radar shouldn't have been up. They would have known the COLREGS cold - there is numerous proficiency training and a rigorous qualification standard for navigation and lookout watchstations in the Navy.

-Yes, surface warships practicing evolutions do not generally maintain heading and speed (commit to a track), but it's very likely they were not doing maneuvers, drills, or exercises in the middle of the nightshift. If they were part of a naval exercise it would have been mentioned. If they were transiting to somewhere, they were likely following the TSS or a navigational track.

-I too find it baffling (and unsettling) that they didn't send a pan pan off, or any means of reporting a collision at sea for so long. Perhaps they thought the warship would handle itself? Unfortunately it sounds like the DDG's radio room was hit.


The CO was in his stateroom at time of collision - which is why he was injured and trapped in there with the XO having to take control. So, that means he wasn't notified of the duress prior to. This is every CO's worst nightmare come true - not getting the notification of an impending casualty in time and therefore not being able to act to save the ship. If he had gotten the call, or if the collision alarm had been thrown, I guarantee he would have been up on the bridge in seconds in his skivvies (don't ask how I know this..) I feel awful for him (as well as the rest of the watchstanders) who now have to live with this on their conscience. They are very young folks, who take their training (and jobs) very seriously. Seriously some of the best and brightest, most responsible humans I have met.

I'll leave it at that - please keep the families of those folks in your prayers, and we'll look for the accident reports (from the multiple entities conducting them) in due time. Sad sad days for the 7th fleet right now.