US Navy Destroyer Severely Damaged in Collision

[Chance]

There are seven sailors unaccounted for. From NBC News:

Seven U.S. sailors are unaccounted for after a Navy destroyer collided with a merchant ship southwest of Yokosuka, Japan, early Saturday local time, the Navy said.

The USS Fitzgerald, a 505-foot destroyer, collided with a Philippine container vessel at approximately 2:30 a.m. Saturday local time (1:30 p.m. ET Friday), about 56 nautical miles off Yokosuka, the U.S. 7th Fleet said.

The ship, which had experienced some flooding after the collision, was tugged back to Yokosuka Naval Base, south of Tokyo, early Saturday.

Meanwhile search and rescue efforts by U.S. and Japanese aircraft and boats were underway in the area where the vessels collided.

The U.S. Navy said damaged areas of the ship will also be searched for the seven unaccounted-for sailors after the ship is safely docked.

It's hard to appreciate how huge those things are until you see them in person. Any sailors around to give some insight into what happened?

[Chance]

FYI: This is what the Fitzgerald looked like before.

[blues]

Somebody's got some 'splainin' to do...

I'm not optimistic about recovering the sailors but will hope for the best if and while hope remains.

[JohnO]

From the damage evident on the two vessels it appears the container ship broadsided the Destroyer. I'm no sailor but aren't there right-of-way rules on the seas and assuming both ships were underway the Destroyer would be at fault? I know I have no knowledge of how it happened but does my suspicion hold water?

[Chance]

The container ship was sailing really erratically.



Did a u-turn, then corrected course. Apparently, it suffered so little damage it went on to its original destination.

[TGS]

Can any sailors/former sailors on this board describe how an incident like this could happen?

I imagine there would be redundancy built in, that even if the watch officer were asleep there would be other people there to wake him up....that even if a gizmo (radar?) went down, other systems would still provide warning, etc.

I'm not really asking for speculation on how this particular incident happened, just wondering what the contributing factors would be for a modern USN surface warship to suffer a collision...

[TAZ]

Wow form that track, it looks like a Bernie supporter was at the wheel of the container ship. Prayers for the missing sailors. I'd really like to hear what happened. You dont really hear of this kind of thing happening often on the shipping lanes. Drunk weekend warriors on a lake or near shore, sure, but not out on the shipping routes.

[Chance]

That's, what... 17 million pounds colliding with 58 million pounds?

Wow.

From CNN:

The area where the wreck happened is known for heavy maritime traffic, the Japanese coast guard said. About 400 to 500 ships pass through the zone each day, the service said.

The last known fatal incident there was in September 2015, when a South Korean vessel and a Japanese container ship collided, Japan's coast guard reported. Six Japanese crew were declared dead.

In such a busy shipping lane, the ships may have been in a "restricted navigation" situation, meaning they would have had o observe strict rules for movement and positioning in relation to other vessels in their vicinity, said Carl Schuster, former director of operations at the US Pacific Command's Joint Intelligence Center and a Hawaii Pacific University professor.

Those rules leave vessels little room to maneuver, as turning away from one ship could place a vessel at risk of an even more serious incident with another, Schuster said.
The area has seen two other major collisions in the past five years.

I'm sure we'll have knowledgeable folks wander in before too long, but I'm guessing the container ship's erratic path resulted in the destroyer trying to get out of the way.

The bulbous protrusion at the bow of the container ship, which evidently makes it more hydrodynamic, is leading people to speculate that the damage to the Fitzgerald may be worse under the water line.

[Trooper224]

Been there, done that during my Navy days. It happens more often than you think. You'd wonder how two ships can collide in the big open ocean, but it happens. This was at 2:00am, so it wasn't in broad daylight. The Destroyer was probably running without navigation lights, which is SOP. Navigation radar should have made the presence of both vessels obvious to each other. In the end, it will probably come down to human error, most likely on the part of both vessels.

[Drang]

Read somewhere that the skipper was among the injured, and not just his career.