"USS Fitzgerald in collision off Japan" Topic

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My God, you beat Tango to the post!

WTF… hasn't radar been around for 75 years or more?

See John Candy vs. Richard Crenna in Summer Rental.

The destroyer was damaged on the right side, and the cargo ship was damaged on the left side, so it appears that the ships were going in approximately the same direction.

… Oh, hear us when we cry to thee for those in peril on the sea.

My thoughts are with the lost sailors.

Path of the ACX Crystal shows an unplanned u-turn a half-hour before the collision. Damage to both vessels looks more like a t-bone than a sideswipe. 7 sailors are still unaccounted for, divers are going down into the flooded sections of Fitzgerald.

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"On the timeline of the merchant ship, one sees obvious anomalies from 0010AM (0410PM UTC)."

So Filipino cargo ships are now as much a threat as North Korean missiles?

@piper909,

Perhaps more of a threat?

All sailors are now accounted for – the Crystal's prow hit a berthing compartment, apparently, and the remains of the missing 7 sailors have been recovered.

Reading another article claims the cargo ship turned off its running lights and transponder. Was this a deliberate ramming attack?

Reading another article claims the cargo ship turned off its running lights and transponder. Was this a deliberate ramming attack?

No need to go full paranoid before all the facts are in.

A sailor would have to be too stupid to live to turn off their running lights and transponder at night.

Because if this *was* a mere accident, this is exactly what happens when you let [expletives deleted] turn off lights and transponder. Someone runs into you and kills a lot of people.

Plus – check the course – sudden about turn – was heading due east, suddenly turns north and then west as the Fitz is passing by.

This is highly likely to be deliberate.

Well, didn't take long for the paranoid rumblings to start. Might want to wait until the facts come out (I know, facts are SO inconvenient…).

BTW, according to one expert in the field, there's one such collision per DAY worldwide.

Third World cargo ships are all too often very poorly maintained and manned by virtually untrained crews. I know of two incidents in which U.S. highway bridges were rammed by foreign ships due to jammed steering mechanisms. In another case of collisions between two ships, it came out that one of them was running at night on autopilot with no qualified ship's officer on bridge duty. Some reports indicate the latter might have been true in this case.

See my comment regarding sailors too stupid to live, attilathepun.

The sea does not tolerate stupidity like that without killing someone for it.

Unfortunately, its not always the stupid that pays the price (as in this case. And tragically so). We can only hope that the truly stupid will some day get their just rewards…

Looks like the container ship was running on autopilot, and resumed previous course after hitting the USS Fitzgerald and that there was nobody on the bridge when the collision happened.

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