This is a strange case and I have investigated several. After a collision at sea both parties normally discuss on VHF what happened, etc, etc, and later, in port, owner/H&M/P&I/cargo inspectors and authorities visit both vessels to establish the damages and the proximate cause of them … and who is going to pay what, and so on. If you cannot agree, the case may go to arbitration or court.
Here there is no info about any VHF-contact between the ships at all, which must be the reason for CRYSTAL returning to the location of the collision to have a look. Maybe FITZ… had sunk … . The silence of FITZ… is disturbing. It seems FITZ… - the give way vessel, was sneaking up from behind and crossed in front of CRYSTAL and the collision occurred. Maybe the FITZ… was chasing North Korean submarines ready to attack Japan and USA and got a little absentminded?
The Japs have the VDR from the ship and their own radar plots/vhf tapes, I think the investigation is already over and done with.
^^ question - anyone know if there are Japanese shore radar that sweep this area - military, or JCG perhaps?
Is it safe to assume that a ship’s captain might use the light instead of the VHF in order to avoid embarrassing the other vessel’s captain by broadcasting over the VHF, a channel open to all in receiving range, and also something that would be recorded on those vessels’ VDR’s?
Is is also safe to assume that another case in which a ship’s captain might use the light instead of VHF to signal a ship at night who isn’t transmitting AIS, since they would not know who to hail on the radio? “Hello, ship near Japan, have you got yer ears on? Breaker breaker good buddy, & all that.” It occurs to me that trying to hail a random ship out of maybe fifty ships which might receive the transmission might get either no response, or many responses.
Y’all attract a lot of attention when a big news event happens and your industry might benefit by adding some additional context for the broader than normal audience.
The light was used more often pre-AIS because of the time and trouble it took to communicate. Not to mention the risk of making passing arraignments with the wrong ship. Now with AIS the VHF is more often the go to tool to sort out complex traffic situations with another ships, for example two ships approach each other while weaving through a fishing fleet.
With fishing boats without AIS it likely not worth the time to try and contact via VHF. Say I’m meeting a large vessel port to port and overtaking a fishing vessel to stbd, with bad water to stbd, the F/V starts to creep in on me a quick flash of the light “hey I’m here” most often does the trick. Unlike the 5 short blasts the light is specific to a single vessel.
Under stress people tend to revert to old habits, if the crew used the light frequently but not the whistle that might explain that reaction, of course they “should have” used the whistle as well.
Yes, that’s true, but most people don’t read long posts, I sail foreign deep-sea, world wide. Taiwan Strait, Korean Strait, South China Sea, Japan Sea, Singapore Strait, Gulf of Thailand all involve encountering heavy, mixed fishing boat / large ship traffic, a little more to it than saying follow COLREGS.
You know, there has got to be a happy balance between too many people on the bridge or too few. When the dust settles, I wonder if that will even come up. My point is, with the sheer amount of people on the bridge of a naval ship (yes, I have sailed on the bridge of a naval ship), there’s just too many people up there for a good flow of information and great situational awareness (in my opinion). On a merchant ship, in a busy water way, there’s probably too few. I wonder if that subject will even come up? Just a random thought while reading all these good posts.
Yes i heard the japs have the radar and vhf tapes
As has already been said the Fitzgerald was not showing any AIS information.
It is often the case USN ships call other ships on VHF and request/order other vessels to keep clear (It’s true) no matter what"the Rules" say.Collision avoidance by VHF is practised widely by them. There are plenty of international flags however that actively discourage the use of VHF for collision avoidance purposes, but I doubt any ship, no matter which flag, would ignore a call from a naval vessel of any nation.
Which leads me to suggest the Fitzgerald did not use VHF to call ACX Crystal, and as they were also not identified on AIS, the ACX Crystal only saw a fairly small radar target, mostly blacked out, or well darkened, and used the aldis lamp to flash concerns at this unidentified vessel. Whistle signals fade very quickly with distance whereas an aldis lamp is very bright and will be easily seen at night over much further distance than a whistle can be heard.
We still havnt heard if the navy boat was disabled in any way?
We have not, but would the Captain be napping in his stateroom if his ship were disabled? It’s possible, but I think unlikely.
Took me a while to find these pix in my archives. Just for edification on warship AIS/radar questions, I attach 2 views of convoy forming up for Gulf of Aden transit. Me at the back of centre line (B5).
Note the AIS/ECS plotter view of 3 lines of mercant vsls.
Then on the radar view, see the two extras on the outside of the formation - our escorting warships! (in this case PLA Navy).Still very visible radar targets, no AIS.
Looks like that info isn’t coming any time soon, either. Crystal captain finally asked why Fitz turned across his bow - very good question. Certainly fits damage photos and track of Crystal. The proximate cause has to be failure of the fleeter vessel to give way to the lumbering container ship. Everything after that looks like comedy of errors - as was said at the beginning - plenty of blame to go around and, historically, no one walks away unblemished. Wish I could be a fly on the wall when the Navy deposes the Fitz bridge crew.
The area where the incidence took place , early in the morning, it reminds me lot with few factors that contributed the accident…Haze condition during the Northern Summer period -starts fm May,dense traffic with crossing situation within normal traffic lane from Uraga Suido( Tokyo bay ports) to Irago Suido ( Nagoya or adjacents ports), speedy vessels with PCC/Container coupled with Japan coaster-Kinkai vessels , intend to pick up pilots early in the morning.Wondering how the USS navy ship following the normal Commercial busy lane where no VTIS coverage similar to Singapore strait…they shud be slightly out of lane to avoid such incidence. Regret to say, Navy personnel are poor in Navigation in all nationality with factors that compiled by Captain Conrad are very legitimate based on my 30 yrs sailing exp with at least 20 yrs of exp within the waters where incidence took place
Since the Navy is not going to let any other authority interview the Fitz crew I suspect the Navy interviews will carefully avoid any questions which answered would make the Navy look even more ridiculous, if such a condition is possible.
The Navy will not ask questions that jeopardize the reputation of any senior officer or organization. They do not want any document to exist which a critic may, at some time in the future, use for any reason that might harm the organization. Naval investigators know and have been told which questions are “off limits.”
Why else would the Navy deny any legitimate maritime authority the opportunity to gain knowledge about how a repeat of such an event might occur?
I believe this “investigation” has begun in the shadow of the USS Porter bridge audio. As much as the Navy would like to promote the idea of “never again” the reality is its fractured DNA creates an “until next time” culture and until there are drastic changes like never seen before, next time will probably not be all that far away.
boy, you sure got that one right
U.S. Likely to Bar Japan Investigators from Interviewing Fitzgerald Crew, Official Says
June 30, 2017
By Tim Kelly TOKYO, June 30 (Reuters) – The United States will likely bar Japanese investigators from interviewing USS Fitzgerald crew manning the guided missile destroyer when it was struck by a cargo ship in Japanese waters killing seven American sailors, a U.S. navy official said.
The Philippines-flagged container ship ACX Crystal and the U.S. warship collided at night just south of Tokyo Bay on June 17. The U.S. deaths were the greatest loss of life on a U.S. Navy vessel since the USS Cole was bombed by militants in Yemen’s Aden harbour in 2000. No one was hurt on the cargo ship.
At least six investigations are being carried out, including two U.S. Navy internal hearings and one by the United States Coast Guard (USCG). The Philippines government is also conducting an investigation.
The U. S. Coast Guard, which is investigating on behalf of the National Transportation Safety Board, has interviewed the crew of the container ship.
But the U.S. navy official, who declined to be identified, said warships were afforded sovereign immunity under international law and foreign investigators were not expected to get access to the U.S. crew.
“It’s unlikely Japanese or Philippine authorities will have direct access to crew members,” said the U.S. official.
The U.S. Coast Guard would instead provide summaries of crew interviews to the Japan Transport Safety Board (JTSB), which would share them with the Japan Coast Guard (JCG), he said.
Declining access may be viewed by Japanese investigators as falling short of a pledge made by Seventh Fleet commander Vice Admiral Joseph P. Aucoin of full cooperation in the investigation.
“We have asked for access to the U.S. ship and its crew and can’t proceed until we hear back from the U.S. Navy,” said a spokesman for the JTSB. He said he was unaware that the U.S. side was likely to turn down the request.
A Seventh Fleet spokesman said the navy would “share information in accordance with protocols.”
In the first detailed account from someone involved in the accident, the ACX Crystal’s captain, in a report seen by Reuters, said his ship signalled the Fitzgerald with flashing lights about 10 minutes before the collision, but the U.S. ship did not respond or alter course.
The Fitzgerald will enter dry dock at its home port in Yokosuka, Japan, where engineers will assess damage and patch it up in preparation for a return to the United States for full repairs.
“We are still working through the timing and how the ship will get there,” the Seventh Fleet spokesman said.
GODDAMNED NAVEE IS SO FUCKING GUILTY HERE…NOTHING BUT A MISERABLE BUNCH OF SELF SERVING HYPOCRITE!
SICKENING!
You are probably right about no outside agency being granted access to interview the crew or assess damage to the Fitz, but as to the internal investigation, I disagree: they will ask. It won’t be a public investigation and you won’t see their findings. The existence of embarrassing documents from previous investigations is evidence enough that they don’t shrink from asking tough questions - USS Indianapolis is a good case in point. The fact that they know in advance that those interviews will be kept in-house eliminates any need to avoid tough questions - they will be asked, and maybe even held responsible in ways we’ll never know. Military officers take the death of America’s sons and daughters entrusted to their care most seriously. I conducted many such investigations (AR 15-6’s in the Army) and the findings were our business alone, not for public dissemination. In some cases, the interviews and findings were legitimately classified - such as the 15-6s I conducted in Bosnia and Iraq - those won’t see daylight until after I’m dead. (I directed Army vessels all over the Persian Gulf.) In many cases, the final report may be sanitized during rewrites to keep them brief, with only the ‘findings and recommendations’ being fully spelled out and retained in official records that may one day be disclosed. A supporting interview form may be lost, which is improper, but not unheard of, or redacted, but the tough questions will definitely be asked. Conducting those interviews with no holds barred helps one develop insights into what goes on in the minutes leading up to, and in the immediate aftermath of, an accident like this. The Navy definitely wants to know how and why this happened, and what can be done to prevent expensive ‘encores’. In any case, this investigation won’t get public release unless the Navy determines it’s in their interest to do so, which I’m sure it’s not. The movements of the Fitz, as reported by Crystal, and the fact that Fitz was impaled amidship by Crystal’s bow, are all the evidence we need to draw that conclusion. In the interest of Maritime safety, they might release their final recommendations, but some of the contributors to this incident won’t be negotiable, like turning on their locators - which is an OPSEC issue, particularly for a Navy still involved in GWOT against tech-savvy JIhadists and N Korea behaving so badly in that area at the time of this incident. The best compromise I can see is better VHF monitoring and restoring manual signal training for bridge crews, as the Army had to do with manual gunnery, and a good bang on the helmet for whoever decided they could clear Crystal’s bow without impact - unless their radars failed, which the internal investigation will discover. The actions of the Crystal, moving at a leisurely 12 kts, are unremarkable, if sluggish, and the captain of the Crystal reported “confusion” on his bridge, but that’s to be expected if the captain wasn’t on the bridge himself before the impact. I discount speculation that Crystal may have veered off course before the incident; it’s far more likely that they were on autopilot and bridge crew turned her hard to starboard in a hopeless effort to avoid or minimize the impact, and probably less than 6 minutes before the collision. With both captains off their bridges (unremarkable for that location, despite numerous past incidents), we’re probably looking at Fitz doing something unnecessarily risky in front of a vessel incapable of avoiding her, but trying for all she was worth and flashing warning signals (per Capt. Advincula), and then all hell breaking loose - with less experienced officers making the tough calls well enough, but not as well as their captains, or even you or I might have managed in their places. Capt. Advincula did not report that anyone on his vessel signaled Fitz on VHF-16, which all vessels are required to monitor in Tokyo Bay, and offered no explanation for that omission to his employers, but no one else reports hearing Crystal’s crew on VHF-16 until after the collision, which the Japanese investigation will clear up. The Navy actually eliminated the Signalman rate in 2003, according to an article on the US Navy’s own website - http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=10511. Ineffectually rolling that responsibility up under the QM rate - not a top priority for them. Two retired Navy signalmen say the Navy has since stopped requiring ICS and Morse, it’s now an extra-credit self-paced course that doesn’t include lights, just minimal key training, and a 2014 youtube video shows a US vessel flashing poorly spaced and almost unintelligible light signals. Last year, the Navy announced “reviving” signal lights, but not for Morse, but as a carrier wave for digital ship-to-ship communications http://dailycaller.com/2016/08/10/revamped-100-year-old-lamp-will-help-the-navy-counter-russia-and-china/ So it’s unlikely anyone on the Fitz bridge even understood the Crystal’s signal - especially if they were younger, second-stringers. It’s possible that more seasoned officers were on the bridges of both ships, but if they were, they didn’t perform to expectations, and that may be noted in their performance evaluations. This was not the greatest maritime disaster we’ve seen, and not the last - may God show mercy to the faithful sailors now in His care.
(C.Captain’s unfortunately inappropriate profanity notwithstanding.)
The light signal was very likely not Morse code but simply flashing a light to get their attention.
Even worse. Fitz should have seen her running lights, but apparently didn’t.
Similarity to Porter Collision is eerie.
I assume the Japan Transport Safety Board - https://www.mlit.go.jp/jtsb/english.html – is already investigating the collision incl. interviewing crews, inspecting damages and the proximate cause as it occurred in Japanese waters. US NTSB may attend as interested party as any Philippine authority. When the report is complete all interested parties have the opportunity to comment on the findings and after that the report will be published on the Internet, maybe in less than two years time. Re cost of damages the structural damages of the Crystal focsle bulwark they are initially paid by H&M underwriters that later could claim them from USN.