Well, I acknowledge that is good thinking, in addition plausibly true… guess I assumed the ships’ onboard computers driving the auto-pilot would actually log the data & keep records which the Captain could consult after the fact?
According to this article, most merchant ships turn on a circle having a diameter equal to 3-4 ship’s lengths “at full speed with the helm at 35 degrees”. If the ACX was turning hard, then perhaps D = 3L ~= 2000’, R = D/2 = 1000’ in round numbers.
If you accept the “warship due east, ACX ENE” impact scenario, then the ACX could have turned no more than 20 degrees… that translates to a forward distance of travel, or arc length around that turning circle, of at most Rtheta = R(2pi 20/360) = R*(pi/9) ~= R/3 ~= 300’ = 100yards. At 18 knots, the ACX would have covered a hundred yards every 10s.
Now, that is rather rough, but the calculation shows that the ACX, in the above scenario, did not begin any maneuvers much more than 100 yards from the warship. If you visualize that, 100 yards being hardly more than half of the warship’s waterline, then… if anything… a turn at such a late stage would only have moved the impact point further forward along the warship’s hull…
given that the final impact was straight into the central superstructure, then without any turning inputs, the freighter would have clipped the warship’s stern or possibly even just barely missed the vessel entirely.
So I offer that it is very hard to distinguish between “no turn at all” and “100 yards = 10s” of turn – and, if any turn to starboard was actually undertaken, it may have made the impact more severe, perhaps a turn to PORT would have avoided a collision altogether?? Of course, if the Captain really was on the bridge, he had a duty to do something, he could slam into a Navy vessel having done nothing to avoid an impact… and a turn to PORT would have been a much riskier maneuver… a turn to starboard would have been the safest and most acceptable option from 100yards = 10s to impact… I just don’t understand why an evasive maneuver would have been initiated so late in the drama. Nor do I know how to distinguish between “no turn” and “at most 100yards of turn for at most 10s”. One wonders if both ships somehow thought there was “just enough” room to avoid collision all the way up until the very last possible moment?