It’s good.
Great Grady alumni and I remember seeing your boat from the Pretty Lake Bridge.
John,
Your excellent analysis has a minor error. You wrote that the Crystal had an AIS “receiver.” It actually had to be a “transceiver,” as it is required to transmit its location, etc.
It could be that the Fitz was only using the “receiver” portion of their AIS “transceiver.” I’ve sure this will come out in the investigation
Armand
Thank you 
But no, I am not an NTSB investigator.
But I have done my time in the Navy. I’m an engineer in Applied Physics. Tomorrow I’ll take a coast guard vessle with an entirely new manouvering system for a trial run.
I buy the comments on turning rather than slowing down, and I do see why. But I still have an issue with the damages vs this “course of action”.
When a ship like the Crystal makes a hard starboard turn, where will the center of the rotational movement be? I am assuming somewhere outside the rear starboard half of the ship. If so, it would mean that the Crystal must have displaced the Fitz quite a bit in the water while the Crystal completes its turn to clear the Fitz. And this is where I think the damages would have been much more severe, or at least extending a lot more, at least on the Fitz.
If two vessels move parallel to each other, or even if one vessel is stationary and the other moving at some speed, there will develop a pressure zone between them that keeps them apart.
Would be interesting to learn more about this, you wouldn’t happen to have a link to more info about this phenomena?
Google “bow cushion” and the game the Houston ship channel pilots play called “Texas chicken”.
Edit: Google ‘bow cushion shipping’ or you get yacht fenders.
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Pivot point is near the front 1/3 of a vessel moving forward. At full sea speed there would be large amount of advance in the turning circle. Figure 18 knots equals roughly 0.3nm per minute. The stern would have a large area of “sweep” as the turn would be made, though if the Crystal’s bow was forced around abruptly by the impact this could look more like an instantaneous setting of a new heading.
You seem to be fixated on the trading of paint between the two ships. Have you considered that they both may have been heeled over by the impact and forward motion and made further contact under the waterline?
Texas Chicken More like a commercial for Houston Pilots
More, Texas Chicken filmed with a potato link
Six min timelapse of a trip up the ship channel with a few close passes link
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[quote=“DamnYankee, post:131, topic:45129”]
Pivot point is near the front 1/3 of a vessel moving forward. At full sea speed there would be large amount of advance in the turning circle. Figure 18 knots equals roughly 0.3nm per minute. The stern would have a large area of “sweep” as the turn would be made, though if the Crystal’s bow was forced around abruptly by the impact this could look more like an instantaneous setting of a new heading.[/quote]
Correct, I wrote rear half but ment front half, and 1/3 it was 
What I was after was exactly what you mention, the stern sweep.
Considering that the Crystals bow collided pretty straight into the Fitz (let’s say somewhere in between 90 and 135 degrees ), and that the Crystal is about 3-4 times the weight of the Fitz, there would likely not be any abrupt forcing around of the Crystals bow. It’ll be the Fitz being displaced. Surely the Crystals course and speed was affected as well, but I doubt it was an abrupt change of course.
This is something that puzzles me, yes. That-s a good thought there, and now that you mention it, the Fitz was surely heeled over quite a bit to port at the impact. But gravity will most likely get her back again a lot quicker than the motion of the two ships moving into a similar course and separating, and in that process, the Fitz will begin to gain its starboard list from taking in water through the ruptured hull, I would assume.
Haha, you should try googling “bow cushion”
But I did find what you mean down the hit list. And a simple but good link, which brings up what I was thinking. You’ll get a bow cushion, but a stern suction.
Also, I wonder if this applies when the ships have collided in the way the Crystal and Fitz did. But I certainly won’t argue it couldn’t Similar effects is surely an issue in sea rescue from time to time.
I just tried. Sorry, Google ‘bow cushion shipping’.
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I’m talking about pressure zone developing between hulls when two ships are REALLY close, like 1-2 m. apart and moving at some speed relative to each other, which MAY have been the case here.
As a young Master I used this phenomena to get out of a tricky situation.
In 1971 I was leaving from the very congested Inner Roads in Singapore with a small ship. When I was passing the side of another ship still at anchor, I was set towards her Port side.
Knowing about the effect of pressure zones between hulls, I increased speed to build up such a pressure zone, The distance between the hulls were not much, but no contact was made.
When the effect got reduced as my stern got close to her bow, I ordered hard a stbd., both to keep my propeller clear of her anchor chain and to avoid hitting the detached mole that existed there then.
PS> This was before ISM so no Near Miss Report needed.
This is what the Inner Roads in Singapore looked like at that time:
Always full of small ships, tongkangs and sampans. Pilots refused to take ships in or out of there.
The detached mole that protected the anchorage from the NE Monsoon swell is now somewhere under the Marina Bay Sands Casino.
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Have you ever listened to the cacophony on the bridge of a U.S. Navy ship? Hard to maintain “situational awareness” where pandemonium reigns.
https://pilotonline.com/news/military/audio-confusion-reigned-before-destroyer-s-collision/article_c7472be8-efcb-5763-93bb-aab66d820175.html
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Well, what do you know, the USS Fitzgerald wasn’t the first destroyer to get hit dead on right on that spot. USS Porter beat her to it by several years 
By the conversation on the bridge to judge, the crew has very little confidence in their captain, no wonder he was relieved.
And no wonder they collided, no one on the bridge had any plan on what to do, especially not the Captain, who, considering just that, simply should have let the OOD do his job (who actually had a plan) . That said from a leadership perspective. If you, as the top dog, entered the scene minutes ago, don’t make hasty decisions in a stressed situation in contradiction of your trusted staff, unless you have grasped the situation and know what you are doing. That goes in any profession.
If your response is “Why don’t we go this way?”, in a situation like that, then you know you don’t know
What can be noticed, is that the Porter also seem to lack the kind of damage I am looking for. So, I guess, these accident happens without that kind of damage occuring. So, now I wonder, how the ships moves relative of each other during the collision, and how they come apart, without further damage.
There are some good articles on gCaptain.com and a couple of long forum threads here about the Porter incident.
If your response is “Why don’t we go this way?”, in a situation like that, then you know you don’t know
Nothing’s wrong with the Socratic method as long as: you’re in control of the situation, and a teaching/mentoring environment; the Porter wasn’t, though. I don’t really get a socratic vibe from that guy’s voice though, it sounds more like an arrogant / rhetorical response from a guy who knew he was right.
PS You might have a look at the Colombo Express collision in the Suez a few years ago.
Captain Konrad: Your title and first sentence are great but the piece kind of slides of into the murk after that.
The Fitgerald was hit on the green light! That means IAW the COLREGs that the merchant ship had the right of way and it was the duty of the destroyer to avoid the collision. The electronic gear, watch keeping standards and all the other stuff mean absolutely nothing in the face of that one fact.
It will be interesting to find out why the Captain was not on the bridge. I don’t know that piece of the ocean so am not competent to critique. It should be noted that Navy Regs are plain on the Captain’s responsibility for qualifying OODs. He writes a letter saying the the officer is qualified as OOD on large amphibious ships for example. He has then bought responsibility for anything that officer does on watch.
I did participate in a very similar situation a long time ago, i.e., the statute of limitations has expired. During Operation Steel Pike in 1963, all the east coast Marines got on all the east coast amphibious ships and sailed over to Spain for a practice landing. As Marine officer, I was part of the ship’s company and for personal reasons had just started to qualify for underway watches. (My future father in law was skipper of the USS Randolph at the time.) It was the mid-watch the second or third night out and we were steaming in form 51 under EMREL conditions. This meant that each of the ships was responsible for visually keeping the assigned distance from the guide, which was the Boxer LPH-4. Our station was on the port bow 1,000 yards away. Which ever of the Lt(jg)’s had the conn saw that we were a bit outside of station and commanded a 2 degree course change to close the guide a bit. We then continued our conversation until somebody wandered out on the starboard bridge wing and discovered the Boxer about 500 yards away and towering over us!
I would submit that the facts available to date indicate that Fitzgerald bridge team, although not in formation, did something similar. The approaches to a port feature lots of parallel or converging courses setting up a relative motion situation much like formation steaming.
When the Navy started to design their post-WWII destroyers there was considerable discussion about the bridge accommodations. Previous destroyer classes had open bridges. The Navy decided to enclose the bridges for the comfort of the watch standers. That made the last step in maneuvering more important and more difficult. Before giving a helm order the conning officer looks at what he might be steering the ship into. In the Burke class ships that looks to require opening a door and going outside. It looks like the final step in an incident chain!
Is it me or does the Navy complicate navigation and maneuvering for unnecessary reasons? If the Fitzgerald was alone and returning to port, how about getting onboard with the rest of us out there and acting like a simple old Power Driven Vessel? I think John hit it on the head with his article. The international language of the sea is English, but just about every term you used describing S.O.P. on a Navy ship sounded like a foreign language to me. I’m American. How do you think the rest of the world comprehends things like distances in yards? Work it out into Cables or Nautical miles. The international standard.
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Two things I never do on this forum are curse and praise @john but holy shit, did you guys read the comments to John’s article on Facebook? Practically the entire officer corps of the 7th fleet took a dump on him in the comments.
Well done John! Seriously the article was well written, accurate and obviously hit a soft spot right on the mark. As our navy “friends” would say Bravo ZULU.
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