Navy Ship Collides with Tanker

Am I missing something here? How did this happen? Is this another case of incompetence?

U.S. Navy Ship Collides With Tanker Near Strait of Hormuz
By Wael Mahdi and Isaac Arnsdorf - Aug 12, 2012 5:47 AM ET

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The U.S. Navy said one of its guided-missile destroyers collided with an oil tanker near the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.

The collision between USS Porter and the Panamanian-flagged bulk oil tanker M/V Otowasan occurred at about 1 a.m. local time, Bahrain-based U.S. 5th Fleet spokesman Lieutenant Greg Raelson said in a phone interview today. The collision was not combat-related and overall damage to the ship is being evaluated, he said.

Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway carrying a fifth of the world’s traded oil that Iranian officials have threatened to block in retaliation for sanctions targeting the country’s nuclear program. The U.S. Navy has said it would move to stop any Iranian attempt block the waterway.

The tanker, owned by Tokyo-based Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd. (9104), can hold 2 million barrels of crude oil and is 95 percent full, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. The vessel loaded at Mesaieed in Qatar and was sailing to Fujairah, the region’s largest refueling port in the United Arab Emirates, the data show.

“We have had no reports of any spills or leakage,” 5th Fleet’s Raelson said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Wael Mahdi in Manama at wmahdi@bloomberg.net; Isaac Arnsdorf in London at iarnsdorf@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Shaji Mathew at shajimathew@bloomberg.net

Wow! That’s a fender bender!

[QUOTE=Fraqrat;78284]Wow! That’s a fender bender![/QUOTE]

uh oh…better get Maaco!

Wow. I guess that stealth shit works better than we thought!

Obviously the lookout couldn’t see anything either.

Don’t ya hate it when the Merchant ships have better wheelhouse staffing than the military? I mean the Navy ship probably had 15 to 25 people in the lookout to the final decision making process. The Merchant Vessel had at best 3 or 4. Which side is the collision on? Who was the give way vessel? Hmmmmmm

The Navy got hit on the starboard side just forward of the bridge. That make’s it look like he ran under the tanker’s port bow. Not good.

Yep everybody knows how sneaky those fully loaded supertankers can be. I swear officer he just poped up out of no where, never saw him coming. G whiz???

Maybe the tanker had his AIS turned off to avoid pirates. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard of a tanker popping up out of nowhere. Damned things are a menace I tell ya.

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/what-happens-when-a-battle-ship-hits-an-oil-tanker-Va180LqrS1OVoe_2zyNZww.html

video

[QUOTE=Fraqrat;78301]Maybe the tanker had his AIS turned off to avoid pirates. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard of a tanker popping up out of nowhere. Damned things are a menace I tell ya.[/QUOTE]

Yep, these tankers are so small, cannot spot them on radar either :wink:

Yet another example of the total incompetence of the USN. One report indicated the navy ship turned left on front of the tanker, they were all set up for a normal port to port passage. Of course the navy co will spin this in some fashion to where the tanker is at fault . The fact that the USN did most likely have 15 -25 people on the bridge is the reason they have problems. Generally most naval officers including commanding officers were leaps and bounds behind a good third mate in Maritme knowledge, basic seamanship and ability. I hear the co is from Guam, and a kp graduate. I bet he was fast tracked to co under political pressure. Perhaps he has a future in guam politics, or may be the next Msc Guam commanding officer.

If normal Navy procedure holds true, which it almost always does, the CO will be relieved of command and sent to finish his time in the Pentagon. Nice golden parachute, If you will.

As a former surface warfare officer and academy grad (not KP), I agree there is a lack of seamanship and sea sense when it comes to navigating navy vessels. Then again, I wasn’t there so maybe more to the story. In any case there is a CO and OOD whose career is over.

First hand account being circulated via email…

First of all, thanks for checking up on us. Everything is ok here but the ship has seen better days! The pictures don’t even crack the surface on all the damage we sustained. I was on watch in … when the walls started caving in. Ill give you the short version as we are still in the process of figuring out what went wrong. … we were doing a Straight of Hormuz transit … There was a conversation over the net between the bridge and the TAO about a possibly (sic) contact not under command in front of us. We avoided that contact, checked the radar and didn’t have much. SWS had a few hits on the radar but there was not a steady track on the contact. Over the net in heard the OOD say that we were coming up to flank speed to avoid the NUC contact. We went hard right, then hard left to avoid this contact. All of us in combat thought we were clear when we heard we were slowing to 5 knots. Not more than 30 seconds later the ship started coming through the wall. Combat had no warning at all that we were going to collide as we had no paint on this guy. It happened so quickly that there was no time to brace for shock or the collision alarm. It happened so fast. I will never forget that sound or the smell that went along with it.

As of right now, we do not have a starboard break. When the ship came through the wall, the fire main and chill water pipes exploded and we had water pouring out at alarming rate all over energized equipment. My GQ station … so as you can imagine, fires were breaking out all over the place. Radio was completely submerged as a result of the ruptured fire main and chill water pipes that burst. Besides the gigantic hole in the side of the ship, radio seems to have sustained the most damage. It was filling up so fast that everyone in radio had to use to escape trunk to get out. Cleaning that up is a gigantic mess! We still have not been able to get the ACs back online so the temperature on the ship is well over 130 degrees and has been deemed uninhabitable. The first night in port, everyone slept topside as no one knew what to do with 300 homeless sailors on such short notice. We have about 100 or so cots set up not but that still leave people sleeping topside.

We have every tech rep known to man on board right now along with VADM Miller (5th fleet), the Captain in charge of this area, and so many other military representatives. We really won’t know the full extent of the damage for quite a while now but as you can imagine, there isn’t much good news coming out of this. The divers were here yesterday and we are starting to hear some of the results from their dive are starting to surface. After this week, we should have a slightly better idea of the extent of the damage and want we are going to do. We do know that whatever fixes they will made here are only temporary and permanent repairs will be made back in Norfolk.

No one ever thinks their ship is going to be the main character of a case study. We don’t go out to sea thinking we are going to collide with a fully loaded oil tanker twice our size. It was absolutely unreal. It is a miracle no one was seriously hurt or killed. The bumps and bruises are starting to show up which are very minor in comparison to what could have happened. Had someone been sitting in the tomahawk corner, they would have been cut in half. I walked through the pway where the crash occurred no more than 5 minutes before the crash. Our smoke break was also in the starboard break, which no longer exists. The blast door that was once there is now 2 decks below where it use to be. How is it possible that not a single person was there at the time? We were hit so hard that the missile deck was in the water. SCAT was manned and not a single one of them was hurt. The whole situation is still very unreal and we are all very lucky to be alive. Had we hit head on or at midships, we would have lost a lot of lives. I was standing in combat watching the ship crush the walls in just thinking, this is the end of all of us. It was and still is absolutely unreal.

Via CDR Salamander: PORTER Collision: 1st Hand Report

Sounds like extensive damage. US Navy has a long list of similar collisions, Melbourne/Evans, Kennedy/Belknap, to name a few. Bad news for Navy.

Can someone please explain to me how the hell the radar the Navy uses couldn’t see a VLCC?Probably some seamen playing with the gain dial…

HOW ABOUT FUCKING BINOCULARS?!?!?!?! AND A VHF RADIO?!?!?

[QUOTE=Mikey;79230]First hand account being circulated via email…

There was a conversation over the net between the bridge and the TAO about a possibly (sic) contact not under command in front of us. We avoided that contact, checked the radar and didn’t have much. SWS had a few hits on the radar but there was not a steady track on the contact. Over the net in heard the OOD say that we were coming up to flank speed to avoid the NUC contact. We went hard right, then hard left to avoid this contact. All of us in combat thought we were clear when we heard we were slowing to 5 knots. Not more than 30 seconds later the ship started coming through the wall. Combat had no warning at all that we were going to collide as we had no paint on this guy. It happened so quickly that there was no time to brace for shock or the collision alarm. It happened so fast. I will never forget that sound or the smell that went along with it.

Via http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2012/08/porter-collision-1st-hand-report.html[/QUOTE]

Whatever happened to “allowing more time to assess the situation”, by SLOWING DOWN! I know its in the rules somewhere around safe speed. (Rule 7?)

I don’t work on deep sea ships, mud boats, or tugs, but when in doubt…I slow down, take a step back, and reassess the situation.

I have a friend who was the comm officer on the Porter a few years back and now he is with 5th fleet. Ill see if he knows anything.

“On the specifics of this case - by the time this redacted email was published here, the unredacted version was all over the place; not by me - but via email, Facebook, etc by others. The drama-mammas, haters, control freaks, bed wetters, & self-important should probably gather a little perspective and note what this email actually does; it gives you a shot of the professionalism of our men and women in a collision at sea. One where no one was killed, but a well trained crew and a well built ship made it back to port under power.”

If you follow the link to where the original story was posted on a blog hosted by " cdr salamander". His statement above shows he is about a disconnected as the rest of the USN. " professionalism"? They turned left in front of a tanker. … How professional is that?

Thanks for sharing this. Incredible to say the least. Really sounds like amateur hour in the bridge. SWO, Cic, OOD, JOD etc… How about a frigging watch officer with a license!

[QUOTE=Xmsccapt(ret);79410]“On the specifics of this case - by the time this redacted email was published here, the unredacted version was all over the place; not by me - but via email, Facebook, etc by others. The drama-mammas, haters, control freaks, bed wetters, & self-important should probably gather a little perspective and note what this email actually does; it gives you a shot of the professionalism of our men and women in a collision at sea. One where no one was killed, but a well trained crew and a well built ship made it back to port under power.”

If you follow the link to where the original story was posted on a blog hosted by " cdr salamander". His statement above shows he is about a disconnected as the rest of the USN. " professionalism"? They turned left in front of a tanker. … How professional is that?

Thanks for sharing this. Incredible to say the least. Really sounds like amateur hour in the bridge. SWO, Cic, OOD, JOD etc… How about a frigging watch officer with a license![/QUOTE]

[B]CDR Salamander
"Proactively “From the Sea”; leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity"[/B]

Say, Cdr Salamander, does your boomerang ever come back?