maybe because he did not believe Halsey would make such a blunder with all his years at sea? The memo was a pretty stinging rebuke of his decision and even though Nimitz always supported Halsey publicly even after the latter took the fleet into a second strong typhoon, I believe privately he was appalled at the needless risk taken by Halsey and told Halsey so to his face.
While conducting operations off the Philippines, the Third Fleet remained on station rather than breaking up and running from the storm. This led to a loss of men, ships and aircraft. A Navy court of inquiry was convened on board the USS Cascade at the Naval base at Ulithi. Admiral Nimitz, CINCPAC, was in attendance at the court. Forty-three-year-old Captain Herbert K. Gates was the Judge Advocate for the court. The inquiry found that though Halsey had committed an error of judgment in sailing the Third Fleet into the heart of the typhoon, it stopped short of unambiguously recommending sanction.
In January 1945, Halsey passed command of the Third Fleet to Admiral Spruance (whereupon its designation changed to “Fifth Fleet”). Halsey resumed command in late-May 1945. In early June 1945 Halsey again sailed the fleet into the path of a typhoon, typhoon Connie, and while ships sustained crippling damage, none were lost on this occasion. However six lives were lost, and 75 planes were destroyed, with 70 more badly damaged. A second Navy court of inquiry was convened. This time the court suggested that Halsey be reassigned, but Admiral Nimitz recommended otherwise due to Halsey’s prior service to the Navy. Halsey remained in command of Third Fleet until the cessation of hostilities.
Halsey was no doubt a fighting Admiral however there is more than ample evidence to indicate the man’s decision making faculties were flawed vis. his falling for the ruse by the IJN to pull his forces away from the San Bernadino Strait which Halsey fell hook, line and sinker for. Only Kurita’s chickening out and turning tail when right on the doorstep of the invasion beaches of Leyte prevented a hideous bloodbath there. Nimitz of course was immediately aware of this as well hence the famous:
“Where is, repeat where is Task Force 34? The world wonders”
[QUOTE=captjacksparrow;180181]Would a higher manning standard, reducing the captain’s work load, help in theory and in fact?[/QUOTE]
Almost definitely, yes. There should be a 4th Mate so the Chief Mate doesn’t need to hold a watch and can actually be the Chief Mate. That would help ease the Master’s work load in port and at departure.
[QUOTE=Capt. Phoenix;180195]Almost definitely, yes. There should be a 4th Mate so the Chief Mate doesn’t need to hold a watch and can actually be the Chief Mate. That would help ease the Master’s work load in port and at departure.[/QUOTE]
except in this case an additional watchstander would not have saved the ship
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;180186]My argument here would be that it’s a mistake for the master to look at the weather until he is satisfied that it’s not an issue, or not an issue for the next 12 hrs when it will be routinely looked at again.[/QUOTE]
This sounds like the exact opposite of what I think you meant to say. Could you rephrase it to make it more clear please?
Re: “Where is, repeat where is Task Force 34? The world wonders”
From David Kahn’s history of cryptography (“The Codebreakers”), pg 609:
"Naval communication procedure called for the head and the tail of messages – their most vulnerable parts – to be concealed by nulls consisting of meaningless words. This “padding” was supposed to be totally alien to the text, but the enciphering ensign in Pearl Harbor violated this rule when he used a phrase that was ‘just something that popped into my head.’ Though he correctly set the padding off from the text by doubled letters, communicators on Halsey’s flagship decided against removing it on the chance it might be part of the message. Thus, the decipher tape they rushed to Halsey read:
From CINCPAC action Com Third Fleet info Cominch CIF seventy four X Where is repeat where is Task Force thirty four RR the world wonders."
(I’ve cut Kahn’s explanatory bracketed explanations of the naval jargon so you can see the message as it was.)
Kahn cites Nimitz, Halsey and Morison books but no primary archival sources.
Davidson was an ambitious man and opted for a position as master of one of the new Marlin-Class containerships. However, he was weighed by Tote and found to be too light for that position. Was Tote asked during the hearings what the reasons were which led to this negative conclusion. Surely they must have had some doubts and it would be interesting to learn what these were.
A deep-sea ship uses a process to navigate. The mate watches out the window and radar to see if the picture he sees matches what it should be if the ship is in safe waters and progressing down the track-line. But he doesn’t stop at the point where he is satisfied that everything is OK. Instead there is the requirement (pre-ECDIS) that track-lines and DRs be laid down on the chart and that fixes be plotted at regular specified intervals. It is a process designed to trap errors. If the DR and fix do not agree then the miss-match has to be resolved.
If he had seen that he might have been satisfied that he understood the situation and the TS-11 was not a threat. Instead a rule based error-trapping process should be used. For example there could be a requirement that (for example) any tropical cyclone in the Atlantic be tracked on a chart and updated at 6 hour intervals.
It pays to read the whole thread. This is from an article c.captain posted in #51:
By Kirk Moore
2/17/2016
Capt. Michael Davidson made his bid to get command of one of TOTE Maritime’s new 764’ Marlin-class liquefied natural gas containerships, weeks before he sailed with 32 others on the 40-year old El Faro into Hurricane Joaquin.
“He was brought in and given consideration…he was eminently qualified to be master of one of our LNG ships,” Philip Greene, the president of subsidiary TOTE Services and a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, told a Coast Guard board of inquiry Wednesday on its second day of hearings into the Oct. 1 sinking.
[snip]
At some point top TOTE management made a decision to recruit for four captain’s slots for the new ships, Isla Bella and Perla del Caribe, from outside the company.
That move was part of TOTE’s overall trends of “new leadership…new energy, new perspectives,” Greene said. “We were moving forward with new ships, new technology.” Davidson, like all the candidates, was "eminently qualified” as an unlimited tonnage master, he said.
[QUOTE=Capt. Phoenix;180202]What makes you so sure?[/QUOTE]
how would an additional watchstander prevent the flooding and the cargo breaking loose? Only someone with the power to halt the ship before it reached the point of imminent peril could have prevented the loss and that was the master.
[QUOTE=c.captain;180206]how would an additional watchstander prevent the flooding and the cargo breaking loose? Only someone with the power to halt the ship before it reached the point of imminent peril could have prevented the loss and that was the master.[/QUOTE]
That’s like arguing that the want of a nail could not possibly led to the kingdom being lost.
[QUOTE=Earl Boebert;180199]Re: “Where is, repeat where is Task Force 34? The world wonders”
FWIW.
Cheers,
Earl[/QUOTE]
of course this is common knowledge amongst all us naval historians and the entire message read:
TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR THE WORLD WONDERS
of course even though he completely missed that the ending words were not from Nimitz, the message made Halsey near apoplectic
The message (and its trailing padding) became famous, and created some ill feeling, since it appeared to be a harsh criticism by Nimitz of Halsey’s decision to pursue the decoy carriers and leave the landings uncovered. “I was stunned as if I had been struck in the face”, Halsey later recalled. “The paper rattled in my hands, I snatched off my cap, threw it on the deck, and shouted something I am ashamed to remember”, letting out an anguished sob. RADM Robert Carney, Halsey’s Chief of Staff (who had argued strongly in favor of pursuing the carriers), witnessed Halsey’s emotional outburst and reportedly grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, shouting “Stop it! What the hell’s the matter with you? Pull yourself together!” Recognizing his failure, Halsey sulked in inactivity for a full hour while Taffy 3 was fighting for its life – falsely claiming to be refueling his ships – before eventually turning around with his two fastest battleships, three light cruisers and eight destroyers and heading back to Samar, too late to have any impact on the battle.
[QUOTE=c.captain;180206]how would an additional watchstander prevent the flooding and the cargo breaking loose? Only someone with the power to halt the ship before it reached the point of imminent peril could have prevented the loss and that was the master.[/QUOTE]
An additional watch stander would have freed up the Chief Mate to be a proper Chief Mate. That could have changed the outcome in many ways. Maybe he would have been looking at the weather and conferring with the master, or maybe he would have taken some of the load off the master in the process of sailing so the master had more time, rest, and energy to analyze the weather himself.
The fact is that the bridge of most ships is undermanned and needs a 4th officer more than ever before thanks to all the new paperwork requirements that are added yearly.
[QUOTE=Dutchie;180210]So it is company policy and not a lack of capabilities on the part of Davidson. Good to know. Thank you for the information.[/QUOTE]
Apparently they were replacing both masters of both ships. I’m not sure if Davidson was aware of that or not though, he might have thought he still had a chance so didn’t want to miss his ETA. (I’m curious if the current masters were being fired or transferred to Alaska with their ships.)
[QUOTE=Kennebec Captain;180138]
Here is 30/1700 hrs LT, not much change, system is expected to be moving north. This forecast is consistent with plan to pass 65 miles south of the system.
[/QUOTE]
This forecast (#12) only predicts that the system will start moving north sometime after 14:00 on the 1st Oct LT. By which time they should have been past the area where it was forecast to be.
The storm actually started its jog north at approx. 02:00 EDT on 2nd Oct as a Cat 4 hurricane.
Advisory #18 at 05:00 EDT on the 2nd was the first that recorded the movement of the storm NW. #19 at 11:00 EDT showed it moving N, and #20a at 20:00 EDT had it going NE.
[QUOTE=Mat;180139]Which, without some kind of explanation, seems inexplicable.[/QUOTE]
it seems ludicrous that Davidson would simply have gone to bed and left no night orders for the bridge to closely monitor Joachim and for the master to be wakened if there were any developments he should be aware of. Could Davidson really been that asleep at the switch?
[QUOTE=c.captain;180217]it seems ludicrous that Davidson would simply have gone to bed and left no night orders for the bridge to closely monitor Joachim and for the master to be wakened if there were any developments he should be aware of. Could Davidson really been that asleep at the switch?[/QUOTE]
and if he was, was it that kind of toxic enviroment where nobody would raise the concern (besides an email home)? or were they in the same situation?
[QUOTE=Mat;180212]This forecast (#12) only predicts that the system will start moving north sometime after 14:00 on the 1st Oct LT. By which time they should have been past the area where it was forecast to be.
The storm actually started its jog north at approx. 02:00 EDT on 2nd Oct as a Cat 4 hurricane.
Advisory #18 at 05:00 EDT on the 2nd was the first that recorded the movement of the storm NW. #19 at 11:00 EDT showed it moving N, and #20a at 20:00 EDT had it going NE.[/QUOTE]
Yes, I see what you mean. The 65 mile margin was gone before 30/1700. It got eroded with each forecast. My guess is at this point that you’d have to look at the wind field and/or wave heights to justify standing on. The bigger the commitment the more reluctance to turn back. Crooked Island passage would seems like it would have been a better option. The other factor that obviously comes to mind is overconfidence and perhaps a failure to appreciate the nature of hurricanes.
[QUOTE=z-drive;180218]and if he was, was it that kind of toxic enviroment where nobody would raise the concern (besides an email home)? or were they in the same situation?[/QUOTE]
I just don’t know what the HELL happened there on the EL FARO after 2300 on the 30th…were they all blind to what lay ahead? Was Davidson’s command method an iron fist that brooked no questioning him in his decisiona? Maybe or maybe all the deck officers were also not feeling that any peril was possible? Recently, I asked the mate who was with me on the GALAXY in 1990 if he was livid at my decision to take the ship into a strong storm and he told me he wasn’t. He felt that it was not up to a mate to question the master regardless of how he might have felt although he says he did not feel I needlessly risked the ship that night. Maybe that was that he was younger than I so had still less experience himself? Maybe an older mate would have said “Captain, what the FUCK are you doing here?” I know one of the engineers was unhappy with my taking the ship out into the Gulf of Alaska but I only learned that years later. He said nothing to me personally. Of course, when we pushed past Cape Spencer conditions were not that bad and it was maybe eight hours later everything turned south and by then we were stuck to see it through. If you intend to use your voice, you have to use it in ample time to effect the outcome. It does no good at all to yell at someone when nothing can be changed other than to vent.