USS J McCain / Alnic MC collision near Singapore

They already have a mechanism in place for this. They just need to offer better incentives. Direct commission MMR ( now called Strategic Sealift Officers) make it easy for people people to sign up, especially those who didn’t do it in school and sailed commercial instead, and offer them good incentives for active duty positions sailing. Maybe you won’t get SSOs on every ship in the fleet, but even if you have a lot of them out there it will help.

2 Likes

Agree, that could be a way of distilling hard earned experience to the benefit of both.

In my experience of Singapore Strait (30+ years) the traffic has a flow and a behavior.

You get a sixth sense of what is going to happen that is invaluable.

Back to the Mcain it does not look goof - look at the AIS animation - all is going well and flowing well until the collision.

Perhaps an ill judged crossing by the Mcain?

Press is not short of opinions from “experts”, once again…
"Bonji Ohara, a research fellow at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation in Tokyo, told New York Times one recurring problem was that while naval ships tended to have live crews on watch, most commercial ships work on autopilot mode to reduce costs, which can lead to problems in busy sea lanes."
:angry:

Perhaps there should be pilots available for the approaches to Singapore? They would probably have to be embarked in the previous port and disembarked in the next port.

The Navy could do a lot of good training for its ship drivers with simulator training for the difficult places.

Simulator Training is useful but not a band aid and cure all.

I have several weeks worth of sim training and have done research in simulators working with simulator operators.

The problem with sims is that the classes, usually split into pairs for each bridge station, end up gamifying the exercise. The object then becomes one of surviving the course to get to the next level.

As an example, and this was in Singapore in the sim, we had one scenario that we created that had not run before.

The student, experienced Chief Mate & another from same class acting as helmsman, did OK at first, managing bridge assets well till the black swan of an extra vessel coming out of Jurong caught them out (they were the stand on vessel) and collision.

Also sims take huge PC power - full mission bridge sims can have typically 93 PCs to run everything.

With Singapore they struggles as they cannot project the true number of vessels and it ends up as Singapore lite, which becomes dangerous as the real experience will shock the candidate.

Even back in WWII, the differences in experience and outlook were apparent. Read “Away All Boats” (the movie was a decent adaptation but did miss some of the nuance) that was written by a Merchant officer who joined the Navy and you will see that many of the gaps we are witnessing were present then, too.

1 Like

It must have been a bulbous bow extending very long in front of the forecastle to say the least.
But only the CAIN aft engine room could have been up-flooded. So how is the engine crew couldn’t escape and so many drowned?

We are very quick to assign blame here to the USN vessel and, based on both history and knowledge, that is certainly the more likely expectation. So, I am not attempting to defend the JSM watchstanders. I am also not ready to jump to conclusions based on almost zero knowledge of this incident.

I would like to ask how there are so many “navigational incidents”, such as collisions, allisions and groundings, by merchant ships each year when there don’t appear to be any naval officers involved. Only the professional, apparently infallible, merchant marine officers?

Is it possible they are not all created equal?

Flame away.

This collision took place east of Horseburg llight which marks the entrance of Singapore Strait. By far the most collisons near Singapore take place inside Singapore Straits, west of Horseburg

From Vessel Collision Frequency Estimation in the Singapore Strait:

In the Singapore Strait, the most risky overtaking area is between longitudes 103°48′E and 104°12′E. The most risky head-on area is between longitudes 103°50′E and 104°00′E while the majority of crossing collisions occur between longitudes 103°50′E and 104°12′E

Horsburgh Lighthouse is an active lighthouse which marks the eastern entrance to the Straits of Singapore. It is situated on Pedra … Coordinates · 1°19′49″N 104°24′20″E

Sure, merchant ships have accidents.

The public (us included) expects more than this from our Navy. No flames necessary.

2 Likes

Not a lot of at sea experience that I see here:

The Xo’s quals: (desk pilot) During his shore tours, CDR Sanchez served as Commanding Officer for Mobile Mine Assembly Unit 10 in Okinawa, Officer-in-Charge of Navy Munitions Command East Asia Division Det. Okinawa, Officer-in-Charge of Center for Surface Combat Systems Det. Mayport, and Commanding Officer for Navy Operational Support Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. He holds an AAS in Electro-mechanical Technology, a BS in Liberal Arts, both from Excelsior College, and a MA in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College.

The Co’s: Commander Sanchez attended the Naval War College, and obtained a Master of Arts Degree in National Security and Strategic Studies. He later served as the Aide to the Commander Navy Air and Missile Defense Command, Dahlgren, VA. Commander Sanchez most recently completed a tour on the Joint Staff as the Egypt Desk Officer in the Strategy and Policy (J5) Middle East directorate.

2 Likes

Just curious are both XO and CO named Sanchez?
Or did you have a typo there?

IMG_2106

The bow rises rather steeply above the bulbous bow. On a close up picture it can be seen that the tanker’s bow also slightly dented the McCain’s railing. The collision speed was luckily not very high otherwise the damage would have been much more severe, but a bulbous bow can easily punch a hole in a ship hull sideways.

If the puncture took place in an engine room than, in view of the size of the hole, with sea water rushing in it would fill it in minutes making escape pretty difficult…

Both are Sanchez, pulled this from another site, and the poster noted the same thing and double checked.

As has been noted in other posts, this is unfortunately very common.

When I was assigned as XO on a DD963 class ship in the mid '80s, it was a ‘payback’ to me for a previous assignment. Specifically, those Spruance class were the new DDs and the COs and XOs that got those assignments had usually come from some plum shore assignment in DC, or on some flag officer’s staff. None of them were engineering specialist hawsepipers like me. I would assume that much the same still happens with assignments, although there aren’t as many “old” O-5 command slots as there used to be.

I’ve been retired for 24 years, but many officers (SWOs) looked at their ship assignments as “tickets to punch” so they were eligible for the next promotion. This was (is?) particularly valid for XO and CO assignments. If you don’t do well in each of those you may not get promoted and are unlikely to get the next upward assignment.

This wasn’t limited to SWOs. I don’t know about now, but back then they were assigning P-3 (Maritime Patrol Aircraft) navigators as Navigator on aircraft carriers. This was considered a “hardship tour” for them, and they got choice of duty for their follow on assignment.

As I have said in other posts, I love the USN, it gave me a fantastic 28-year career opportunity, lots of great experience in 13 years at sea, but I can’t defend the SWO as jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none.

2 Likes

Not certain, but it appears to have hit in the aft portion of Main Engine Room (MER) #2. Might have also opened up a few compartments just aft of the MER.

From what I understand, unfortunately, it looks like as on the Fitz, it hit a berthing area.

Funny place for such a Navy facility in the middle of the dessert. Oh, well, you can place a few bets during lunch time…

I suspect it has a lot to do with Red Flag aviation ops. Lot’s of F-18 are out there. Someone has to get show tickets and hotel rooms.

From the reuters article
"Collisions between warships and other large vessels are extremely rare, with naval historians going back more than 50 years to find a similar incident."

Really???

1 Like