to me this the same as taking the 5th! they are hiding this key evidence because to release the track of the FITZGERALD before the collision will show the ship to be the one principally at fault! however, if the OOW on the FITZGERALD was “in the right” then you would think that the brass would want to the world to know that fact by releasing the track, so it must be the opposite and that they know clearly that their ship was the one that erred the most grievously…they are deliberately hiding the truth from the world and it STINKS!
the Navee is famous for obfuscating and passing the buck to blame anyone or anything but its own incompetence when there are catastrophic failures involving USN assets. Look at the hideous attempt to make a dead gunner’s mate responsible for the turret explosion on the IOWA in 1989!
we should discuss both past and present Navee wrongdoing and their culture to bury any evidence of their incompetence which in recent years seems to be near endless in number!
I’m sure the details will come out once the hearings start, and not beforehand. In the press I’m sure it’s already old news, so there’s no pressure to release anything.
Why the Master was taken off is unknown. Maybe he was due for crew change, or maybe he was sent out of Japan before somebody decided to arrest him, “just in case he had done something wrong”, which has become the norm whenever there is an accident involving ships.
Whether the Japanese and Filipino investigators will be able/allowed to have unfettered access to the watch standers on the Fritz is left to be learnt. (Or maybe not?)
PS> It may be too late to hope for unhindered and uncoached statements to be had, since the Navy’s “legal eagles” are probably coaching them right now.
It is easy to picture a conference room full of lawyers and gurus from a civilian public relations firm that specializes in reputation repair strategy.
But, in reality, the public memory is short and it is unpatriotic to mention military f-ups no matter how often or how many die. The truth will come out but by then we will be on to some other passing outrage.
Yes, but he was sent home to the Philippines in a hurry, maybe because the tendency lately has been to arrest the Master regardless of proven guilt or not.
Many companies has as their standard procedure to get him out a.s.a.p. This has been the case for some years now.
And I would expect the company to have to foot the bill for his room and board, etc. until the Master gets home. If he was not charged with anything, and the Japanese Coast Guard has completed the interview with him, why keep him in Japan for an investigation that may take quite some time?
June 26 (Reuters) – A U.S. warship struck by a container vessel in Japanese waters failed to respond to warning signals or take evasive action before a collision that killed seven of its crew, according to a report of the incident by the Philippine cargo ship’s captain.
Multiple U.S. and Japanese investigations are under way into how the guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald and the much larger ACX Crystal container ship collided in clear weather south of Tokyo Bay in the early hours of June 17.
In the first detailed account from one of those directly involved, the cargo ship’s captain said the ACX Crystal had signaled with flashing lights after the Fitzgerald “suddenly” steamed on to a course to cross its path.
The container ship steered hard to starboard (right) to avoid the warship, but hit the Fitzgerald 10 minutes later at 1:30 a.m., according to a copy of Captain Ronald Advincula’s report to Japanese ship owner Dainichi Investment Corporation that was seen by Reuters.
@c.captain Any attempt at a reasonable dialogue is prohibited by your obvious bias against the Navy, demonstrated by your pejorative spelling of the word.
No they aren’t but it’s the smart thing to do. Next time you are in public and see someone over the age of forty ask them why the Exxon Valdez ran aground… then tell them that Captain Hazlewood wasn’t “drunk at the wheel” he was in his cabin and that the USCG was not able to revoke his license for wrongdoing. I assure you they will be surprised!
Ask the same person about the Tailhook scandal and I promise you they won’t talk about all millions of dollars the US Navy spent investigating its own and the millions more spent fixing the problem… but they probably will remember the tshirts stating “WOMEN ARE PROPERTY”
If the US Navy doesn’t release this information before the public starts loosing interest… then the public will just make assumptions based off the last thing they remember reading… and the U.S. Navy’s reputation will suffer… along with future recruitment efforts.
The media feeds off unanswered questions… and the Navy has the information at hand to stop the big media outlets from butchering the story which (regardless of fault) is in their best interest to do.
P.S. Don’t blame the internet because this B.S. predates the internet by 119 years. The book “Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator” by Ryan Holiday traces the history of B.S. reporting back to a US Navy incident in Havana Harbor on the evening of 15 February 1898. Had the Navy released the facts after that incident then we would have avoided war. A century later and the Navy still hasn’t learned how to deal with “new” media.
P.S.2. The only people with the patience to “wait for the full investigation to be finish before speculating” are the handful of Navy and Merchant Marine professionals who will read the final report and take action because of it. Early speculation does very little to influence these professionals. In fact early speculation by these true experts can (and does) help investigators look into problems which they’d otherwise miss.
who said I ever wanted a reasonable dialog?..what I want if for others who agree with me that the Navee is burying the truth to join their voices with mine to demand that the evidence be released. To me the very act to omit disclosing the track of the FITZGERALD to the public is tantamount to admitting the Navee is in the wrong here. No this isn’t a court of law with the burden of proof on the prosecution…here if you can’t prove you are innocent, then you must be guilty.
I understand that you feel entitled to make whatever demands that you want, but the REALITY of the matter is that NO Navy in the world will publish the movements of their ships for obvious (well…to most of us) reasons of security. You’re welcome to be as outraged as you like about that, but your outrage will have zero effect on reality. That said, I think that you will find, when everything is said and done, that the Navy is going to admit to the (near-certain) multiple failures that occurred on that bridge that night, as well as those that occurred on the Crystal. And so your outrage seems rather pointless, because you’ll gleefully (sadly) get what you want, in the end.
