
Why Did a U.S. Destroyer Fail to Dodge a Cargo Ship? - JumpCrisscross
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/world/asia/destroyer-fitzgerald-collision.html
======
valuearb
So it's a hugely clickbaity title. The article provides no new evidence or
even offer any possible causes as to the accident, it just details what
happened and wonders why.

We already have a good idea what happened.

1) It was a very dark night, the moon had not yet risen. Even a large cargo
ship can be hard to see against a black horizon at night.

2) The destroyer was running without transponder on, as per typical Navy
behavior so it couldn't be tracked by unfriendly powers. This meant the
automated navigation system on the cargo ship didn't see it.

3) The cargo ship made a significant course change a few miles before the
collision, which meant if the destroyer crew had plotted its course prior that
change, they might have not realized they were suddenly on a collision course.

4) The cargo ship hit the destroyer from an acute angle, almost from behind.
On that heading rules of navigation say it was on the cargo ship to give way
to the destroyer, it's possible the crew thought they would.

5) if any of the cargo ship crew were on watch, they could not have seen the
destroyer once they were close, given how tall their ships deck was.

6) The track after the collision indicates the cargo ship crew was asleep and
the automated navigation system turned at the collision then resumed course,
and it took 30 minutes for the crew to take control, figure out what had
happened and returned.

7) Allegedly AEGIS radar systems are often tuned to filter out surface traffic
so they can be more accurate at picking up air traffic.

8) The fact the captain was asleep in cabin is evidence no alarm was given nor
threat detected before impact. Every time the captain goes to bed they leave
standing orders to wake them if any ship gets within a certain safety margin.

What is still a mystery is why the crew didn't detect the cargo ship before
the collision. Certainly a combination of radar and deck watch should have
been able to see the ship. It should have been well lit enough to see once it
was close. It should have been signaling it's location with a transponder.
Even if the crew incorrectly thought it would pass a minimum safe distance the
captain should have been woke and brought to the bridge.

~~~
nawitus
> 2) The destroyer was running without transponder on, as per typical Navy
> behavior so it couldn't be tracked by unfriendly powers. This meant the
> automated navigation system on the cargo ship didn't see it.

I hope this behavior is changed during peace to prevent unnecessary human
fatalities.

~~~
civilitty
If they did that, then the second a war started all of our surface Navy would
be wiped out in a first strike.

~~~
astrodust
Considering the size of the US navy, around 430 ships, that's extremely
unlikely. There's not enough submarines in the world to sneak attack them all
at once.

~~~
civilitty
No one would use submarines for the first strike in a major war unless it was
to launch nuclear warheads from an unpredictable location. It would take
months for them to get into position, even if the attacker had that many subs
and it would reveal sub locations at the start of the conflict.

Hitting a ship with a missile is hard because they're usually out of land
based radar range but if they all had their transponders on, it would be so
much easier, especially since medium and long range missiles are getting
increasingly more advanced. I wouldn't be surprised if state of the art recon
satellites could pick up a cluster of transponders in a carrier battle group
and use that data for targeting. If all an enemy did was take out our aircraft
carriers, it would cripple our force projection outside of stationary military
bases (which would all be hit in a first strike) and turn the navy into
glorified mobile silos. The element of surprise is often the only deciding
factor in skirmishes and battles between equal forces so it is paramount that
giant, slow, and vulnerable fortresses don't broadcast their position.

~~~
astrodust
Nukes don't work very well on ships much to the dismay of military planners.

There's a new generation of ballistic missile which might work, but they're
extremely expensive, have limited range, and are rare. This idea of sinking
the entire US fleet in one strike is utterly absurd.

------
CalChris
The _Crystal Bay_ is 294m and crewed by 20–25. It isn't very maneuverable and
was most likely on autopilot. Yeah, the _Crystal_ was for all intents and
purposes a drone ship and the crew was probably asleep.

The _USS Fitzgerald_ is 153m and crewed by 200. It is extremely maneuverable
and is professionally navigated. While its AIS transponder was most likely
turned off for security reasons, it has radar and an AIS receiver and deck
watches.

~~~
revelation
How does that work? Does the autopilot wake someone up if there is an
impending collision or are the ship routes fixed?

~~~
mjlee
The crew are not allowed to be asleep. In practice - it happens.

~~~
revelation
I get that part, but if the whole lot of them went to sleep, they must have
been very confident that nothing happens or that they will be awoken before
anything happens.

I'm wondering why they would be that confident.

~~~
mjlee
There are only one or two people awake on lookout in a civilian ship.

Air-conditioned bridge, slowly rolling waves, practically nothing to see or
do... If they're on a typical watch pattern, 0230 means they got out of bed an
hour ago and had just settled into the watch routine.

Pretty easy to drift off.

~~~
jessaustin
...for 3-12 minutes. Then BNWAS flashes the light, then it sounds an alarm,
then it sounds a different alarm both on the bridge and in the captain's
cabin, then it sounds an alarm that the entire crew can hear...

However, yes, even if BNWAS were operational the watch could doze off for long
enough to miss the fact that they were being passed, but not by enough, by a
smaller faster vessel with no lights and AIS turned off.

------
rsync
This accident is actually fairly well understood and is a result of a
particular aspect of naval and shipping culture that most of us never
experience.

It is described in detail, with laugh-out-loud illustrations of boat paths, in
an entire chapter devoted to these kind of accidents, in the excellent book
_Normal Accidents_ by Charles Perrow.[1]

In short, very, very large ships are captained by egomaniacal captains who
play chicken with one another - each of whom is certain that they have the
right of way (due to ship size, military vs. civilian, etc.) These kind of
accidents are nothing more than: "you get out of the way", "No, YOU, get out
of the way". A very large cargo ship interacting with a US Navy destroyer is a
perfect recipe for this kind of interaction.

Again, the illustrations of the boat paths in the book are literally laugh out
loud funny as these huge boats slowly point directly at each other and crash
_or_ are on-course for near-misses and at the very last second veer into one
another as they mistake who is turning where.

I highly, highly recommend this book - not just for the funny (but not that
fascinating) chapter on the shipping lanes, but for the chapters on nuclear
plant accidents and the challenger accident.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents)

~~~
valuearb
Like everyone else said, captain was asleep. And the cargo ship hit the
destroyer obliquely, from behind. The destroyer clearly had right of way and
no one was playing chicken because everyone was asleep on the cargo ship.

~~~
nulldev
> no one was playing chicken because everyone was asleep on the cargo ship.

Unless everyone on _both_ ships was asleep, this statement doesn't have to be
true. If anything, it seems eminently plausible the destroyer's crew was
playing chicken with the freighter _thinking they were playing against a human
opponent_ , when in fact they were dealing with an automated system.

~~~
rsync
"Unless everyone on both ships was asleep, this statement doesn't have to be
true. If anything, it seems eminently plausible the destroyer's crew was
playing chicken with the freighter thinking they were playing against a human
opponent, when in fact they were dealing with an automated system."

Interesting you should mention this because, IIRC, the book has an aside about
ships that (unknowingly) play chicken with lighthouses.

~~~
nulldev
Is that in any way related to the somewhat apocryphal / mostly untrue anecjoke
about the aircraft carrier and the lighthouse?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_and_naval_vessel_ur...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_and_naval_vessel_urban_legend)

------
marze
No question this is embarrassing for the military. These ships are supposed to
be able to detect and shoot down missiles arriving at mach 3. But they didn't
detect a 40000 ton cargo ship traveling at 15 mph? A cargo ship that was
broadcasting its GPS location constantly?

That said, this article really adds nothing to that which is already known
about the incident, besides that someone tweeted "people weren't paying
attention".

Very lucky there weren't more deaths.

~~~
etrevino
The problem is, I think, that someone, something, somewhere, did detect the
Crystal, but didn't act on it. The technology almost certainly worked right.
It was likely the people that screwed everything up. The Crystal was probably
on autopilot with no one (awake?) in the bridge and it would appear that the
Fitzgerald was in the same state.

That said, for the US this is a pretty serious embarrassment, because it
screams "not combat ready".

~~~
okket
I am pretty sure that in a combat situation this collision would not have
happened. It's the routine that is dangerous plus the mentioned "I am bigger"
vs. "I am military" both assuming they have the right of passage.

------
tux1968
Have this image of the Navy, strict protocols, attentive crew all responding
quickly to the commands of a hardened captain. For this accident to happen,
nothing close to that was going on. It's hard to comprehend just how many
people had to drop the ball for this accident to happen.

~~~
mpyne
An attentive crew responding quickly to orders is by no means incompatible to
what happened here.

The question is, who was in a position to know about the incoming container
ship? And who was in a position to _act_ on that knowledge? The helmsman would
have promptly responded to an order to take evasive action, I'm sure, and the
engineering crew would have very quickly "answered the bell" \-- but the order
was never given.

In fact, the more there was a central point of focus within the watchteam (in
this case the Officer of the Deck, not the Captain), the more likely it is for
things like this to happen. If the OOD were to have been mistakenly convinced
that the ACX Crystal was not a threat (whether due to its old course or
because it was an overtaking vessel) then the OOD alone could have prevented a
proper watchteam response. We've seen similar things with airline disasters,
where a pilot loses their situational awareness and the crew failed to speak
up in time.

Sadly, I could easily come up with plausible and workable theories of how a
Navy watchteam would have this slip through the cracks. They involve
complacency, or contact density, or misapplication of the navigation "Rules of
the Road", or a mixture of all of those. The hardest part to explain is how a
lookout didn't spot the Crystal in the lead-up to the collision -- dark or
not, she would have been lit up to some extent by her nav lighting alone, and
can't have been overtaking so fast that there wouldn't have been minutes of
warning.

------
mc32
That commander should be relieved of his duties at once. There is absolutely
no reason a modern warship should have an "accident" like this. How could
there not be automated systems screaming "collision course ahead".

This is the same thing as always, people are lulled into complacency and then
accidents happen.

~~~
valuearb
What did the commander have to do with this accident? He was asleep in his
stateroom.

Edit: The captain is responsible for his crews performance and the navy way
means he'll never be given command again, regardless of the results of the
investigation.

But my response was to someone who apparently thought the captain was gunning
the engine while playing chicken with the cargo vessel. For one specific
point, the destroyer wasn't on collision course, the cargo vessel was.

~~~
zzalpha
Is this comment intended to be sarcastic?

If lookouts were not posted or the radar was not properly manned, the
commander is ultimately responsible.

Heads will proverbially roll on this one, and his will absolutely be one of
the first.

~~~
valuearb
Not sarcasm. I was replying to someone who assumed some arrogant naval captain
was playing chicken with a merchant vessel and I was just pointing out he
wasn't involved in the decision making.

And we do know he will lose his command and never get another one, whether
he's shown to have culpability for his crews failures or not. It's the navy
way.

~~~
zzalpha
* I was replying to someone who assumed some arrogant naval captain was playing chicken with a merchant vessel*

Odd, because when I go back to the OP, I don't see any indication that
suggests he thinks the captain made an active decision to be reckless.

Maybe they edited after you replied?

Or is it the quotes around "accident" in this sentence that lead you to
interpret their comments this way?

 _There is absolutely no reason a modern warship should have an "accident"
like this._

If so, I read this differently. In my view, an accident is something that
occurs due to unexpected changes in a situation. For example, if a car crash
occurred because a deer jumped across the road and lead a vehicle to swerve,
I'd use the word "accident".

But in cases of negligence, I find the word "accident" makes it far too easy
to blame the situation rather than the people. In this case, in my view these
two ships colliding was no "accident" in that there must have been clear,
conscious human decisions that lead to the event, even if those decisions were
simply "I'm going to have a nap now (and thus be negligent in my duties)".

Incidentally, I think we're far too willing to refer to car crashes as
"accidents", and for this same reason.

------
civilitty
For those who are interested in a relatively accurate (but dramatized)
portrayal of what the operations on a destroyer look like you should watch the
first and second season of The Last Ship. It does fudge a few details and its
obviously a TV show that can't show anything close to classified material but
it does give you a general sense of what its like.

------
adolph
Gcaptain.com has had some informed and informative commentary about the
incident.

[http://gcaptain.com/](http://gcaptain.com/)

~~~
CalChris
Yeah, gCaptain has excellent coverage of this and anything else maritime.

[http://gcaptain.com/uss-fitzgerald-fault/](http://gcaptain.com/uss-
fitzgerald-fault/)

[http://gcaptain.com/uss-fitzgerald-fault-part-2-questions-
an...](http://gcaptain.com/uss-fitzgerald-fault-part-2-questions-answers/)

------
protomyth
gCaptain had two articles about this (according to the notes there will be
another article) [http://gcaptain.com/uss-fitzgerald-
fault/](http://gcaptain.com/uss-fitzgerald-fault/) [http://gcaptain.com/uss-
fitzgerald-fault-part-2-questions-an...](http://gcaptain.com/uss-fitzgerald-
fault-part-2-questions-answers/)

~~~
Animats
That's useful. Clearly the destroyer didn't detect the container ship before
the collision; there was no collision alarm and no maneuvering to avoid the
collision. But why? That hasn't been reported publicly yet. The U.S. Navy
probably knows in general terms; the bridge and CIC crew members will have
been interrogated by now.

No real point in speculating in advance of evidence.

------
Pica_soO
I guess there was a deal in place to reduce the look-out crew and radar-crew-
which where allowed to nap. This would reduce the multiple layers of security
to a single point of failure- which then happened.

------
zeep
I wonder if a slow torpedo could also avoid detection

------
GiorgioG
Someone forgot to read: [https://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Huge-Ships-John-
Trimmer/dp/0870...](https://www.amazon.com/Avoid-Huge-Ships-John-
Trimmer/dp/0870334336)

~~~
jessaustin
Maybe they just couldn't afford to spend $105 on a 112-page book?

~~~
GiorgioG
It’s the Navy, they can afford it ;)

------
gaius
Clickbait headline. Real one is " _Maritime Mystery:_ Why a U.S. Destroyer
Failed to Dodge a Cargo Ship" emphasis mine

~~~
nightcracker
While the title is missing the "Maritime Mystery", I don't think this title
could be considered 'clickbait' due to that omission.

~~~
gaius
It purports to give the answer, but does not, therefore it's a trick.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
My bad. Thought I was cutting out junk. Updated to be less definitive on
providing an answer.

------
Nomentatus
Click bait doesn't get much more severe than this. Someone should write that
article and tell us the answer, when we know it - but this ain't that article.
Grab a little integrity, NYTimes.

