
Fitzgerald Officer of the Deck Pleads Guilty at Court-Martial - montrose
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/05/08/fitzgerald-officer-deck-pleads-guilty-court-martial.html
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danielvf
From memory (I’ll try to dig up the report) the officer on deck:

\- Was going too fast for the number of ships in the area

\- Did not call the captain when nearish other ships as procedure required.

\- Had in fact gotten too close to several other ships that night.

\- Gotten confused between which of two ships was where

\- Did the calculations wrong on the closest approach of the collision vessel

\- Denied a request to change course away from the collision vessel because
then she would have to recalculate a new nearest approach distance

\- When a collision was clearly in the future, did not contact the other
vessel in any way

\- Gave a late turn order, but then immediately countermanded it, keeping the
ship on collision course

\- spent the rest of the time until the collision freaking out (an enlisted
man eventually gave the final turn order that saved some lives)

So it was about as bad as could be, and seven men died.

However, I have a feeling the Captain's court martial is going to turn out
worse for him than this.

~~~
ComradeTaco
I'm curious what hour of her day the deck officer was on and how many hours of
sleep she had the night previous. At some point, sleep deprivation can leave
you essentially non-functional.

~~~
chx
According to official report
[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4165320/USS-
Fitzg...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4165320/USS-Fitzgerald-
and-USS-John-S-McCain-Collision.pdf) it played a part for sure:

8.4 Fatigue

The command leadership allowed the schedule of events preceding the collision
to fatigue the crew.

The command leadership failed to assess the risks of fatigue and implement
mitigation measures to ensure adequate crew rest.

~~~
dTal
Here is a very scathing and informative commentary on the Navy's "risk
assessment" and "mitigation" procedures:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15120369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15120369)

~~~
chx
There obviously is something very wrong with the entire system when this
happens twice within a short timeframe.

------
hluska
A different outlet reported her sentence:

> A U.S. Navy officer pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty Tuesday in the
> collision of a U.S. Navy destroyer that killed seven sailors last year. Lt.
> j.g. Sarah Coppock was sentenced to receive half-pay for three months and a
> letter of reprimand.

(Source - [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lt-jg-sarah-coppock-pleads-
guil...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lt-jg-sarah-coppock-pleads-guilty-in-
uss-fitzgerald-collision/))

~~~
walrus01
This is effectively a career ender as well, she will never be promoted if she
stays in.

~~~
hudibras
This definitely falls into the category of "Useless Information that I Happen
to Know," but any Navy officer who is punished at court martial or Captain's
Mast is also required to face a Board of Inquiry to show cause for retention
in the service. Many officers (who don't hire lawyers) decide "Oh, I'll just
plead guilty and get a letter of reprimand and move on," only to be separated
by the Board of Inquiry.

In this case, it's pretty cut-and-dry that she'll be separated; the BOI will
just be a formality or she might even waive it.

The pertinent Navy instruction (page 7), if you're interested.
[http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-
npc/reference/milpersman/1...](http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-
npc/reference/milpersman/1000/1600Performance/Documents/1611-010.pdf)

~~~
torstenvl
I agree with pretty much all of the substance of what you said, but the better
source is SECNAVINST 1920.6C.

[https://doni.documentservices.dla.mil/Directives/01000%20Mil...](https://doni.documentservices.dla.mil/Directives/01000%20Military%20Personnel%20Support/01-900%20Military%20Separation%20Services/1920.6C%20CH-5.pdf)

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Waterluvian
I can't help but always be skeptical with these rulings, as if someone's
always just being thrown under the bus to protect the higher ranking career
military persons.

I think about how easy it would be to have a culture of sloppy, poorly trained
sailors, and when something goes wrong, whoever is in the chair at the time
takes the punishment for that.

Naturally I could be completely wrong about this or other cases. But it's hard
to shake that skepticism.

~~~
harshreality
Whoever is the officer of the deck at the time _is_ responsible. That's what
the position means, if it means anything at all. The sailors could be poorly
trained, but the buck has to stop somewhere. How else can a command-structure
organization work? At the very least, she'd have to effectively lose her job
through loss of confidence in ability to command, even if she weren't court-
martialed.

Blaming higher leadership (which has also happened in these navy accident
cases) in the military has the same problem. They're just products of their
environment, too, put there ultimately by a chain of appointments ending with
the President, Congress, and ultimately the voters.

It's much better to focus on process improvement than on assigning blame. But
command-authority organizations like the military don't really work that way,
and it's difficult to improve the culture of the military when that culture is
shaped by unwise demands — excessive operational demands, fiscal constraints,
and directives that end up micro-managing and constraining what commanders do
— from above. Even navy admirals have their hands tied in many ways, and
they're just trying to do the best they can do with a bad hand.

~~~
hudibras
>Whoever is the officer of the deck at the time is responsible. That's what
the position means, if it means anything at all.

The OOD is the very definition of a "You Had ONE Job!" job, and that one job
is "Don't run into other ships or the land."

~~~
Stranger43
Except that the systematic aversion to allow any delegation of power that
haunts all western military forces, means that the reality is that the OOD
ends up with dozens of contradictory tasks all of highest priority.

On a merchent marine ship traveling that kind of waters there would be a team
of 2-3 people with the most junior seaman present having more experience at
see then the average junior US Navy officer, and no bullshit about having to
coordinate with combat centers or signal intelligence in addition to having to
navigate. Where as it sounds like several dozen of mostly inexperienced seaman
was involved on the Fitzgerald incident.

------
exabrial
I can't believe a giant merchant vessel could collide with a modern warship...
doesn't establish a lot of confidence. How did you _not see that coming_?

~~~
jabl
Just as an anecdote, I was recently taking the ferry (as a passenger mind
you), and the ferry encountered a Burke-class DD (which would be slightly
unusual around here, but I later learned it was on its way to a friendly visit
to my country). The Burke was ahead of us, to starboard, going in roughly the
same direction, although slightly converging (lets say around 45 deg
difference in heading, maybe?). When I got up, it was at maybe 1 nm distance,
at 2 o'clock. So I go to another area of the ship, and the next time I look
out of the window the Burke is on our port side at maybe 300m distance. Which,
if my interpretation of events is correct, means the Burke cut in front of the
ferry at frickin close range. For no effing reason whatsoever, considering
there was plenty of open sea around both ships. This is the kind of macho BS
attitude that gets people killed. Sure, nothing happened, but what if they
would have had some kind of machinery or bridge communication malfunction? The
ferry would have plowed the Burke in half.

~~~
slededit
If the Burke was starboard then the ferry was the one who had to give way. You
should be blaming them in this scenario.

The Fitzgerald was hit on the Port side which indicates it should have given
way.

