
Death and Valor on an American Warship Doomed by Its Own Navy - oedmarap
https://features.propublica.org/navy-accidents/uss-fitzgerald-destroyer-crash-crystal/
======
smacktoward
_A dozen or so [maintenance issues] were considered more serious. They
included problems with the ship’s primary navigation system. It was the oldest
such system among destroyers based in Japan. It was running on Windows 2000,
even though other ships had been upgraded. It could not display information
from the AIS.

The broken email system had a “major impact” on the ship’s day-to-day
operations. Microsoft Outlook did not work. Nor could commanders communicate
over a classified email system...

Technicians were constantly fixing the SPS-73, the other main navigational
radar on the Fitzgerald. Sometimes, the radar would show the destroyer heading
the wrong way. At other times, it simply locked up and would have to be shut
down...

A third radar, used for warfare, was slow to acquire targets, but technicians
had installed a temporary fix that became permanent. “Problem known since
2012. Declared hopeless,” read notes attached to the repair report...

Other equipment had been written off, too. The so-called Bright Bridge console
was supposed to help the bridge crew by sharing information from the combat
room. The console had been scavenged for spare parts, leaving the station
unmanned._

I found this section of the article legitimately infuriating. How the hell
does a first-line warship of the United States Navy get into a state like
this? I can understand the occasional malfunction, but this sounds less like
that and more like some sad-sack Russian ship circa 1995, where the crew is
struggling to keep the thing afloat with just duct tape and bubble gum. But at
least the Russians in the '90s had the excuse that the government that had
built the ship had collapsed and the replacement hadn't bothered spending a
dime to maintain it. What's _our_ Navy's excuse?

Based on the article it sounds like the excuse they've settled on is just
blaming everything on the crew, which is shameful. Things don't get this bad
in the absence of some kind of systemic rot. If that rot isn't tackled now
it'll end up having to be tackled after we lose some future war, in which
case, God help us all.

~~~
crushcrashcrush
Corruption my friend.

Direct from a deployed friend's mouth:

"When laser printers would run out of toner on base in Iraq, we wouldn't order
more toner (we couldn't) - we'd order another entire printer and use the toner
cartridge in the new one, and shoot at the printer on the range."

Your tax dollars at work.

~~~
genkimind
It has nothing to do with corruption. See my other comment.

~~~
module0000
Hanlon's razor at work...

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

~~~
arminiusreturns
I like to remind people that Hanlons razor is a logical fallacy, and really
shouldn't be used nearly as much as it is, especially the way it is (in an
isolated context)

~~~
Spooky23
I would disagree. Seeing corruption everywhere is your brain trying to assign
order to chaos.

The reality is that big military bureaucracy is among the dumbest of
organizations and is capable of feats of illogic almost impossible to
appreciate.

~~~
shard972
Maybe if you have never spent any time in the military.

Would it be ok for me to say that Theranos failed because of stupidity because
halons razor? All i know is the company failed and i don't have time to read
any articles so aren't i justified in saying it was stupidity not malice?

~~~
Spooky23
I’ve never been in the military, but I have lots of time in massive
bureaucracy.

So many people are involved in the decision making process it’s nearly
impossible to make a decision about anything. When I hear speculation about a
conspiracy involving printer toner in Iraq, that sounds like nonsense without
evidence.

Theranos is the opposite. A naive young founder pretending to be the
reincarnation of Steve Jobs with a manipulative guru/mentor/lover pulling the
strings is like a Petri dish for corruption.

------
danso
Good god this story is a gripping read, even at ~18,000 words. I had the
pleasure of being colleagues with one of its authors, T., years ago, and was
always amazed at how throughly nerdy in detail he was in investigating the
document trail, while still being able to so elqouently describe impact and
drama at the individual human level. It's not that the two skills are
diametrically opposite, it's just that T may have been the best at both,
especially when reporting on complex bureaucratic tragedies.

This American Life had a good segment in late 2017 about the Navy accidents
here: [https://www.thisamericanlife.org/634/human-error-in-
volatile...](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/634/human-error-in-volatile-
situations)

~~~
Aromasin
I didn't even acknowledge that the article was 18k words long until reading
your comment. You know it's an excellent author when they can make something
that dense seem like a brief read.

------
a3n
> The 26-year-old officer of the deck, who was in charge of the destroyer at
> the time of the crash, had navigated the route only once before in daylight.
> In a panic, she ordered the Fitzgerald to turn directly into the path of the
> Crystal.

Just a random comment:

She may well have panicked, but depending on proximity, that may have been the
correct move, if executed correctly and in time. In other words, the move may
have come from training, and it may merely have been inconsequential if
executed too late.

A ship turns by moving its back end left to turn right, and vice versa. That's
how the rudder affects the ship. "Right full rudder" moves the back end left,
pointing the entire ship in a more rightward direction.

I've directly observed this maneuver used in an emergency. I was enlisted, on
a Knox class fast frigate. We were refueling underway next to an oiler. The
two ships steam forward side by side, and lines are sent across, to eventually
get hoses across from the oiler to the receiver (us).

One of our junior officers was in command. The captain was also on the bridge,
observing and monitoring. I was there in case what I was responsible for
broke, otherwise I wasn't normally on the bridge.

The junior officer allowed our ship to drift to the right, too close to the
oiler. At some point the propellers of the large ship started to suck us in
even closer.

The captain identified himself and declared himself in command, ordered right
full rudder, _toward_ the oiler, and full speed ahead. An alarm was also
sounded, "emergency breakaway" or something like that. The maneuver
immediately moved most of our ship _away_ from the oiler, and we shot past the
oiler (they were also executing their side of the emergency breakaway).

Not saying the two incidents are the same, only that "steering toward the
other ship" wasn't _necessarily_ the wrong maneuver. But they were doomed no
matter what, as just about everything else relevant that could go wrong was or
already had gone wrong.

~~~
jessaustin
_In a panic, she ordered the Fitzgerald to turn directly into the path of the
Crystal... She may well have panicked, but depending on proximity, that may
have been the correct move, if executed correctly and in time. In other words,
the move may have come from training, and it may merely have been
inconsequential if executed too late._

TFA:

 _Instead, Coppock ordered a move that disregarded the very basics of her
training. She commanded the helmsman to gun the destroyer’s powerful engines
to full speed and duck in front of the Crystal by heading left._

I don't think this abortive maneuver is well indicated in TFA's "cut-scenes",
but it would never make sense as a way to _avoid_ a collision. Unlike the
situation you describe in which two ships were traveling roughly parallel
courses, the courses of these ships were roughly perpendicular, with
Fitzgerald's starboard side facing Crystal's port side. The way for Fitzgerald
to avoid contact would have been to change speed (either faster or slower) or
to steer hard to starboard while slowing in order to go behind the other
vessel. The presence of other vessels might have caused problems with any of
those options, but "matching" the other ship's course was likely to cause a
collision. If she had enough power to clear the other ship while turning to
port, she had more than enough to clear it while maintaining the current
heading. Of course, she didn't have enough power to do either, at 0130.

There is no indication in TFA that Crystal was ever plotted as a separate
contact from Wan Hai, even after they finally noticed Crystal. If that's the
case they really were flying blind, relying on nonexistent intuition to steer
through the gauntlet. It would have been surprising if any of the bridge
personnel had had enough experience to simply _see_ the right maneuvers by eye
at night, which TFA seems to imply Coppock attempted to do. Perhaps the CO or
XO would have had that experience, but since they were both in their cabins
instead of on the bridge we'll never know...

------
jessaustin
Regardless of other problems, TFA makes it clear that LTJG Coppock failed
really hard between 0120 and 0130. Although her subordinates probably should
have detected the Crystal sooner, she had ten minutes to save the lives of her
crew, and she should have done so. Navigating out of danger might not have
been possible, but an emergency stop like that executed by LTJG Breau a month
earlier would have worked. The really unforgivable (as in, detail a firing
squad) offense was not to sound the alarm and get those sailors out of their
soon-to-flood bunks.

I'd say that the captain should receive the same punishment that Coppock gets,
and the captain of a month before as well. It's difficult to say from the
outside whether that should go up the chain, but perhaps it should, just to be
safe.

~~~
danso
The story notes that the ship's crew was overworked and overstretched due to
the expedited schedule and crew cutbacks. On the night of the accident, there
was only one person qualified to be a lookout, and was expected to watch both
sides of the ship. The allocations of time and resources such that the USS
Fitzgerald could never find time to make repairs or have adequately trained
staff, at a time of increased patrolling to deal with North Korea, are factors
that involve people higher up in the chain.

~~~
a3n
> On the night of the accident, there was only one person qualified to be a
> lookout,

That ship was therefore not fit for duty. Not that that would take a ship out
of service, these days. They're probably all more or less unfit for duty,
based on this and other articles about the same incidents.

Former enlisted Navy, decades ago, made three Western Pacific deployments in
and around the area of the article's concern. Not a subject matter expert, and
probably never was.

------
favorited
My brother had a carrier deployment in the Pacific end a week or so after the
Fitzgerald collision. We asked him and his girlfriend (also a sailor) about it
and they genuinely had no idea what we were talking about.

It was a revelatory moment for me. I can understand how the Navy wouldn't be
excited to disseminate that kind of demoralizing news internally (though I
still assumed they _would_ one way or another). But sailors on his ship have
sporadic internet access – I was really surprised that word didn't just get
around.

~~~
a3n
I'm a long distance trucker. A few weeks ago I heard a couple truckers talking
about a day long nationwide work stoppage, to occur this coming April. I'd
never heard a thing about it, and I have almost as much internet as I want,
through my phone (as long as I'm not driving).

I don't use Facebook, so that's probably part of the reason I hadn't heard
about it. But also, news about my industry is beyond the last things I'm
looking for on the internet.

I just drive. Your brother probably just does his maintenance and stands his
watches, and keeps up with friends and family on Facebook, _most_ of whom
would not even notice an article about something as foreign as the military.

------
cryptonector
Key 'grafs:

> Although the Fitzgerald radars did not show them, more than two dozen ships
> surrounded the destroyer, all close enough to track. Three of them, large
> vessels off the starboard bow, posed a grave danger to the warship. They
> were closing in. Quickly.

> But the ships didn’t appear on the combat room’s key radar, the SPS-67,
> because neither Combs, nor Woodley, nor anyone else, realized that it had
> been set to a mode designed to scan the seas at a greater distance. With the
> SPS-67 button taped over, only specialized technicians could change the
> tuning from another part of the ship.

~~~
metta2uall
It is just shocking & negligent UX - the radar screen should have at least had
a coloured circle around the centre indicating the area that was not being
scanned..

~~~
shard972
Considering they can't even seem to have their radars working most of the
time. I have a feeling UX might be low on the priority list for them.

------
TomMckenny
Not that it changes anything, but is it known what the Crystal was attempting?
The animation looks like it kept trying to pass ahead of the Fitzgerald for an
impossible port to port passage. Or was the Crystal totally unaware of the
Fitzgerald?

~~~
jessaustin
The Crystal had the right of way. By COLREGs, they were supposed to maintain
their course and attempt to convince (via radio, horn, and signal lights) the
other ship to give way. They were going half the speed of the Fitzgerald, and
were much less maneuverable with far less power driving a far heavier vessel.
This is like asking why a train ran into an automobile parked on the train
tracks.

------
rebuilder
I'm sure it's an interesting article, but unfortunately the fancy format
renders it very difficult to read (Firefox on Android). Scrolling down, I
found the single word "FIGHT" overlaid on a pov shot of a ship's interior,
then further down, two stripes of colour, and scrolling further down, nothing
else, until the actual content finally loaded. Even then, the text kept
jumping up and down as I tried to read.

Not really an improvement over less flashy presentations IMO

~~~
amphibian87
There's an app for that called Pocket. You may already have it it's owned by
Mozilla now, removes ads and makes it way easier to read articles. Also dark
mode.

------
ariwilson
_Officers used Gmail instead._

Props to Gmail :).

~~~
InitialLastName
Why is high-level military commanders using a private email server not a
similarly big deal to a Secretary of State or First Daughter/Advisor to the
President?

~~~
a3n
Because we don't vote for military commanders, and military commanders
contribute little to nothing to political alliances outside the military, so
there is no incentive for talking heads or Congress to notice it.

There's also a lot more of them than Secretaries of State and First Daughters,
and the people that Congress and talking heads manipulate, us, couldn't
sustain our interest past the second or third incident.

