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Naval Commanders In 2 Deadly Ship Collisions To Be Charged With Negligent Homicide
The U.S. Navy announced Tuesday that the commanding officers of two vessels involved in separate collisions in the Pacific Ocean last year will face court-martial proceedings and possible criminal charges including negligent homicide.
The statement by Navy spokesman Capt. Greg Hicks says the decision to prosecute the commanders, and several lower-ranking officers as well, was made by Adm. Frank Caldwell.
[...] In the case of the USS Fitzgerald, the commander, two lieutenants and one lieutenant junior grade face possible charges of dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide.
The commander of the USS John S. McCain will face possible charges of dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel and negligent homicide. A chief petty officer also faces one possible charge of dereliction of duty.
Previously: U.S. Navy Destroyer Collides With Container Vessel
10 Sailors Still Missing After U.S. Destroyer Collision With Oil Tanker
Chief of Naval Operations Report on This Summer's Destroyer Collisions
(Score: 1) by starvingboy on Wednesday January 17 2018, @07:04PM (16 children)
Most of the time when things go THIS wrong, it's not that one person F-d up really bad. Instead, it is a culmination of small mistakes and bad timing. The leadership should be held accountable, but, dang, sometimes it just looks like fate conspired to ruin the day.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Wednesday January 17 2018, @07:30PM (4 children)
> sometimes it just looks like fate conspired to ruin the day.
Still my "favorite" illustration of Rube Goldberg tragedy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Heck_rail_crash [wikipedia.org]
When Hollywood relies on that many coincidences, I usually call Bullshit...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:52PM
Awww, Heck!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Thursday January 18 2018, @05:22AM (2 children)
If you read the link that was caused by a lorry towing a trailer that ran off the road. Really not the fault of the crew of either train.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday January 18 2018, @05:54AM (1 child)
Read my post again, and read again the link, but correctly this time (it ain't a lorry).
How many things had to line up exactly right, causing all those deaths?
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday January 18 2018, @08:01PM
The Land Rover driver, Hart, was an accident waiting to happen. The way you put it though makes him sound like an innocent victim of chance. That's BS.
I remember the reports of the accident. Hart had described himself as someone who "lived life at 1000 mph". He was known to drive like a maniac. It was determined when he left home (at the earliest) from his internet activity (he was having an on-line chat with a woman), and obviously the time of the crash was also known. As part of the investigation police drove the route themselves with the road cleared and even so they found it difficult (largely on typical British winding roads) to drive to the schedule that Hart had managed - and they were in a standard patrol car and Hart was driving with a heavy trailer. Go figure.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday January 17 2018, @07:32PM (3 children)
There are also some rumors that the somebody (state actors [snopes.com]) was spoofing the GPS, one or both ships were not running radar at the time, and one or more of the watch keepers were not at their stations. (The mentioned Chief is likely one of these).
https://newstarget.com/2017-08-26-was-the-uss-john-s-mccain-warship-gps-spoofed-to-cause-collision.html [newstarget.com]
These may be stories made up to cover various asses, but they have to be checked out, and apparently they have been, to the satisfaction of the Navy.
There are supposed to be levels of backup for everything. Multiple Radars, covered by watch standing, GPS nav, covered by old fashion course plotting, etc.
Its designed such that not everything can go gunny sack at once.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by gottabeme on Wednesday January 17 2018, @07:51PM (1 child)
Well that's the problem: the fact that the accidents happened in spite of those levels of backup seems implausible.
And, in fact, the public report the Navy issued does not explain why the collisions happened. It explains factors that led to them, but it does not explain why those factors happened. For example, it doesn't explain why the CICs failed to communicate with the bridges, nor why the captain was not alerted despite his orders to do so, nor why the visual lookouts failed to report the other ships, etc.
Poor training, while apparently a contributing factor, is not a sufficient explanation, because it doesn't explain why the guys with binoculars, ostensibly, stood idly by while the other ships approached. It doesn't explain why the crews allowed the collisions to occur.
For those reasons, as well as the timing, location, and the matter of North Korean nuclear ambition and ballistic missile defense, I think there is much that was left out of the Navy's publicly issued reports, and much more to the stories than we will ever hear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @03:41PM
You know those ships do not turn and tack on a dime, don't you? Because you think you understand collision avoidance in a moving vehicle, don't assume you know how naval vessels and especially container ships maneuver.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @09:28AM
No matter whether you are in a car, a plane or on a ship, what's outside the window ALWAYS overrules what theGPS says.
While the old lady who followed the GPS' instructions to drive onto the ferry without first checking that the ferry was docked could be excused (GPS wasn't around when she got her drivers license), those in command of a navy ship should be aware of this.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:17PM (1 child)
Things do conspire to ruin lives. Small mistakes and bad timing, yes. But, that is a big part of leadership. When lives depend on the actions of several men, and many sensors, the drills are in order, until each man understands his part in the entire process. Hopefully, he understands more of the process than just his own part, but he MUST understand his part. Drill, drill, drill.
Those drills must also require precision, and accuracy. In one of those collisions, it was reported that the OOD seemed to be unaware that there were TWO ships in proximity, on similar relative headings. Obviously, the reporting was imprecise and/or inaccurate. What ever happened to "skunk able", "skunk baker", "skunk charlie" and so one? Maybe the Navy doesn't use grease boards and grease pens anymore, but the designators? What was reported to the OOD? "There's a ship over yonder, and maybe another one beyond it" is hardly precise, or accurate.
Now, the thing I'm getting to here is - if imprecise and inaccurate information is the norm aboard ship, then leadership is responsible. They have accepted slipshod work over the years, and everyone has grown accustomed to it. The bar has been lowered, and the lower ranks are taking advantage of it. Several layers of leadership are at fault in this situation. Captain, Executive, Quartermaster/Navigation division officer, the division Chief, and the division's Leading Petty Officer are all at fault, for failure to correct the situation.
Back in my day, we used a grease board, and a grease pencil, which was illuminated at night by a ring of lights around it. My first time with it, was at night. Guy in CIC would tell me, via sound powered phone, what they were seeing, and it was my job to update the board, AS WELL AS to announce those changes for the benefit of the OOD and bridge crew. I got my ass reamed, first time around, because I was timid about speaking up. I marked my board, and stated the changes aloud, so that the guy on the other end of the phone could confirm that I got it right. But - it was my JOB to BROADCAST all of that information, and ensure that the OOD was aware of updates. What was actually happening, because I was timid, was that the OOD was completely unaware of some of my updates. A first class petty officer jumped all over my ass, declared me to be an incompetent worm, and that he was going to use my boot camp ass for bait the next time he went fishing.
In my case, a lowly first class petty officer corrected the problem. And, in almost all cases, a petty officer SHOULD BE correcting deficiencies. If the third class accepts substandard performance, and the second class does the same, right on up through the CO, then you have multiple layers of incompetent leadership.
And, that seems to be exactly what TFA is suggesting.
Or, in terms a court martial will understand, you have "ineffective leadership". That is an unforgiveable offense in the military. No court martial will accept that fate conspired to ruin the day.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 17 2018, @08:59PM
Yeah, but the problem I see here is that the leadership is trained based on policies that are set at a level far above even a commander or captain, and really goes up to the Pentagon or even Congress. What's the captain supposed to do when the Navy itself refuses to provide proper schooling in maritime operations to any of its officers? How's he supposed to correct that systemic deficiency all by himself? This problem wasn't caused by a few officers on ships, or else we wouldn't have seen 4 ships have major accidents so close together. This problem was caused by policy problems within the Navy itself. Now the Navy is working to correct the policy and improve training and other policies (like with crewmen not getting enough rest, another thing the captain has little control over since he's given operational orders from people above him), but they're using these officers as scapegoats for their own incompetence at training them properly.
This is basically like sending a kid to ITT Tech instead of MIT, and then penalizing him when he doesn't do work at the level of a MIT grad. WTF did you expect? Remember, the Navy eliminated its training courses for maritime operations, and replaced them with a set of CD-ROMs to be read at sea. WTF kind of training is that?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Arik on Wednesday January 17 2018, @09:00PM (3 children)
[cite=https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2017/11/01/navy-crews-at-fault-in-fatal-collisions-investigations-find/]
Sanchez ordered the crew to set sea and anchor detail at 6 a.m. instead of an hour prior, when the ship entered the shipping lane heading into the Strait of Malacca. The ship’s operations officer, executive office and navigator had all recommended the ship set sea and anchor at 5 a.m. for safety reasons.
The critical failure came when the current was pushing the ship left and Sanchez noticed the helmsman — usually a junior sailor charged controlling the ship’s steering and speed when ordered by the officer of the deck or conning officer — was having trouble keeping the ship on course.
The master helmsman who would perform these tasks during a sea and anchor detail was still in the chow line at the time.
At 5:20 a.m., Sanchez ordered a second watch-stander to help run the controls to steer the ship, letting the helmsman keep control of the rudder while giving the second watch-stander control of the speed and position of the ship’s two propellers — a position known as the lee helm.
Putting two sailors at the separate positions required changing the ship’s steering configuration and shifting control of engine propeller speed to another part of control console.
But changing the control mechanisms immediately led to confusion because they mistakenly shifted all of the controls — both rudder and engine speed — to the second console.
As a result, the helmsman could no longer control the steering. He initially believed he had lost steering due to a mechanical failure, when in fact, he was just confused about the configuration of the equipment.
Four minutes before the collision, confusion began to run wild on the bridge while watch-standers attempted to fix a nonexistent loss of steering.
Complicating the situation further, changing in steering configurations forced the rudder to revert to a center line position, releasing the previous position that was set to the right between one and four degrees to fight the current that was pushing the ship left.
With the rudder unintentionally set to center line, the current continued to push the ship left of track.
During the confusion, when the bridge thought they had lost control of steering, the commanding officer ordered the engine to slow the ship’s speed from 20 knots to five. But the sailor at the console controlling the speed of the two propellers only slowed the port shaft to five knots, while the starboard shaft was still turning at 20 knots, abruptly pushing the ship sharply to the left and into the track of the Alnic MC for more than a minute.
An officer on the bridge ordered the steering controls to be shifted to a space near the rear of the ship that can also control steering, known as aft steering. But that was not yet manned due to Sanchez’s decision to man sea and anchor at 6 instead of 5 a.m.
The McCain’s steering configuration was changed five times in the roughly three minutes before the collision, according to the Navy report.
By the time the aft steering was manned and the sailor on the bridge fixed the speed issue that was forcing McCain left of track, it was too late.
The collision with Alnic MC at 5:23 a.m. created a 28-foot hole in the side of McCain, flooding spaces within seconds and killing 10 sailors, most of whom appear to have been crushed to death or drowned in the berthing.
[endcite]
Not mentioned in this source but recalled from another report, several of the crew had just transferred from another ship with similar, but subtly different computers, and had not qualified on this particular setup.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by leftover on Thursday January 18 2018, @12:31AM (1 child)
Somebody please tell me the Navy does not use computer UX practices to control helm and rudder -- please? And the ability to shift control around without it being obvious? Shit. I haven't been on the bridge of a warship since mid 1970's but I can recall the benefit of having a great big brass wheel and big helm control levers front and center on the bridge. It was immediately obvious where control was being maintained and every single person there could see the control positions, even in hectic conditions. Especially in hectic conditions.
Did ship designers confuse the selection and training level of submariners with those of regular Navy? Did actual experienced officers and senior crew not have veto power over REMFs who only imagined being underway? There have always been reasons behind mariner's legendary resistance to change. One of those reasons is the predictable behavior of frightened people in a shitstorm. We become very easy to confuse and then we rely on overtrained responses to Really Obvious Information. Visceral representations like Big Fucking Lever Up, certainly not abstract text on a console.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday January 18 2018, @02:15AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Thursday January 18 2018, @05:30AM
In other words...poor or lack of training of junior officers and crew.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 18 2018, @04:40AM
That was similar to the conclusion on the USS Greeneville collision with Ehime Maru in 2001. The sub took too many chances, was operating without some sonar equipment in working order, and was been driven too recklessly, pushing too much to impress civilian passengers who'd been given too much leeway and were getting in the way of the crew.
The captain was forced to retire, but not further punished. He was not court martialed, and was given an honorable discharge.