Originally Posted by 69GTX
Originally Posted by Mr Nice
Isn't the commanding officer supposed to order their crew (officer and enlisted)..... "All heads on a swivel" when out at sea ????
Why wasn't the crew not doing their very basic job functions ????
A container ship could not be 'seen' by an American Navy destroyer with advanced equipment to navigate busy shipping lanes and not detect a very large distant, slow moving container ship ?????
Sad that sailors died due to negligence and crew letting their guard down. Jail time is needed for the people responsible for this accident.
The Operational Tempo of the Fitzgerald seemed extreme. A lot of the key watch standers on this first midnight watch were operating on 0-2 hrs of sleep. Even the Captain was exhausted. The whole crew reported to the ship early that morning to commence training at 6 am. The collision occurred late that night at 1:30 am. Despite all the equipment issues of not being able to track all the ships around them, the OOD did have a fairly decent visual picture of the situation 15-30 min before the collision....expecting no one to close inside 1500 yds. Things went south when one of the close by merchant ships came out from behind a closer one, changing that picture to hundreds of yards. It was at that point that the OOD knew they were in serious trouble. And, it didn't help any that the top side lookouts were all on the opposite side of the ship where there were no close by contacts.
There were so many holes in this cheese you couldn't possibly summarize it in one paragraph.
By the time I separated 2-4 hours a sleep in a cycle and the cycle was commonly nearly 40 hours one trip to South America I remember not sleeping for 120 something hours while underway. There really is no excuse to keep anyone up like this unless engaged in battle. The Navy did this regularly. Not to mention the 1MC with the Boatswain's whistle paging a Chief Party Officer or Officer every 5 minutes or the ship's bells on the hour. It made sleeping impossible.
Originally Posted by Mr Nice
Isn't the commanding officer supposed to order their crew (officer and enlisted)..... "All heads on a swivel" when out at sea ????
Why wasn't the crew not doing their very basic job functions ????
A container ship could not be 'seen' by an American Navy destroyer with advanced equipment to navigate busy shipping lanes and not detect a very large distant, slow moving container ship ?????
Sad that sailors died due to negligence and crew letting their guard down. Jail time is needed for the people responsible for this accident.
The Operational Tempo of the Fitzgerald seemed extreme. A lot of the key watch standers on this first midnight watch were operating on 0-2 hrs of sleep. Even the Captain was exhausted. The whole crew reported to the ship early that morning to commence training at 6 am. The collision occurred late that night at 1:30 am. Despite all the equipment issues of not being able to track all the ships around them, the OOD did have a fairly decent visual picture of the situation 15-30 min before the collision....expecting no one to close inside 1500 yds. Things went south when one of the close by merchant ships came out from behind a closer one, changing that picture to hundreds of yards. It was at that point that the OOD knew they were in serious trouble. And, it didn't help any that the top side lookouts were all on the opposite side of the ship where there were no close by contacts.
There were so many holes in this cheese you couldn't possibly summarize it in one paragraph.
By the time I separated 2-4 hours a sleep in a cycle and the cycle was commonly nearly 40 hours one trip to South America I remember not sleeping for 120 something hours while underway. There really is no excuse to keep anyone up like this unless engaged in battle. The Navy did this regularly. Not to mention the 1MC with the Boatswain's whistle paging a Chief Party Officer or Officer every 5 minutes or the ship's bells on the hour. It made sleeping impossible.
