Heroic US Navy seamen praised, officers fired in lethal warship collision
 Hair raising rescues were recorded by an official inquiry into the causes of accidental collisions of two US guided missile destroyers with two merchantmen in which bridge teams and absent officers were blamed and relieved of their duties.
"Multiple failures" by US Navy crews contributed to two deadly collisions, according to the Collision Report for USS Fitzgerald on June 16 and USS John S McCain on August 21, entitled "Supplemental Preliminary Inquiry and Line of Duty Determination".
The inquiry found the two collisions that killed 17 sailors at sea were preventable and caused by errors by those standing watch.
But the inquiry also said: "Sailors should be commended for their swift and heroic action. Members of the Fitzgerald crew saved lives. No damage control efforts would have prevented flooding or the deadly circumstances in that situation."
The 43-page report contains tales of last-minute escapes and extraordinary efforts to save sailors trapped by rising water, or caught in the twisted wreckage.
Of the ship's 300-strong crew, 34 were trapped in the area that was flooded when the bulbous containership cut a 13 by 17-foot hole in the side of the Fitzgerald.
The ship's commanding officer was sleeping in a part of the ship that took a direct hit, his cabin located just above the waterline.
"Five men used a sledgehammer, kettle bell, and their bodies to break through the door into the CO's cabin, remove the hinges, then pry the door open enough to squeeze through," the report recounts.
"A junior officer and two chief petty officers removed debris from in front of the door and crawled into the cabin. The skin of the ship and outer bulkhead were gone and the night sky could be seen through the hanging wires and ripped steel.
"The rescue team tied themselves together with a belt in order to create a makeshift harness as they retrieved the captain, who was hanging from the side of the ship," said the report.
In one instance, two sailors who had been helping others from the bottom of a ladder were eventually forced to climb as water reached the top of the compartment.
But before leaving they reached back into the water and pulled two others from the flooded compartment. Both were completely underwater when pulled to safety.
The Fitzgerald collision killed seven off the southern coast of Japan, while the McCain collision killed 10 near Singapore.
The navy has since sacked several officers and men including the senior officer in charge of the 7th Fleet, to which both ships belonged.
Said Admiral John Richardson: "We must never allow an accident like this to take the lives of such magnificent young sailors and inflict such painful grief on their families and the nation."
The Fitzgerald collision was blamed on watch teams disregarding established ways of contacting other ships and required safety precautions that were in place.
The investigation found that at about 11pm on June 16, the ship's captain, Cmdr Bryce Benson and executive officer (XO) Cmdr Sean Babbitt, had left the bridge for the evening.
By 1am, the Fitzgerald was moving past Japan's Oshima Island and approached three merchantmen from starboard. There was "minimal" distance between the Fitzgerald and the other vessels, and all three presented a collision hazard, the investigation found.
But in the 30 minutes leading up to the collision, neither the 8,315-ton Fitzgerald nor the 39,565-ton ACX Crystal, a Philippine-flagged 2,858-TEU containership, did so until just a minute prior to the disaster.
The investigation faulted the officer of the deck, who was not named in the documents, for failing to manoeuvre as needed, sound the danger alarm on the ship, contact the Crystal or call his own captain, as required.
With the Fitzgerald badly damaged, the men had to decide whether to continue searching for their fellow shipmates or seal off the flooding areas.
"Initially, the officer of the deck intended to take no action, mistaking Crystal to be another of the two vessels with a greater closest point of approach," said the report.
Eventually, he realised that Fitzgerald was on a collision course, but too late.
Cmdrs Benson and Babbitt and the senior NCO aboard, Command Master Chief Command Master Chief Petty Officer Brice Baldwin were cited for being absent from the bridge at the time of the crash. They were sacked in August.
In the McCain collision, the ship's captain, Cmdr Alfredo Sanchez, and XO Cmdr Jessie Sanchez, both sacked in August, were on the bridge, but confusion about how the ship's steering worked caused chaos.
The investigation found that it was 5.19am on August 21 when Cmdr Alfredo J. Sanchez noticed that the helmsman was having difficulty maintaining course while in congested waters.
In response, he put a second sailor in charge of shifting speed control while keeping the steering with the helmsman.
The decision prompted confusion, with the men thinking that steering had been transferred from one to the other even though it had not.
The helmsman reported a loss of steering, prompting the commanding officer to order the slow from 10 knots to five knots. But the second man reduced the speed on only one propeller, veering the 8,315-ton destroyer into the 50,760-ton Liberian-flagged tanker Alnic MC.
"Although John S McCain was now on a course to collide with Alnic, the bridge team didn't know it. No one on the bridge clearly understood the forces acting on the ship, nor did they understand the Alnic's course and speed."
Three minutes after the steering problems were reported, the McCain's crew regained control, but too late. The ships collided at 5.24am.
"The collision was felt throughout the ship," the report said. "Watchstanders on the bridge were jolted from their stations momentarily and watchstanders aft were thrown off their feet. Several suffered minor injuries. Some thought the ship had run aground; others thought they had been attacked.
The investigation found that the McCain collision "resulted primarily from complacency, overconfidence and lack of procedural compliance". It added that with regard to procedures, the bridge team, including the captain and the XO, were not properly trained on how to correctly operate the ship control console during a steering casualty." |
