Oh, they were going downhill 20 years ago, one reason I retired when I could.

After some of the grievous errors I've seen committed on our nation's ships (carrier Captains having wild parties in their cabins, destroyer Captains allowing terrorists to get close enough to blow holes in their ship, love "triangles" leading to massive explosions in gun turrets), it would not surprise me to learn that a particular watch was either asleep or just away from his post.

I'm not picking on our Navy, but some of the current batch of sailors may not be up to the standards of those we knew in years (or decades) past.

I agree this incident is being covered up. Forty some odd years ago I was a hydraulics maintenance mechanic visiting customer oil and chemical tankers in the Port of New York and riding some of them between refinery discharge berths I never heard or seen a collisions the New York or New Jersey anchorages. Today, most merchant ships have sophisticated navigation and radar equipment. This was a deliberate act of ramming!

Sounds about right. Too bad they fell victim to social Darwinism 100 years before, but it is not an excuse for ridiculous present behaviors. We should just dump the whole system, and let it be a part of history like so many others.

My bet is they have Mattis locked in a padded room over this!

The incident was in Nov 1975, about 4 months before I went to boot camp. Occurred off Sicily in the Med. Thats why I was curious about Bangor, as the one last year was the only one I knew of, other than when the native americans dragged their crap nets in front of my boat so we ran into them and then cried foul. We had all the data to prove they crossed in front on purpose, but the Navy bought them 100K worth of new nest to shut them up, and told us to stay quiet.

Indeed, my point and question, as we never even really heard a resolution on why the boats ended up captured by Iran a couple years ago either, I bet this will be "under investigation" for a long time and then just fade away...

Well Crap, Just plain Crap. I guess if a giant freaking cargo ship can take out a USN Destroyer then we are in a shit load of trouble when/if NK launches a couple missiles at one. If they can't see a cargo ship coming they damn sure won't see a missile. I was on the USS Intrepid back in the early 70s and can tell you for sure there was not much that ship couldn't see and the tenders around it that were much newer saw a lot more with updated systems. There is no way that all these fails were simply a matter of coincidence!

Yep. Forgot the name of the ships. I recalled it was in Bangor. Oh well. I was definitely not talking about one from last year. I originally learned about this one with an retired Navy O5 and later merchant marine captain buddy of mine that did his third career at Electric Boat, when I was a pup.

Here is an article from the UK saying the Merchant was signaling, but again it would just add to the mystery of what their lookouts were doing, as well as why the merchant just did not either turn back north, or just stop, as it makes no sense that they were heading away from their destination and signaling the Fitz. More ambiguity.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/uss-fitzge...

Do you mean the Belknap collision?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bel...

The only Bangor one was the Louisiana last year. Here is an article from the Times listing collisions:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/19/us...

Hacking a commercial autopilot is a lot easier than hacking Aegis, and Aegis is really a combat system. There is a completely separate navigation radar for maneuvering.

I think the bridge crew was inexperienced, and though a turn was actually the other direction, which is easy to do for a big ship at night. This happened with a US cruiser and US carrier a long time ago in Bangor The cruiser went under the carrier foredeck, and the carrier steel foredeck about wiped the aluminum superstructure of the cruiser right off.

There are a LOT of things going on here, and the story will die out until the families start demanding answers in a few months. Something happened that the Navy does not want to be known, either their Aegis got hacks, the merchant got hacked, or some kind of terrorist thing. The hacking thing would match all the facts, as well as support Chinas current efforts to dominate the Pacific Rim area, and such an incident, which was probably not intended to kill anyone (i.e maybe the Chinese thought the look outs would see it, the ship evade and the message sent to us). Look at how Russia does the same thing in the air and on the sea, their ships have tried such maneuvers for over 40 years against ours.

A Highly armed and super technical US Navy Destroyer getting slammed while it's pants were down around it's ankles is simply unacceptable. The Fitz is a Burke Class ship with a published top speed of over 30 knots and probably can hit closer to 40 if necessary. It could run circles around the cargo ship and scoot out of it's way in rather fast fashion. There is something mighty fishy in this story but no surprise that we are not getting the truth.

Exactly so. Also, the autopilot only stays on the programmed course, the idea of a malfunction causing it to turn 120 degrees and hit a Destroyer, then return to a course to take it home is a joke.

Doc, if you go look at the maritime tracking record, you see the freighter on course for Yokohama, then apparently veer 120 degrees left, go straight to the Destroyer, then sort of wander back until the autopilot is disabled and they returned to the scene of the crime. Their transponder was working all the time.

Well, we are also forgetting the Iranian boat controversy a year or so ago. Remember we asked the same questions? I agree there is seemingly no way this could happen, but it does look like :
a. Someone was able to hack the autopilot of the merchant ship (supposedly the crew was asleep or not watching). They ten gave it different directions, probably with self errasing software.
b. Someone would have had to have hacked the Ageis system and been able to make it appear that there was no contact (you could just delete the entry in the contact database, everytime it writes), and the crew was also asleep at the wheel thinking they did not need to be alert because the god Ageis was protecting them. Again, self erasing software could then go away and maybe, as an insult, leave the last entry in the table to make it look like a glitch.

Not only is this a good plot for a book, but it also would be a "test" or a warning to Trump that they have weapons the US does not know about, that can defeat our vaunted technology.

I don't know about an attack. Hitting a 100,000 hp destroyer with dual, controllable pitch propellers with a containership, is like Rosanne Barr catching Lionel Messi. It only happens if Messi is not paying attention. That destroyer can stop from flank in a few ship lengths, and maneuver like a rabbit.

Maybe the containership crew were doing something inappropriate, but the containership has right of way, and destroyer is very fast and very maneuverable. The ONLY way the destroyer gets hit is US crew incompetence.

The track of the freighter and Navy ship shows a movement due to the hit and then a return of the freighter after the turn. I believe there were screwups but both were at fault. First the freighter was on auto pilot but the bridge should still have been manned in case something happens. The Navy ship bridge should have given right away to the freighter and screwed up by not changing course. I was Navy and even on an aircraft carrier, we changed course to steer clear of any possible collision. Granted, most ships steered clear of us but occasionally we had to change. I did 3 WestPac (Western Pacific) cruises and it is a busy ship traffic area, especially around South Korea, Taiwan, mainland China and the Straits of Malacca.

The problem is that like air traffic control systems, marine navigation relies on transponders instead of active radar. It would be interesting to see if the transponder on the freighter had been turned off, so it became "invisible" to other vessels.

Sounds like JFK....got run over by a destroyer in fog on his first combat patrol. Didn't have the full compliment of lookouts on duty. Should have been cashiered out of the navy....but family connections got him written up in "Profiles in Courage"

Here is an article from the Seattle Times that adds to the same questions: http://www.seattletimes.com/nation-wo...

Oh, AJ, the AEGIS CIC is like the bridge of the starship Enterpirse, complete with command chair, and a senior officer is always on duty there. No grease pencils unless the computer craps out. Only on submarines 20 years ago did we still hand plot and that was so we could make sure the FC system was sane and no one had put in crap like 100 knots for target speed. Being a "stack the dots" system, you can change any variable (range, speed bearing rate) and make the dots stack, but that was when reality steps in and you tell the boobs "nope, can't be doing 60 knots, sir, try again" Sonar was graded on it's ability to independently track and solve target solutions good enough for MK48's to eat them. We had to pass or face continuous remedial torture. We were very good on my sonar gang.

see my above for why this makes no sense. They have a CIC whos only job is to manage the space around the ship 360 in all aspects, and it could NOT have missed a big ass freighter covered in containers (metal reflects radar incredibly well) so they had a signal strength of like "a billion" and it will flag a contact with a signal strength like -20 or -30. The Navy is digging a bigger hole for itself than the Dumbocraps "Russia Hacked Us" gang.

My question exactly. I just cannot see how they did not have SOME sensor see it coming at them (especially after a radical course change) and go "Threat". They have a super duper combat information center with an integrated "battlespace management" system that puts all their contacts air, sea and sub, on one large display. Was everyone asleep in CIC? AJ, you are correct (IMHO) BS!