Fitzgerald Officer of the Deck Pleads Guilty at Court-Martial
military.com
military.com
- Was going too fast for the number of ships in the area
- Did not call the captain when nearish other ships as procedure required.
- Had in fact gotten too close to several other ships that night.
- Gotten confused between which of two ships was where
- Did the calculations wrong on the closest approach of the collision vessel
- Denied a request to change course away from the collision vessel because then she would have to recalculate a new nearest approach distance
- When a collision was clearly in the future, did not contact the other vessel in any way
- Gave a late turn order, but then immediately countermanded it, keeping the ship on collision course
- spent the rest of the time until the collision freaking out (an enlisted man eventually gave the final turn order that saved some lives)
So it was about as bad as could be, and seven men died.
However, I have a feeling the Captain's court martial is going to turn out worse for him than this.
This is the part that everybody shakes their heads over. In that situation, with that geometry between the ships, it's ingrained and almost automatic for the OOD to go right full rudder and all back full: turning the ship astern of the other ship and coming to a complete stop as soon as possible. At that range (2000-3000 yards), there's no way a collision would have happened.
But the OOD actually did the exact opposite: increase speed and turn to the left, which will almost certainly result in a collision, especially if the other ship maneuvers the way it's supposed to. Just thinking about giving those orders in that situation is giving me the shivers...
8.4 Fatigue
The command leadership allowed the schedule of events preceding the collision to fatigue the crew.
The command leadership failed to assess the risks of fatigue and implement mitigation measures to ensure adequate crew rest.
Never thought I'd see reality approach fiction, when a navy is involved. Everybody down!
> A U.S. Navy officer pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty Tuesday in the collision of a U.S. Navy destroyer that killed seven sailors last year. Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock was sentenced to receive half-pay for three months and a letter of reprimand.
(Source - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lt-jg-sarah-coppock-pleads-guil...)
In this case, it's pretty cut-and-dry that she'll be separated; the BOI will just be a formality or she might even waive it.
The pertinent Navy instruction (page 7), if you're interested. http://www.public.navy.mil/bupers-npc/reference/milpersman/1...
https://doni.documentservices.dla.mil/Directives/01000%20Mil...
For example the OOD had a habit of not waking the captain when ships were too close, and the captain knew about it and did nothing about it. Thus by navy logic the captain is the one responsible.
The crew on deck at the time had been working hard since 6:00am, and the collision happened at 1:30am the following day. That scheduling was captain's responsibility.
Almost everyone (everyone?) on the bridge and in the combat information center failed at doing their jobs that night. This again by Navy logic is all on the captain, who is responsible for making sure that people know their jobs.
The ship had even lost its certification of seamanship before the accident.
I feel bad for everyone involved. The USS Fitzgerald was utterly overworked and overcommitted, and had not had the time available to train its crew or officers. The fault was a fault of the system, and in another world with more time for training, all of those in command that night may have turned out fine officers with long careers.
I think about how easy it would be to have a culture of sloppy, poorly trained sailors, and when something goes wrong, whoever is in the chair at the time takes the punishment for that.
Naturally I could be completely wrong about this or other cases. But it's hard to shake that skepticism.
Keep a few things in mind:
(1) By my count from reading the article, at least four admirals have been fired, and one has retired early. That's pretty much the entire chain of command in the Pacific fleet above the ships that had incidents. I don't know if any of them will face courts martial (I would expect not), but their careers are over, and they're not going out in a good light.
(2) The captains of the ships involved are all facing possible courts martial (and I would expect that "possible" will become "actual" within the next few weeks, from the dates given in the article), even though none of them were on the bridge at the time of the incidents. That's standard procedure for a Navy ship: if you're the captain, everything that happens is your responsibility. The executive officer and command master chief of at least one of the ships are also receiving punishment. (The command master chief, btw, is the senior enlisted aboard the ship, whose primary job is to make sure all of the sailors aboard are being properly taken care of by their officers. So it's expected that the CMC will suffer consequences when that doesn't happen.)
(3) I understand the whole "culture" thing, but at the end of the day, if you're a military officer, you're in charge, and it's your job to do what's necessary, culture notwithstanding. The officers who were operating those ships did not do their jobs, and sailors died as a result. That deserves punishment regardless of anything else.
Blaming higher leadership (which has also happened in these navy accident cases) in the military has the same problem. They're just products of their environment, too, put there ultimately by a chain of appointments ending with the President, Congress, and ultimately the voters.
It's much better to focus on process improvement than on assigning blame. But command-authority organizations like the military don't really work that way, and it's difficult to improve the culture of the military when that culture is shaped by unwise demands — excessive operational demands, fiscal constraints, and directives that end up micro-managing and constraining what commanders do — from above. Even navy admirals have their hands tied in many ways, and they're just trying to do the best they can do with a bad hand.
Trying, but still failing in this case. Playing a bad hand means you have to put more emphasis on the basics, not less. After all, ultimately military units are for fighting wars, and any war is going to be full of bad hands that you still have to play. A military that can't succeed in that kind of environment is not a military worth having.
The OOD is the very definition of a "You Had ONE Job!" job, and that one job is "Don't run into other ships or the land."
On a merchent marine ship traveling that kind of waters there would be a team of 2-3 people with the most junior seaman present having more experience at see then the average junior US Navy officer, and no bullshit about having to coordinate with combat centers or signal intelligence in addition to having to navigate. Where as it sounds like several dozen of mostly inexperienced seaman was involved on the Fitzgerald incident.
You'd think that someone who's being put in charge of helming a billion dollar vessel with over a hundred people onboard would get lots of training for it, but nope, it takes more training to become a cosmetologist in most states than it does to helm a navy ship.
Sometimes problems are multifactored and complex, but sometimes they're also just simple. The Navy simply stopped training people in how to steer ships, in a bid to save money and time. Turns out that maybe that training was good for something after all though.
Scant details on what made them 'derelict in their duty'. Was it being negligence or was it mistakes caused by lack of training.
Both. The article doesn't say that, but from my own experience as a Naval officer, I'm pretty sure. Lack of training means higher ups were also at fault, and that's why they're also being punished. But lack of training does not remove your responsibility if you're the officer on watch. Nothing does. Those who don't like that should not become officers.
[1] https://news.usni.org/2017/11/01/uss-fitzgerald-uss-john-s-m...
> The Navy has acknowledged that its forward-deployed 7th Fleet in Japan was stretched too thin – undermanned, overworked and exhausted under an intense operational schedule. To meet the high operational demand, training and ship maintenance were deferred, according to a Navy review.
The Fitzgerald was hit on the Port side which indicates it should have given way.