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Comment by sinuhe69 | Hacker News Reader

Like people with a loaded gun, sailors and officiers of warships think they are invincible and anybody else has to avoid them and not vice versa. I guess the bleak reality after such incidents would give them a cold shower to wake up, but probably too late. All modern warships were designed as if they operate on open ocean only when in reality most of the time they must navigate in world where commercial shipping has grown more strongly than ever before. The most effective weapon for modern skirmishes seems to me simple but heavy built ships designed for ramming :D

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Speaking about sailors and invincibility - there's a funny story that's circulated around (false according to snopes [1]) about a particular US and Canadian Navy interaction :) :)

Text snipped from snopes article:

Americans: “Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.”

Canadians: “Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.”

Americans: “This is the captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.”

Canadians: “No, I say again, you divert YOUR course.”

Americans: “THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES’ ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR COURSE 15 DEGREES NORTH. THAT’S ONE-FIVE DEGREES NORTH, OR COUNTER MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.”

Canadians: “This is a lighthouse. Your call.”

[1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-obstinate-lighthouse/

Yeah, I've heard variants of this story since I was a kid (usually with different countries substituted for "Canadians" here). Funny, nonetheless.

It was an ad for compasses years ago: https://youtu.be/sYsdUgEgJrY

Yeah, great joke. Came here to post it.

But damn, Snopes doesn't seem to have much of a sense of humor. I mean, it's a bloody joke! And anyway, there's no way that they could know about every naval confrontation throughout even the historical era. Pissing matches about course corrections are all too common.

Distress Call: "I'm sinking, I'm sinking."

Coast Guard: "What are you thinking about?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLSdOY-6R_U

Oh that's harsh...

None of this makes any sense. Modern warship sailors and officers are trained in, and expected to know at a professional level, seamanship, including international rules of right of way [1]. And they've been operating in crowded ports for decades if not centuries, that's nothing new.

All that happened in this case was the warship's watch changed at night and the new watch mistook the oncoming supertanker's lights for shore terminal lights, mistook the radio warnings, and didn't sound the alarm soon enough.

Also the most effective weapon in modern skirmishes remains, er, weapons. A big heavy ship can still be quickly disabled and/or sunk with a single modern cannon, torpedo, or anti-ship missile.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Regulations_for_...).

Like people with a loaded gun, sailors and officiers of warships think they are invincible and anybody else has to avoid them and not vice versa

I don’t think anyone in any recent warship collision has thought that. Generally they were simply oblivious to their surroundings. The USN root-caused it to sleep deprivation plus cuts in the training budget 10 years ago. Now the generation of officers who missed the training are commanding ships themselves and they don’t know what they don’t know.

But fooling around in a busy shipping lane without AIS or running lights in a ship designed for stealth should be obviously stupid, I’ll give you that!

While your narrative is a compelling one, I do not see how it maps to the sequence of events leading up to the collision.

According to the investigation, Sola TS was mistaken to be a stationary object further away, and the warning received over radio was believed to come from one of the outer portside ships. If that was the information I had at hand, I would not turn starboard either.

As a ham operator the thing I noticed was the missing identification from the party talking.. just 'Helge Ingstad, turn starboard'. And so on. Never a 'Helge Ingstad, this is Sola <"on course so-and-so, speed so-and-so"..'. Helge Instad didn't (according to the report, and no wonder) understand who they were talking to. Not that the personnel on board Helge Ingstad were much better.

That's hardly a common attitude with Norwegians and their military. The outcome certainly shows poor training and perhaps poor discipline on the bridge, but there's no reason to attribute it to some bravado.

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