If you require blood pressure meds, take some now. Also remove any throwable objects from arms reach. HMCS(FMF) ret sent me the link just as I was finishing the article. I then worked on Poe’s Valor Friday post for an hour, just to calm down. This is not good news.<\/p>\n
A scathing internal Navy probe into the 2017 collision that drowned seven sailors on the guided-missile destroyer Fitzgerald details a far longer list of problems plaguing the vessel, its crew and superior commands than the service has publicly admitted.<\/p>\n
Obtained by Navy Times, the \u201cdual-purpose investigation\u201d was overseen by Rear Adm. Brian Fort and submitted 41 days after the June 17, 2017, tragedy.<\/p>\n
It was kept secret from the public in part because it was designed to prep the Navy for potential lawsuits in the aftermath of the accident.<\/p>\n
Unsparingly, Fort and his team of investigators outlined critical lapses by bridge watchstanders on the night of the collision with the Philippine-flagged container vessel ACX Crystal in a bustling maritime corridor off the coast of Japan.<\/p>\n
Their report documents the routine, almost casual, violations of standing orders on a Fitz bridge that often lacked skippers and executive officers, even during potentially dangerous voyages at night through busy waterways.<\/p>\n
The probe exposes how personal distrust led the officer of the deck, Lt. j.g. Sarah Coppock, to avoid communicating with the destroyer\u2019s electronic nerve center \u2014 the combat information center, or CIC \u2014 while the Fitzgerald tried to cross a shipping superhighway.<\/p>\n
When Fort walked into the trash-strewn CIC in the wake of the disaster, he was hit with the acrid smell of urine. He saw kettlebells on the floor and bottles filled with pee. Some radar controls didn\u2019t work and he soon discovered crew members who didn\u2019t know how to use them anyway.<\/p>\n
Fort found a Voyage Management System that generated more \u201ctrouble calls\u201d than any other key piece of electronic navigational equipment. Designed to help watchstanders navigate without paper charts, the VMS station in the skipper\u2019s quarters was broken so sailors cannibalized it for parts to help keep the rickety system working.<\/p>\n
Since 2015, the Fitz had lacked a quartermaster chief petty officer, a crucial leader who helps safely navigate a warship and trains its sailors \u2014 a shortcoming known to both the destroyer\u2019s squadron and Navy officials in the United States, Fort wrote.<\/p>\n
Fort determined that Fitz\u2019s crew was plagued by low morale; overseen by a dysfunctional chiefs mess; and dogged by a bruising tempo of operations in the Japan-based 7th Fleet that left exhausted sailors with little time to train or complete critical certifications.<\/p>\n
To Fort, they also appeared to be led by officers who appeared indifferent to potentially life-saving lessons that should\u2019ve been learned from other near-misses at sea, including a similar incident near Sasebo, Japan, that occurred only five weeks before the ACX Crystal collision, Fort wrote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
![\"fitz](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/fitz-e1547572200902.jpg\")
The guided-missile destroyer Fitzgerald sails limps back to Japan following a collision with a merchant vessel on June 17, 2017. (Kazuhiro Nogi\/AFP\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u2018Significant progress\u2019<\/p>\n
Fort\u2019s work took on added urgency after another destroyer assigned to the 7th Fleet, the John S. McCain, collided with the Liberian-flagged tanker Alnic MC on Aug. 21, 2017, killing 10 more American sailors.<\/p>\n
But it remained an internal file never to be shared with the public.<\/p>\n
Pentagon officials declined to answer specific questions sent by Navy Times about the Fort report and instead defended the decision to keep the contents of the report hidden from public scrutiny.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Navy determined to retain the legal privilege in order to protect the legal interests of the United States, but provided information regarding the causes and lessons learned to families of those sailors, the Congress and the American people, again to make every effort to ensure these types of tragedies to not happen again,\u201d said Navy spokesman Capt. Gregory Hicks in a prepared written statement to Navy Times.<\/p>\n
In the 19 months since the fatal collision, the Navy\u2019s Readiness Reform Oversight Council has made \u201csignificant progress\u201d in implementing reforms called for in several top-level Navy reviews of the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions \u2014 nearly 75 percent of the 111 recommendations slated to be implemented by the end of 2018, Hicks added.<\/p>\n
Navy Times withheld publication of the Fort report\u2019s details until Pentagon officials could brief the families of the dead Fitz sailors about the grim findings.<\/p>\n
Sailors Xavier Martin, Dakota Rigsby, Shingo Douglass, Tan Huynh, Noe Hernandez, Carlos Sibayan and Gary Rehm drowned in the disaster.<\/p>\n
Coppock pleaded guilty to a dereliction of duty charge at court-martial last year.<\/p>\n
The Fitz\u2019s commanding officer, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, and Lt. Natalie Combs, who ran the CIC, are battling similar charges in court but contend unlawful command influence by senior leaders scuttled any chance for fair trials.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Read the rest, if you can stand it, here: The Navy Times<\/a><\/p>\nOver tasked, under manned, no time for training or even maintenance, this is a disaster from the top of the squadron on down. And after completely avoidable disasters (Fitz, McCain) Big Navy immediately goes into CYA mode. <\/p>\n
The part left unsaid is, I’ll wager every other destroyer in the 7th Fleet had exactly the same issues. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Erin Elizabeth Rehm receives the American flag from Vice Adm. Jan Tighe during a graveside service … Worse than you thought: inside the secret Fitzgerald probe the Navy doesn\u2019t want you to read<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Erin](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/Erin-Rehm-reveives-flag-e1547571740201.jpg\")
Erin Elizabeth Rehm receives the American flag from Vice Adm. Jan Tighe during a graveside service for her husband, Fire Controlman Chief Gary Leo Rehm Jr., at Arlington National Cemetery on Aug. 16, 2017. Rehm died when the guided-missile destroyer Fitzgerald collided with the Philippine-flagged merchant vessel ACX Crystal on June 17, 2017. (Elizabeth Fraser\/ Arlington National Cemetery)