Shoddy seamanship to blame in Lake Champlain collision

[nitpicker]

https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2017/11/07/shoddy-seamanship-to-blame-in-lake-champlain-collision/

Shoddy seamanship to blame in Lake Champlain collision

By: Geoff Ziezulewicz ?  15 hours ago

Of the Navy’s four at-sea mishaps this year that sparked a fleet-wide review basic operation performance, the cruiser Lake Champlain’s collision with a South Korean fishing vessel has received the sparsest attention. Unlike the disasters this summer involving the destroyers Fitzgerald and John S. McCain, which killed 17 sailors in total, no one lost their lives or were reported injured in the May 9 incident. The Lake Champlain also did not fail in a high-profile setting, like the cruiser Antietam’s January grounding in Tokyo Bay.

In a very bad year for U.S. warships, the Navy has offered little insight into what occurred. Unlike the commanders of the Antietam, Fitz and McCain, the captain of the Lake Champlain was not relieved, and handed over the ship’s reigns in a standard change-of-command ceremony in September.

The ship’s leader at the time, Capt. Chris Cegielski, as well as the executive officer and watch team sailors, were administratively disciplined after the collision, Navy officials said last month, but they declined to provide further details. Asked last week by reporters why circumstances surrounding the Lake Champlain remained so opaque, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson said he would work to make public a report on the collision. Richardson’s representatives said this week that they are readying a report for release by the end of November.
(snip)

The Lake Champlain was escorting an aircraft carrier on May 9, according to the review. The Nam Yang 502, a South Korean fishing vessel, was operating in the same area, and Lake Champlain sailors were tracking it. But awareness of the vessel was inconsistent due to poor radar operation and backup radar equipment that wasn’t working, the review states.

The ship’s bridge and other watch teams were undisciplined in their communications and failed to coordinate regarding the safety of planned maneuvers. “While changing course to maintain relative position with the escorted aircraft carrier, the USS Lake Champlain turned in front of the fishing vessel without realizing the risk of collision,” the review states. “The Bridge watchteam was slow to react and executed improper and untimely maneuvers in an attempt to avoid collision.” The Nam Yang 502 ended up striking the Lake Champlain’s port, or left, side.

While public reports on the Fitz and McCain collisions have not addressed the role the hulking commercial vessels played in those collisions, the Navy’s review of the mishaps — in this incident — lays blame with the Nam Yang 502 as well.
(snip)

[JayhawkSD]

1. Today's US Navy is totally fubar.

To this day, fifty years after I left the service, I continue to regard my time in the Navy as the best and most useful years of my life. I would not trade that experience for everything else that I have done before or since, and I have held the US Navy in the highest possible regard for all the years since I had the honor and privilege to serve.

What I have read the past few years of its ships and its men today almost brings me to tears. The ships of today’s Navy are barely seaworthy, are certainly not battle worthy, and quality of the manpower of the Navy has become so degraded that high quality ships would be wasted in any case.

I read of an instance where the Captain of a ship was in a bar on shore during liberty drinking with the enlisted crew of his ship. How can good order and discipline be maintained under such circumstances, and how can a Captain’s subordinates possibly maintain a proper respect for a “drinking buddy?”

The crew of another ship forgets to replace the lubricating oil in the ship’s main propulsion reducing gear box, rendering the ship inoperative and requiring shipyard repair. In addition to the appalling carelessness of the crew, what kind of ship is rendered useless by the loss of one set of propulsion gears?

When the bridge crew of an Arleigh Burke class destroyer causes a collision with a civilian ship ten times its size and one engine room is flooded, the ship is disabled and has to be towed to port. What kind of warship becomes a stationary target due to the loss of a single engine room?

The initial cause of that collision turns out to be that a watchstander is seen to be “struggling to cope with handling both helm and engine orders.” I have stood that watch, and anyone incapable of dealing with helm and engine orders after a day or two of training does not belong in the Navy in any capacity. He probably does not belong outside of his parents’ care.

The Arleigh Burke class did, at least, mark a return to all-steel construction. From Wikipedia, “An earlier generation had combined a steel hull with an innovative superstructure made of lighter aluminum to reduce top weight, but the lighter metal proved vulnerable to cracking. Aluminum is also less fire-resistant than steel; a 1975 fire aboard USS Belknap gutted her aluminum superstructure. Battle damage to Royal Navy ships exacerbated by their aluminum superstructures during the 1982 Falklands War supported the decision to use steel.”

That policy didn’t last. What does the Navy decide to do in building its new Littoral Combat Ships? Use all-aluminum construction, including the hull. How stupid can we be?