CAN OUR NAVY SHIPS PLEASE STOP RUNNING INTO THINGS

[Recursion]

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/02/05/no-injuries-after-navy-ships-collide-east-coast.html

A Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser and a dry cargo ship collided stern-to-stern during a resupply operation in the Atlantic off the southeastern coast of the U.S., the Navy announced Tuesday.

The cruiser Leyte Gulf and cargo ship Robert E. Peary "made contact" during an underway replenishment operation, Navy officials said in a release. No personnel were injured, and both ships were able to operate following the encounter.

The news of the collision was first reported by USNI News, which added that damage was minor and occurred at the waterline.

The incident happened around 4 p.m. Tuesday; the ships are now headed into port at Norfolk to assess damage, according to the release.

Thank God nobody was hurt this time but seriously. Can we please stop?

[jberryhill]

1. Good golly

Does anyone manage to keep their command after something like this?

[Blue_true]

5. Could personal electronic devices be playing a role? nt

[denbot]

26. T-Mobile does not cover the deep blue.

LoL

[Achilleaze]

29. Tuff when your "commander-in-chief" is a five-time republican draft dodger

the republican drags down everything he's associated with.

[fescuerescue]

36. They don't

[tinymontgomery]

2. 23 years in and have never seen

23 years in the navy and have never heard of so many navy ship
collisions in such a short period of time. I was involved in two during my time.
11 years as a navy quartermaster and 12 LDO as a navy bridge watch stander, Officer of the Deck.

[Blue_true]

4. How does a Navy Watch play out.

How many people are involved, and if you can, where are they positioned and how do they communicate?

[ooky]

8. There are all kinds of watches for a ship underway at sea.

Fireroom watches, bridge watches, CIC (combat information center) watches, etc. Usually the ones I was involved in were 4 hours long and either on the bridge or in CIC.

Typical bridge watch is an OOD (officer of the deck), quartermaster, helmsman, someone tracking contacts (other ships and their relative positions to ours), starboard and port watches. Communications through headphones to remote locations to the bridge, i.e CIC, signal bridge etc.

[Blue_true]

13. Thanks. nt

[tinymontgomery]

18. OOKY pretty much nailed it

With just a few minor changes in watches on how a ship establishes their watches OOKY nailed it. Refueling at sea is
an exact science and great ship handling. Ships get known on how their professional
ship handling skills are. There's some decent videos on refueling under way (u/w) on navy ships
on you tube, check them out. It is a precise event, even science is involved, understanding the Venturi effect
is crucial.

refueling u/w helped us win in the pacific during WW2.

[ooky]

23. Yep, replenishment details are more sophisticated, can go much longer,

Ships are running same course and speed while our oil rigs are pumping oil (and aviation gasoline in the case of aircraft carriers.)

The ship's captain took over the bridge for these details.

For a frame reference for interested land lubbers, typical hook up here, in a picture taken from my old ship.

http://navy.memorieshop.com/Mississinewa/Portsmouth-Bound.html

[ooky]

7. I was in the Navy for 4 years and involved in two collisions.

The second in which we collided with an aircraft carrier, causing the ship to be retired from the fleet. But, I should add that I was on an oiler, so we were involved in a lot of underway replenishment details.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

34. "...causing the ship to be retired from the fleet"

Uh, which ship had to be retired? Hopefully, it was the oiler, and hopefully there were no severe injuries or worse.

Were there repercussions? Did the captain get forced to retire? Or is there some forgiveness during that tricky maneuver?

[ooky]

37. Sure

My ship, the USS Mississinewa, was retired as a Navy war ship following the accident due to the amount of sustained damage in the collision. There were no severe injuries. Our crew were all transferred to new commands. It is my understanding our captain was court martialed. I do not know the outcome of that.

Here is a photograph of the damage to the forward superstructure of the ship following the accident. It was substantial.

http://navy.memorieshop.com/Mississinewa/Saratoga-2.html

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

38. It appears that the Saratoga had some sort of jinx.

Three collisions. I don't know if that's a record. Combined with the other mishaps, it looks like a less-than-stellar career..

http://www.damagecontrolmuseums.org/Ship_Cas_history/SARATOGA/SARATOGA_n.html

[ooky]

39. Ironically, for me

when I was transferred from the Mississinewa my new orders were to a helicopter squadron which was, you guessed it, aboard the Saratoga.

I think these collisions are more frequent than people know. As I previously mentioned I was in two while on the Mississinewa over about a 2 and a half year period, the first one unpublicized, which was a mere "bump" that fortunately didn't result in any damage. But it was a collision.

[sl8]

3. UNREPs can be pretty tricky.

[Blue_true]

6. How is that? Not debating, just curious. nt

[sl8]

9. You have to match course and speed with 1 or 2 other ships while tied together in close proximity.

Imagine driving alongside a car in the next lane on the freeway. Now, tie yourself to the other car and maintain an 8-10 foot gap for 30 minutes or so. If you're feeling adventurous , do the same with the car on the other side, simultaneously. It's kind of like that, except ships also have to deal with unpredictable waves pushing them together or apart. It's quite an evolution.


Wikipedia has an article on the procedure:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underway_replenishment

[Blue_true]

16. Thanks. The information was interesting.

Must be a wild time on all decks that are involved in the operation, since the weights involved seem to require lifts for replenishment of non fuel items.

[keithbvadu2]

10. They require very precise control of speed and steering.

They require very precise control of speed and steering.

[Blue_true]

17. I saw a graphic and read a description. Pretty interesting.

I can understand better why ships can collide.

[keithbvadu2]

20. Aircraft carrier off coast of Alaska, winter, very cold. Rougher than snot.

Aircraft carrier off coast of Alaska, winter, very cold.
Rougher than snot.
Had to quit flight ops because breaking aircraft struts on landing.
Refueled a Canadian destroyer alongside.
We were jumping around.
They were bobbing all up and down and sideways.
All dressed in foul weather gear, yellow slickers and life jackets.
All except one guy who was doing absolutely nothing and I would not want his job.
Dressed in a wet suit.
He was the swimmer.
If someone fell overboard, guess who was second?

[denbot]

27. Nice..

That could be put to music in the gut of damn near any remote pierside dive.

[UTUSN]

11. Since I are one, the expression "-------- sailor" comes to mind

[Chichiri]

12. Are ship collisions endemic in the Navy of late?

That would be news to me . . .

[hardluck]

14. Yup

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

https://news.usni.org/2018/06/17/summary-major-events-since-fatal-uss-fitzgerald-collision

https://news.usni.org/2018/08/21/35947

[pansypoo53219]

19. not getting the training they used too. this is getting $$$$.

[denbot]

21. Stern to stern sounds odd

I rode a tin can (Guided Missle Destroyer) and every at sea replenish was side by side.

I don’t recall a major collision during my service, but we did close pretty close to a Oiler during a refueling. Our station was on the starboard side and watching that ship close in was a bit unnerving.

[ooky]

24. Unnerving is a good description of watching

that Carrier hit the port side of our oiler and then drift backward over our forward superstructure toward where I was standing on our bridge, knocking down everything in its path.

What it looked like when it was over, you can see the twisted metal that was our gun mounts.

http://navy.memorieshop.com/Mississinewa/Saratoga-2.html

[denbot]

25. Yeah, fuck that.

I was an OS3 at the time, so I still had to do refueling duty on the O1 deck right next to our torpedo tubes. We had already swapped paint with a Kassion Class rust bucket off Mombasa, not scary, it just pissed everyone off.

Watching 80k tons of oiler get so close that we cut lines, spewing fuel oil, and going flank speed to breakaway, is nowhere near the the Belknap pucker, but that shit ran through everyone on that deck’s mind, whether or not think any of us would have admitted to it at that time.

[hack89]

31. I suspect that the CG swung his stern into the oiler as they breaking away

could have been an emergency break away.

[Demonaut]

22. unreps are difficult and risky, ships run side by side for miles to transfer weapon's,fuel and food

Delta unreps are the most difficult

[democratisphere]

28. Perhaps they shouldn't do this while underway.

Seems like a high probability for an accident waiting to happen.

[PJMcK]

30. There aren't any filling stations at sea (n/t)

[hack89]

32. Warships have to fuel every four or five days when at sea

we have been doing refueling at sea for 70 years. It is the reason we won the war in the Pacific during WWII and it is the reason we can deploy ships anywhere in the world.

The accident rate is very low. In my 20 years in the navy, I did nearly 50 underway replenishment without a collision.

[Beausoleil]

35. I was on a replenishment oiler for almost 2 years

Was involved in dozens of unreps. This ship was an AOR; we carried jet fuel, deisel oil, stores and ammo, so we supplied all of that to ships while underway. The ship was designed specifically for unreps. We were like a floating convenience store. We were told that if the ship had a fire emergency while underway, we would radio all other ships in the area, not for assistance, but to let them know to leave the area.

Everyone involved appreciated the dangers and everything was very well controlled. If the seas were too heavy, we did not perform underway replenishment operations.

We never had any collisions, but we did have a couple of emergency breakaways.

The ship did have a couple of "accidents" (due to human error); we ran into the dock when pulling in to Pearl Harbor and we also ran aground coming into San Diego harbor. The navigator lost his commission over that one.

[panader0]

33. The responses here are very interesting.

Thanks to all of you sailors. And wow!