Navy Mishap: Fill & Download for Free

I don’t know.These are my thoughts as a person with a little bit of highly varied experience. But we need to hear from the US Navy investigations. I can only speculate.I’d love to hear from User-9895600850577337560 .The picture above is the USS Spruance, DD-963. The Super Spru. That is the ship I sailed on in the summer of 1982. Rota Spain, St. Nazaire France, Liverpool England, Douglas The Isle of Man, Amsterdam The Netherlands, Portsmouth England and Norfolk Virginia. It is a gas turbine powered destroyer. I qualified on the bridge which included lookouts fore, aft, port, and starboard. CIC which included electronic sensors and messages AKA Radio Room. Engineering AKA start stop and steer the ship responding to mechanical, bell, and voice messages from the Bridge.The North Atlantic and the North Sea showed me the unbelievable power of the Oceans and Seas. Going to Sea is very very difficult.I also cruised on Navy LST’s and LSD’s with the Army as an embarked troop officer. We hit the beach with Mike Boats and Hover Craft.Same with a US Army LSV, landing vehicles and equipment in San Lorenzo port in Honduras in the Gulf of Fonseca. The Army LSV is an ocean going Army crewed ship that came from Panama. The Gulf of Fonseca is extremely difficult to navigate. I had to bring a local pilot out in a small boat crewed by a relative of the pilot. The pilot knew the channels in and out. I hired pilot and his grandson running the pilot boat, because it was a classified operation. I picked … and paid … them. More work? Don’t talk.I worked more than a dozen Merchant ships from all over the world as well as foreign Naval vessels doing jobs for the US Army and US Government. I know how Merchant ships from all over the world work.The good, the bad, and the ugly.I am not Surface Warfare qualified, Merchant licensed, etc.But, I have perspective, including the straights of Malaca, a crowded pirate infested water. Also, Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Cape Town, NYC, Oakland, and growing up in Baltimore City. Some of the busiest merchant ports in the world. Etc.I have been on the bridges of modern merchant ships and debriefed Navy Captains as an Army Officer on my perspective of the ship and the cargo.I also graduated from the US Army Aviation Safety Officers Course at Fort Rucker and am OSHA certified.Foreign Army Advisor.International Business Consultant.Perspective.Experience.My speculation on the recent Navy mishaps?Both collisions were another day at the office that went very badly.Crews are trained. Was their a breakdown in command?Sensors work. Did they fail?Merchant ships must make money. Business. Crews cost money. Training costs money. Crews are human. Autopilot? No human ship handling? Alcohol … LOTS OF IT ON MERCHANTS which means illegal narcotics, too. US Merchant Marine is highly regulated, but money means short cuts, even in the US. Foreign flagged ships are not as regulated, have skeleton crews, and the sky is the limit on what is happening on board.Error?Fog … eye ball doesn’t work. Crowded anchorage? Singapore harbor from the air is UNBELIEVABLE. Dozens and dozens of massive ships. At night???!!!Auto-pilot?The ship made an automatic planned course adjustment at the exact wrong time?IDK. Bad luck? Or negligence … on one or both parts? Or mechanical / electronic failure? Wait and see.

Yep. And it sucks.Imagine a braided steel cable as thick as your thigh whipping around an open deck filled with people and airplanes. A ‘wire snap’ is almost certain to put at least a few people on the hospital and a jet in the water. At best, it looks like this:EDIT: A couple of relevant articles for those who were curious about this particular mishap:Horrific cable mishap caused by maintenance errors: NavyWhen landing cable snapped on USS Eisenhower, Hawkeye pilots say years of training helped them save lives and the aircraft

A buddy from a sister squadron had moved on to be a Strike Fighter Weapons Instructor. He was a Top Gun grad and was with a student on the range near NAS Fallon in Nevada. While he was leading the two jets, his student lost situational awareness and ran into him. The student had to shell out and was retrieved with only minor injuries. My buddy limped back to base, landing safely, but the aircraft was a strike. He continued to fly for another couple years as a weapons instructor, having been fully exonerated by the Navy, before getting out and going to the airlines.At his first airline interview with a major carrier, the table of interviewers talked over several things before getting to the page that showed his mishap. They clarified all that he'd written regarding the accident, also looking over the Navy statement. They closed his file, thanked him for his time, and told him they were unable to hire him. He sputtered that it wasn't his fault, but they simply apologized and said their hands were tied. This happened with the next company, but after an interview with a third company, he was hired.It still seems unfair, but companies have different views about the "stink" of mishap, that it somehow means failure. It's often the opposite, though, creating a stronger, more experienced pilot.