I guess my question is, even if the cargo ship was off course, surely the crew of the Navy ship would have seen it coming towards them either on radar or by some other means and had time to take evasive action? I don’t think they all go to sleep at the same time, leaving the ship unattended. Something’s not right here.
Yeah, none of this makes sense yet. Did the Fitzgerald attempt evasive maneuvers? Were they caught totally off guard? How could that be? Did the cargo ship’s U-turn happen before or after the collision?
The whole thing is just odd, to say the least.
It takes that many people awhile to hide their stash.
yes, the Fitzgerald’s radar would have been following the cargo ship and collision alarms should have sounded in plenty of time to wake crew and take evasive maneuvers. By ship standards these destroyers are very fast. It’s possible there was so much shipping in the area that any maneuver would cause another collision but this doesn’t explain why the Fitzgerald seemed to have been surprised by the collision.
The erratic maneuvers of the cargo ship doing a u-turn and then turning again is extremely unusual. It would be akin to a jumbo jet on an International flight doing a U turn and then back again.
It’s all very odd. Clearly, there is a great deal we don’t know.
Going by the marine tracking of the ACX Crystal and the revised US Navy impact time of 2:20 local, the Crystal begun its bizarre 180 degree turn about 2:07 am local, completed the 180 at about 2:10, and impacted the USS Fitzgerald at 2:20, approximately 10 minutes after the 180 turn.
My current theory is the Fitzgerald OOD did not believe their instruments, that a 30,000 ton cargo ship cannot and would not erratically turn 180 degrees in a relatively high volume shipping lane and steam toward them in a matter of minutes. Conjecture, but pilots (air and sea) have lost ships and lives to disbelieving instruments.
Edit: An alternate theory is the US Navy is misinformed, and the impact did occur at approximately 1:30 am local, where the equally bizarre 90 degree starboard course correction (bottom of map above) occurred, where the ACX Crystal ‘stumbled’ and the autopilot then continued on course, until the pilot took control and reversed to investigate.
As a Navy vet, multiple people royally screwed up. Lots of Officers will soon be out of their jobs.
Radar is not the sole method to monitor water traffic around you, there are four lookouts, bow, stern, port, and starboard.
Maybe the starboard lookout was napping…
The OOD (Officer of the Deck) is certainly going to be court-martialed.
It’s hard to fathom that so many things would have gone wrong all at once, enabling this incident to happen. There are numerous redundancies to prevent these sorts of things.
The list of Officers to be fired is so long. CO, XO, OOD, CIO, etc.
The Deck Log, Engineering Log, along with GPS, and dead reckoning charts, will provide all the evidence.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a case where the Commander wasn’t fired after a Navy vessel ran into something in a non-combat situation.
Thanks for the details on the other layers of screwups that contributed to the collision.
The names of the lost are a tribute to the diversity of the US.
Any deck-watch going on? How 'bout radar observation. No alert to impending collision? Any evasive maneuver by the destroyer? 
I heard the captains log got flushed…something stinks!