US Destroyer T-boned - Again

[Speaker to Animals]

This is why of course people in the military get so pissed off when you start watering down the standards for domestic political reasons, because ultimately you can't train every single subordinate yourself, you're relying on the system to train them properly, and since everybody is going to have their fate in these peoples hands, under this military ethos of captian goes down with the ship, it's not quite the same as working with some tool in an office in the cubicle next to you. If that guy screws the pooch, he gets fired, but in the military, you both swing for it.

Yep.

Hence my affirmative action hire joke (which, sadly, might not be much of a joke in real life).

[Smitty-48]

Well, everybody who needs to swing for it will prolly swing for it, but again, I think there's a structural issue when it comes to why it is DDG-51's this is happening with and happening with more often.

See, the frigate, which was invented by the Eye-Talians a ways back, was intended to be a smaller patrol and picket ship to do the jobs which you did not want to use Ships o' the Line for, but when the US Navy got rid of frigates, they basically went to a fleet which is entirely Ships o' the Line, but when you have to do the frigate job with those Ships o' the Line, constantly, in heavily trafficked waters, at tight quarters, odds are, those will be the ships that end up banging into shit, inherently.

[Speaker to Animals]

I wonder if it's easy for them to get pulled in to those huge freighters.

When a huge ship passes, does it create currents that pull the surrounding water in and under as it displaces the sea going forward?

[Smitty-48]

That generally only kicks in at the last moment, when you get really close, like, that's the big danger when you are alonside doing replenishment at sea, with both ships speeding along parallel to each other at less than a hundred yards, may have been a factor, but in this case you're talking about a 30,000 ton merchant and 7,000 ton destroyer, two big ships, neither of which, at that mass, is easy to stop on a dime.

Generally they see it happening before it happens, but there's nothing they can do about it at the point of no return, you can see that you're not going to make it, but sometimes its not clear where that point of no return is, when you're talking two ships, in tight quarters, trying to avoid all the rest of the traffic at the same time.

[Smitty-48]

Again, it's like the freeway in traffic, you have no choice but to be cutting it close, when everybody is shucking and jiving through traffic around you, there's not much room for error, soon as you get on that freeway, there's no way to say, "oh that truck is big, I'm not going anywhere near it", because there's trucks all around you all the time at tight quarters, all doing their own shucking and jiving, and theres nowhere you can go to get away from them.

[DBTrek]

So many boats in the water tho!!!!!
Not my faaaaaaault!
Pfft
So many boats in the water, but only two whacking into each other.

[Smitty-48]

Well in the military there is always two tracks, track one is assessing culpability for an incident, which, usually pretty easy, since the military has the catch all of "captain goes down with the ship", but you're still running on track two parallel to that at the same time, which is systemic analysis after action review to determine what might be the contributing factors in a structural sense, in order to continously update TTP's to try to reduce attrition overall.

[Speaker to Animals]

So many boats in the water tho!!!!!
Not my faaaaaaault!
Pfft
So many boats in the water, but only two whacking into each other.

Did you guys use to taunt them by calling their shit boats?

[DBTrek]

"Now officer, I know I rear ended that car in front of me. I don't dispute that. But I have this Canadian friend I want you to talk to, he can explain to you that there are so many cars on the road. Don't you see? Look at all these cars out here on the interstate!!! Of course I hit one, eventually. Why are you writing that ticket? "

[Smitty-48]

"Now officer, I know I rear ended that car in front of me. I don't dispute that. But I have this Canadian friend I want you to talk to, he can explain to you that there are so many cars on the road. Don't you see? Look at all these cars out here on the interstate!!! Of course I hit one, eventually. Why are you writing that ticket? "

Well here in Ontario we have "no fault" insurance, which means, even if you are at fault, your insurance company pays for it, still could face criminal charges for any violations of the highway traffic act and/or criminal code, but in terms of civil liability, insurance company pays.