The Navy is punishing the captain, the executive officer, the senior enlisted sailor and all those on watch on the destroyer Fitzgerald on the night in June when it collided with a freighter off Japan, killing seven Americans.
The freighter crashed into the starboard side of the Fitzgerald, its bow penetrating the cabin of the destroyer’s captain, Commander Bryce Benson. It took sailors with a sledgehammer 25 minutes to break down the door to rescue Benson, who was badly injured and hanging from the side of the ship. (His cabin is pictured above).
The Navy’s report said “serious mistakes were made by members of the crew” in not detecting the freighter before the collision and sailors on watch had “lost situational awareness.”
A separate Navy investigation is looking into how the collision, on a clear night, occurred on the first place. The New York Times says this investigation will determine, “were lookouts on watch scanning the seas for other ships and, if so, why did they not see the 728-foot freighter, the ACX Crystal, stacked with more than 1,000 containers, bearing on the destroyer? How did radar officers on the bridge and in the combat information center below fail to detect the freighter closing in?”
