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Navy temporarily relieves commander from ocean collision

The Navy has temporarily relieved the injured commander of the U.S.ship involved in a major ocean collision with a cargo ship in mid-June.

The investigation is on-going, and they say this action is because he is injured, not because of any decision based on the investigation. I personally do not expect this commander to ever get a command again.

For those that want to read a detailed discussion on Behind the Black of this incident, see this thread.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


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"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • Cotour

    Comment made by an Admiral in an interview on the subject: “I expect the executive officer and his subordinates will be fired.”

    And so it begins.

    Human error or what appears to be in-attendance late at night ON A WAR SHIP (?), crazy to me. But thats humans.

    Q: What would HAL 2000 have done?

  • Garry

    As I wrote elsewhere, this case is very puzzling, and I don’t know who is to blame (I suspect there was a cascade of bad decisions, with many people to blame). I’ll be interested to read the findings that come out.

    However, as soon as I read the news, I had no doubt that the captain would be relieved and his career effectively ended, regardless of who was at fault.

    Part of this is due to the culture of the captain always being responsible, but part is because the Navy, more than any other service, always finds a scapegoat. I always thought it fitting that the Navy mascot is indeed a goat.

    One of the most high-profile examples of this was the captain of the USS Indianapolis, which delivered the atomic bomb and was then sunk by a Japanese submarine. Several SOS messages were sent out, but one captain thought it was a ruse, another had ordered that he not be disturbed, and a third was drunk. As a result, he rescue ships came after 5 days, with the men facing shark attacks and insanity. Captain Quint from Jaws was a fictional survivor of this incident.

    In the end the Captain was court martialed, unfairly found guilty, and after discharge he suffered mental health problems (which were not helped by constantly receiving letters and phone calls from angry relatives of sailors who had died) to the point where he eventually offed himself.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_B._McVay_III

    None of this means the captain wasn’t a root cause of the disaster, but I think his relief doesn’t tell us anything about his culpability.

  • SteveC

    In the peace time navy, being off duty, asleep in bed when your ship gets dinged is no defense.

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