The destroyer Porter and a Japanese-owned tanker collided near the Strait of Hormuz at 1 a.m. Sunday, an impact that tore open the destroyer’s starboard side but left both crews unharmed, 5th Fleet said in a news release. ...

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2012/08/na....

Story is in several news services, but this one has a map with good description of the geography and shipping lanes in the region.

Cluelessness of some of the comments in Yahoo! News is mind boggling.

Pictures....

Another commanding officer's career ended.

He hit 'em pretty good... that's gonna **** up a couple of careers.

Also USN lost a ch53 a fw weks back in oman ina training accident.

Images and video:

http://gcaptain.com/navy-destroyer-colli....

Well that inspires confidence!, at least you didn't blow it out of the water.

How the **** can you miss an Oil Tanker for Christ's sake?

Well, quite clearly, he didn't miss it

One of the guys in Crossthreads pictures looks like he has a beer bottle in his hands!

1am...ok, maybe the tanker was running without lights...but one would think a destroyer has...umm...maybe, radar? Who the **** was asleep at the wheel?

Radar, sonar and men on watch topside...someone definitely missed something they should have spotted...a lot of someones.

my money is on bad indian pilot of the tanker.

no us sailor would ever **** up so badly. not unless he were really a communist.

and the Iranian missles have not a chance in hell in hitting our ships

Posted this earlier. "CIC would have been tracking it, for it’s potential threat to the ship. When it approached the limit set by the conning officer they would have reported it to the conning officer. The Quartermaster would have been tracking it separately, as to his navigational duties to avoid a collision, reporting its closest point of approach and suggesting a course change prior to it getting anywhere near the limit of approach set by the conning officer. and the lookout would have been staring at it while reporting its movements to the conning officer. Whatever went wrong I would not want to be the conning officer, both him and the captain are in deep doo doo. "

Yep...

THat is a major FU

gona need lotsa

Some interesting info over at InfoDis: http://www.informationdissemination.net/....

Good discussion in the comments too.

Quote:

If PORTER was exiting the Strait, and passing to the Starboard of the tanker in front of OTOWASAN, PORTER and OTOWASAN may not have seen each other until it was too late. Watch it again and you will see OTOWASAN approach the tanker in front of it on the back port, then cross all the way behind the tanker as it prepares to pass on the starboard. OTOWASAN may have popped out from behind that tanker right into the path of PORTER, been unable to turn to port because the tanker was there, and unable to slow down fast enough, thus rammed into PORTER which wouldn't have seen OTOWASAN until it was too late and likely did manuever to avoid an even worse collision. Looks like a perfect storm.

How fast does rust set in?

Jeffrey, no it doesn't work like that.

The deal is this -- the way the ROR for the water are written if you are unsure if a risk of collision exists then you must assume it does.

That's the "**** you" clause -- it is essentially impossible for there to ever be a collision on the water without someone being tagged "at fault", and usually it is the case that both captains are at fault to some degree.

Gen: I don't see anyone saying no one is at fault, just a scenario on how it might have played out. Feel free to comment on Galrahn's page if you like, guy generally knows what he's talking about. I recommend reading the other comments as well, good discussions there.

Also, tankers are not very maneuverable.

Destroyers are very much so.

If this report is credible than the porter is in deeper doo doo. As in the international rules of the road, the passing vessel is responsible to avoid a collision, more so than the stand on vessel. Also there is no way the porter didn’t know the exact position course, speed and intent of every vessel in the area, as well as ones not in the area. What the story omits is the channel is 19 miles wide, so there is no reason to pass so close that the possibility of a collision exists.

What seems to be a first hand account: http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/2012/0....

Quote:

First of all, thanks for checking up on us. Everything is ok here but the ship has seen better days! The pictures don't even crack the surface on all the damage we sustained. I was on watch in .... when the walls started caving in. Ill give you the short version as we are still in the process of figuring out what went wrong. ... we were doing a Straight of Hormuz transit .... There was a conversation over the net between the bridge and the TAO about a possibly (sic) contact not under command in front of us. We avoided that contact, checked the radar and didn't have much. SWS had a few hits on the radar but there was not a steady track on the contact. Over the net in heard the OOD say that we were coming up to flank speed to avoid the NUC contact. We went hard right, then hard left to avoid this contact. All of us in combat thought we were clear when we heard we were slowing to 5 knots. Not more than 30 seconds later the ship started coming through the wall. Combat had no warning at all that we were going to collide as we had no paint on this guy. It happened so quickly that there was no time to brace for shock or the collision alarm. It happened so fast. I will never forget that sound or the smell that went along with it.

As of right now, we do not have a starboard break. When the ship came through the wall, the fire main and chill water pipes exploded and we had water pouring out at alarming rate all over energized equipment. My GQ station ... so as you can imagine, fires were breaking out all over the place. Radio was completely submerged as a result of the ruptured fire main and chill water pipes that burst. Besides the gigantic hole in the side of the ship, radio seems to have sustained the most damage. It was filling up so fast that everyone in radio had to use to escape trunk to get out. Cleaning that up is a gigantic mess! We still have not been able to get the ACs back online so the temperature on the ship is well over 130 degrees and has been deemed uninhabitable. The first night in port, everyone slept topside as no one knew what to do with 300 homeless sailors on such short notice. We have about 100 or so cots set up not but that still leave people sleeping topside.

We have every tech rep known to man on board right now along with VADM Miller (5th fleet), the Captain in charge of this area, and so many other military representatives. We really won't know the full extent of the damage for quite a while now but as you can imagine, there isn't much good news coming out of this. The divers were here yesterday and we are starting to hear some of the results from their dive are starting to surface. After this week, we should have a slightly better idea of the extent of the damage and want we are going to do. We do know that whatever fixes they will made here are only temporary and permanent repairs will be made back in Norfolk.

No one ever thinks their ship is going to be the main character of a case study. We don't go out to sea thinking we are going to collide with a fully loaded oil tanker twice our size. It was absolutely unreal. It is a miracle no one was seriously hurt or killed. The bumps and bruises are starting to show up which are very minor in comparison to what could have happened. Had someone been sitting in the tomahawk corner, they would have been cut in half. I walked through the pway where the crash occurred no more than 5 minutes before the crash. Our smoke break was also in the starboard break, which no longer exists. The blast door that was once there is now 2 decks below where it use to be. How is it possible that not a single person was there at the time? We were hit so hard that the missile deck was in the water. SCAT was manned and not a single one of them was hurt. The whole situation is still very unreal and we are all very lucky to be alive. Had we hit head on or at midships, we would have lost a lot of lives. I was standing in combat watching the ship crush the walls in just thinking, this is the end of all of us. It was and still is absolutely unreal.
....
Please continue to keep everyone onboard PORTER in your thoughts. We have no idea what is going to happen tomorrow let alone in the next hour! All we can do is sit and wait for any updates on what might be happening next.