A year and a half after the tragic loss of life of our Sailors on the USS FITZGERALD (DDG 62), the Navy’s official accountability process is still in work, but more and more the story it coming out.

Drip by drip, more details are coming out, adding depth, detail, and nuance to a story that demonstrates both the best and the worst of our Navy.

Today an exceptional read came out from T. Christian Miller, Megan Rose and Robert Faturechi at ProPublica. Graphics by Xaquín are exceptional as well.

While some of the details are well known to those who followed the story from day one, there are some important reminders, perspectives, and at last – some detail of our Sailors exceptional performance.

That is where the story starts, and for a variety of different players in this story, the authors provide a more personal side of the sage, up to the CO’s. This is the first place I’ve seen this story told in a way that sticks.

A little after 1:30 a.m. on June 17, 2017, Alexander Vaughan tumbled from his bunk onto the floor of his sleeping quarters on board the Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald. The shock of cold, salty water snapped him awake. He struggled to his feet and felt a torrent rushing past his thighs.

Around him, sailors were screaming. “Water on deck. Water on deck!” Vaughan fumbled for his black plastic glasses and strained to see through the darkness of the windowless compartment.

Underneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, 12 miles off the coast of Japan, the tidy world of Berthing 2 had come undone. Cramped bunk beds that sailors called coffin racks tilted at crazy angles. Beige metal footlockers bobbed through the water. Shoes, clothes, mattresses, even an exercise bicycle careered in the murk, blocking the narrow passageways of the sleeping compartment.

In the dim light of emergency lanterns, Vaughan glimpsed men leaping from their beds. Others fought through the flotsam to reach the exit ladder next to Vaughan’s bunk on the port side of the ship. Tens of thousands of gallons of seawater were flooding into the compartment from a gash that had ripped through the Fitzgerald’s steel hull like it was wrapping paper.

As a petty officer first class, these were his sailors, and in those first foggy seconds Vaughan realized they were in danger of drowning.

Stop reading this blog post and follow the link to the story. At least read this portion and come back.

As the Navy goes through the process of holding CDR and below accountable via NJP and Courts Martial – and yes some senior officers were invited to retire/roll early – one gets the feeling that the latent causes created by senior leadership, over years, has yet to really be brought out in to the light.

The Fitzgerald’s crew was exhausted and undertrained. The inexperience showed in a series of near misses in the weeks before the crash, when the destroyer maneuvered dangerously close to vessels on at least three occasions.

The warship’s state of readiness was in question. The Navy required destroyers to pass 22 certification tests to prove themselves seaworthy and battle-ready before sailing. The Fitzgerald had passed just seven of these tests. It was not even qualified to conduct its chief mission, anti-ballistic missile defense.
…
Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin was commander of the 7th Fleet at the time of the collisions. A Naval aviator who fought in the Balkans and Iraq, he made repeated pleas to his superiors for more men, more ships, more time to train. He was ignored, then fired.

More than 18 months later, Aucoin believes that the Navy has yet to disclose the full story of the disasters. Navy leaders, he said in his first extended interview, have not taken accountability for their role in undermining America’s sea fighting ability.

“I just want the truth to come out,” Aucoin said.

Think about that. Some of you know VADM Aucoin – if he wants the truth to come out … what does that tell you?

There is a lot more “there” there.

Benson also worried about the ship’s physical state. The ship had recently spent eight months in Yokosuka’s repair yards, where workers installed a new defensive system, overhauled its turbine shafts and painted it a new coat of Navy gray. But hundreds of repairs, major and minor, remained to be done.

Then there was the crew. In those eight months, nearly 40 percent of the Fitzgerald’s crew had turned over. The Navy replaced them with younger, less-seasoned sailors and officers, leaving the Fitzgerald with the highest percentage of new crew members of any destroyer in the fleet. But naval commanders had skimped even further, cutting into the number of sailors Benson needed to keep the ship running smoothly. The Fitzgerald had around 270 people total — short of the 303 sailors called for by the Navy.

Key positions were vacant, despite repeated requests from the Fitzgerald to Navy higher-ups. The senior enlisted quartermaster position — charged with training inexperienced sailors to steer the ship — had gone unfilled for more than two years. The technician in charge of the ship’s radar was on medical leave, with no replacement. The personnel shortages made it difficult to post watches on both the starboard and port sides of the ship, a once-common Navy practice.

Bingo.
Optimal manning. Reduced manning. Millington games. It’s all there.

We say people are our greatest asset, yet we treat them as a liability and luxury. Where does this lead?

We were warned … yet here it is for all to see.

Lt. Cmdr. Ritarsha Furqan, the ship’s combat officer, worried that the constant pace was not providing enough time for necessary training and repairs.

“We’d find a part, find a body, make do and get underway,” Furqan later testified in a legal proceeding. “Sometimes it felt like it was unsafe or wrong.”

In March, Furqan confronted Shu: “We are not ready,” she told him. Shu, she testified, told her that he had already delivered that message to superiors. The missions would continue.

Benson’s first test of leadership was improving the ship’s state of readiness. In the months at sea after dry dock, the 22-year-old destroyer deteriorated as its regular maintenance was repeatedly pushed back. Benson spent his first week in command as though he were again captain of an aging minesweeper, trying to tackle hundreds of repairs and begging technicians to fly over from the United States for help.

How many iteration of CNO leadership teams have we gone through in the decade leading up to a front-line warship finding herself in such a condition? What were the priories of those leadership teams in the “man-train-equip” triangle? For those who don’t remember, spend some time looking it up. It wasn’t properly manning, training, or maintaining.

We were warned … yet here it is for all to see.

… the SPS-67, one of three radar systems on the Fitzgerald… was supposed to automatically follow the hooked tracks on the screen. But Fitzgerald sailors had been unable to make the feature work. … The workaround made Stawecki look like he was sending a frantic message in Morse code. He would hit the button more than 1,000 times in an hour to keep the images of nearby ships updated. Just before the collision, Stawecki’s screen showed five ships around the Fitzgerald, none of them close by, none of them threats and none of them requiring reporting to the captain. … radars must be tuned to obtain the clearest images. On the Fitzgerald, technicians had covered a button to tune the radar with masking tape because it was broken. … “There was a lot of clutter; I couldn’t see a lot,” said Stawecki … the SPS-73, the other main navigational radar on the Fitzgerald. Sometimes, the radar would show the destroyer heading the wrong way. At other times, it simply locked up and would have to be shut down. The SPS-73’s antenna was nearing the end of its life, and had been scheduled for replacement in April. But the maintenance had been delayed when the Fitzgerald was assigned to patrol North Korea.

A third radar, used for warfare, was slow to acquire targets, but technicians had installed a temporary fix that became permanent. “Problem known since 2012. Declared hopeless,” read notes attached to the repair report.

There is more, a lot more. Especially if you have not been keeping close track of developments and the drip, drip, drip of details – read the whole thing.

Then ponder.

UPDATE: Make sure and read their follow on article; Years of Warnings, Deaths, and Disaster.