Adam
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
The guided-missile destroyer USS John McCain (named for the current Senator’s father and grandfather) has collided with an oil tanker near the cost of Singapore.
The ship sustained heavy damage which has resulted in the injuries of 5 US sailors. Currently, 10 US sailors are missing.
The United States Navy has issued the following statement about the crash:
U.S. Navy on Twitter: “#BREAKING: Update 2 on #USSJohnSMcCain collission. 10 Sailors missing, 5 injured. More to follow – https://t.co/ZVeM6KGdDT Via @US7thFleet pic.twitter.com/hteCf5Ijs0 / Twitter”
BREAKING: Update 2 on #USSJohnSMcCain collission. 10 Sailors missing, 5 injured. More to follow – https://t.co/ZVeM6KGdDT Via @US7thFleet pic.twitter.com/hteCf5Ijs0
The USS John McCain had previously run into trouble when it violated Chinese territorial waters in the South China Sea while heading towards Korean waters during the height of recent tensions between Washington and Pyongyang.
John McCain on Twitter: “Cindy & I are keeping America’s sailors aboard the USS John S McCain in our prayers tonight – appreciate the work of search & rescue crews https://t.co/jzk9giXbfg / Twitter”
Cindy & I are keeping America’s sailors aboard the USS John S McCain in our prayers tonight – appreciate the work of search & rescue crews https://t.co/jzk9giXbfg
READ MORE: USS John McCain violates Chinese sovereignty in South China Sea
According to the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore,
““There is no report of oil pollution and traffic in the Singapore Strait is unaffected”.
Donald Trump has issued the following statement about the incident.
Donald J. Trump on Twitter: “Thoughts & prayers are w/ our @USNavy sailors aboard the #USSJohnSMcCain where search & rescue efforts are underway. https://t.co/DQU0zTRXNU / Twitter”
Thoughts & prayers are w/ our @USNavy sailors aboard the #USSJohnSMcCain where search & rescue efforts are underway. https://t.co/DQU0zTRXNU
Singapore has confirmed that it is assisting the US with search and rescue efforts.
This is the third US ship to be involved in a major collision in Asian waters in three months. On 17 June the USS Fitzgerald destroyer collided with a container ship from Philippines off the coast of Japan, an incident which killed seven men, while in May of this year the USS Lake Champlain crashed into a South Korean fishing boat.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Seems to me that it is the US warships that are a hazard to navigation in the South China Sea and wherever they go. Sailors will soon be telling each other that “you haven’t been to the high seas until you have been rammed by a US warship!”
The “exceptional” nation has truly lost its sense of direction.
Yep. you are right. No ship has been rammed by China’s artificial island, to date. 😉
Another US ship of state without a rudder…
The US Navy is becoming a tragi-comedy….
Its ships are sent to far off waters and all thney can do is collide with the very shipping, the freedom of navigation of which it is supposed to protect……
Are the wheels coming off not only US domestic and forteign policy but also the US Navy’s ability to steer a ship without colliding with others?
And what happens when another Navy decides to become angry with the arrogance and incompetence of the US?
I don’t give the US Navy much of a chance given current form……
Ironically I just added the whole first season of McHale’s Navy to my Netflix queue last week. Perhaps this series is reflective of how the US Navy actually operates?
No comments or regrets about harm to sailors on the civilian ships, or damage to the ships. Thank goodness the US Navy is always there to ensure the “freedom of the seas”. (Although apparently not freedom from being rammed).
This ship actually looks like it has been rammed!
It actually was. Keep in mind that merchant for hydrodynamic efficiency have a bulbous nose which is submerged when fully loaded and partially surfacing when not. So the inward bulge extends mostly under the water line of the destroyer and seems to have a diameter of close to 10 meters.
I would like to call your attention to the following:
1. http://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2017/08/21/did_china_hack_the_seventh_fleet_112102.html
2.https://rntfnd.org/2016/09/26/china-jamming-us-forces-gps/
3. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2143499-ships-fooled-in-gps-spoofing-attack-suggest-russian-cyberweapon/
And apparently from a slew of Navy people: https://twitter.com/navybook/status/899426279560286210. Very entertaining, I recommend it highly.
Don’t forget USS Donald Cook X 3 and the USS Theodore Roosevelt X 2.
How many of the Aegis Destroyers have taken a hit? One aircraft carrier and how many others?
I wonder what the conversations in the various Messdecks covers?
And Richardson’s “series of major incidents” may include the Osprey crash.
At the end of the day, those sailors signed up to serve their nation, not to serve the oil/gas/banking industries and so I do respect that there are missing sons, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, etc, etc, etc. Some of them are just young kids, fresh out of school. I would never knock them, just their Governments for using them as cannon fodder.
I did not know about the Osprey Crash, but, will try and catch up with Richardson ‘Series of Major Incidents’.
And at the beginning of the day, the fish stinks from the head down (that’s Benjamin Franklin, not some Italian saying as “the Mooch” thinks, and it actually comes from Old German). And people who work in the fish-shop soon do not smell the fish anymore. The sailors signed up for a job to work for a CiC of a country always at war, but with plenty of perks, not at all expecting to die for a cause, always needing an enemy, accepting whatever enemy is presented as the myth energizing motivation. In large parts of the US military including… Read more »
I am not knocking the Forces and never will. You get bad apples everywhere, but, many of those kids sign up, with the best interests of their nations and are willing to give their lives for their people. Their leaders use them as cannon fodder, but, nobody complains about that? The MSM are the largest cheerleaders, remember the spin they put on the Iraq War and many others, in order to unite the nation and get them behind the ‘covert carnage’. The first priority of any nation is the national security and defence of their nation. Russia, is an excellent… Read more »
US is a peril to international trade traffic and fishing . Overstretched zioimperialism . Next the USeless
navy will ram lighthouses – nearly happened as the joke goes , but the lighthouse guard spoke Canadian .
Yankee go home . !
Looks as though the Russians & Chinese can stop building expensive warships and just concentrate on building tankers and then just wait for the U.S. Navy to steam into them or fail to maneuver out of their way; they’re also useful for other things too…
Gobs in a Mess.
Still the best post on this I’ve seen anywhere….
From one Muhammad Abbass on RT:
“What does it matter? The point of all these collisions is that evidently
the USA cannot even see other ships before they have been rammed by
them. A bit late to shoot missiles then.”
Seems the war ship was struck “port side” aft, which means that vessel steamed across the tankers bow!!! This normally is the stand-on vessel, how ever, is pretty stupid, to pass that close to a 600 ft. Tanker steaming at possibly 20 or more knots and as the old saying goes can be “dead RIGHT” too!!!! was a very stupid maneuver fo a modern well e quipped navy vessel!!!!! More USN heads to roll???
I wonder why the watch did not notice, let alone all the technology on board? Was it working?
I’m not buying any hacking/super-weapon theories. Tankers and container ships sail mostly on auto-pilot in straight lines along well defined routes. And everyone, even peasant fishing boats with no more tech than a radio, usually manage to avoid bumping into them.
There’s no excuse, not the ‘laws of the sea’ or anything else – it is simply incompetence and negligence. A pair of eyeballs cannot be hacked. Clearly there weren’t any eyeballs on the McCain.
Just to be clear: I am not and was not selling any hacking/super-weapon theories, although none of this is science-fiction. I merely pointed out what is flying around on US military sites. Four “accidents” over a year seems enough to get people asking whether they are really *that* incompetent. Whatever the investigations turn up, the 7th Fleet is in no condition to run shows of force. Whether it is simply incomptence or that combined with being technologicaly outdone,… let them figure it out. Whether messages have been sent and received, or whether the US just has the opportunity to look… Read more »
I was laughing with a friend of mine, who does not share my politics. Not far from where I live, the USS Theodore Roosevelt had to pop in, after President Putin authorised a submarine to give her a cute kiss and take out her electronic system. She crawled into the UK, docking up in Stokes Bay, not far from the UK Naval HQ in Portsmouth. Handed over details and then crawled down to a UK Naval Healthcare Centre in Devon, for major repairs. Just after similar actions from a French submarine, during a NATO exercise and just after a £multi-million… Read more »
Interesting snippets – thanks. The odd thing with this collision is the lack of any scrape marks surrounding the hole where the tanker T-boned it square-on – the impression from the stem is dead centre. It looks as though the 50,000 ton tanker was barely moving – or it would have cut the McCain in half – and that the US ship was effectively stationary. The tracking shows that the destroyer was maintaining a fairly straight course as it approached Singapore to dock and that the partially-loaded tanker was coming in, also on a straight course, from its port side… Read more »
The empire is exhausted
It’s being eclipsed.
US doesn’t need wars to lose ships, helicopters and fighter jets. They are dropping like flies, everywhere, across the planet…
Then you have the ones that don’t work or keep having to go back to military healthcare facilities.
When two ships collide in high sea, there is always HUMAN error involved.
“I have directed fleet commanders to immediately conduct an operational
pause with commands and leaders across the fleet, to ensure we are
taking all appropriate immediate measures to enhance the Navy’s safe and
effective operation around the world…. This is the second major
collision in the last three months, and is the latest in a series of
major incidents, particularly in the Pacific theater,” said Richardson.
“This trend demands more forceful action.” — http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-21/us-navy-halts-pacific-fleet-operations-historical-path-collided-warship-emerges.
So does “immediately conduct an operational pause with commands and leaders across the fleet” mean that the S. Korea / US maneuvers are called off?
“So does “immediately conduct an operational pause with commands and leaders across the fleet” mean that the S. Korea / US maneuvers are called off?”
Doesnt look like it!
https://theduran.mystagingwebsite.com/confirmed-us-south-korea-begin-massive-joint-military-drills/
Wiki tells me that these 4 ships are about the 30 years old mark, perhaps because US cant find or pick a “war” anywhere they have got to keep the arms and munitions factories ect busy and replacing or a major refit will tide them over for a time?
It will be like the latest fighter/bomber plane that they cant get right and need more money to correct it….. They are up to something, always are!!
The ship’s crazy too! I knew it.
Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision. Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision. Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course. Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course. Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States’ Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that’s one five degrees north, or… Read more »
Set the men on the oars to ramming speed!
What…not blaming Putin??? This is what happens when the US sticks it’s nose where it shouldn’t.
What about the freedom to navigate the South China Sea
Without being rammed by a US warship?!.
Really seems to fit with the ship’s name. Mc,Cain who is doing even more damage to what is left of the united snakes of amnesia!
Obviously their, the wanks, medications are not doing them a lot of good.
“leaving 10 U.S. sailors missing”
Read “leaving 10 U.S. sailors dead”
Don’t they use the “quart” in the US navy anymore? It’s inconceivable that everybody is asleep on a ship; Instead of looking only at the screen, they should watch out the sea. A 30,000-ton oil tanker is not a black speck on a surveillance computer screen.
The latest US ships’ collisions reminded me of Plato’s “Ship of fools” allegory: “Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better. The sailors are quarreling with one another about the steering––every one is of the opinion that he has a right to steer, though he has never learned the art of navigation and cannot tell who taught him or when he learned, and… Read more »