(WAND) – A collision that caused heavy damage to a U.S. warship and claimed the life of an Illinois man was caused by failures inside of the Navy, an investigative report found.
An unclassified Department of the Navy report, which can be viewed here starting on page 43, details what an investigation shows caused the U.S.S. McCain and an oil tanker (ALNIC) to collide on the morning of Aug. 21, 2017. The crash left a gaping hole in the side of the McCain, flooding nearby areas and claiming 10 lives. Harristown man and Navy Sailor Logan Palmer was one of the people who died.
In the early morning hours, the ship approached the Singapore Strait and Strait of Malacca – a passage the Navy says is “one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world”. A commanding officer on deck noticed the Helmsman steering the ship was having issues with handling course and speed control at the same time. He decided to have the watch team divide those duties, which the report says caused confusion among the team and led to steering control moving to a different station without the Helmsman realizing it.
The Helmsman then reported a loss of steering. The control issue caused the rudder to change its placement and shift the ship’s course. A combination of issues at that time caused an “un-commanded turn to the left”, the report says, and moved the McCain into heavy ship traffic. Positive steering control was regained, but a change was made too late and the ships collided.
“Although JOHN S MCCAIN was now on a course to collide with ALNIC, the Commanding Officer and others on the ship’s bridge lost situational awareness,” the Navy said. “No one on the bridge clearly understood the forces acting on the ship, nor did they understand the ALNIC’s course and speed relative to JOHN S MCCAIN during the confusion.”
The crashes involving the McCain and the U.S.S. Fitzgerald, which hit a merchant ship in Japanese waters about a month earlier in June, claimed 17 lives altogether. The Navy responded to each by firing Navy leaders, removing captains from command and conducting internal investigations.
NBC News partner ProPublica put together information and interviews in a detailed report that concluded the Navy had systematic failures, in which it ignored warnings and postponed needed training and repairs.
“Both ships were being pushed past their capacity, run ragged, crews were exhausted, their equipment wasn’t working right or they didn’t know how to use it and in the end, sailors lost their lives,” ProPublica Investigative Reporter Megan Rose said.
The full ProPublica report can be viewed at this link.
As for Palmer, his body was returned to Illinois and laid to rest in September of 2017. Harristown’s post office will be renamed the “Logan S. Palmer Post Office” in his memory.
