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Something Fishy About USS Fitzgerald Story We Are Getting From the Media

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By Thomas Lifson  /  American Thinker

Under no circumstances should a US Navy vessel possibly be damaged by a container ship at sea. Multiple systems exist to prevent this. Even CNN is noticing how little we know about the catastrophe that took the lives of seven sailors and almost caused a powerful warship to founder.

The USS Fitzgerald, an anti-ballistic missile destroyer that was part of the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group, will no longer be ready to defend the carrier and other ships from missile attacks launched from North Korea, should push come to shove in the current confrontation with the rogue regime on the threshold of the capability to attack New York, Los Angeles, and our power grid with nuclear missiles.  This is an incident that could affect the outcome of a nuclear confrontation of historic moment.

Brian Joondeph yesterday noted how the media have distorted what really happened, by reporting a “collision,” as if the ships randomly bumped each other in the fog or something. The truth is that the ACX Crystal, a ship with somewhat murky provenance, rammed into the Fitzgerald with calamitous results:

[Vice Adm. Joseph P. Aucoin of the 7th fleet] described the damage as “extensive,” adding that there was a big puncture and gash below the waterline on one side of the ship. He also said three compartments were severely damaged.

“The ship is salvageable … [it] will require some significant repair,” Aucoin said. “You will see the USS Fitzgerald back … It will take months, hopefully under a year.”

Retired Rear Admiral John Kirby describes for CNN the extent of the chaos unleashed:

First, we know the crew fought heroically to save their ship and the lives of their shipmates. We know that from early reports by Navy officials but also from the images that flashed across our screens, our tablets and our phones after the incident happened early Saturday.

One look at the crushed, twisted starboard side, the hoses flaked about, the water being discharged, the frantic work being done tells you all you need to know about the stuff you can’t see in those same images: a fiercely brave crew working together to staunch the flooding, to rescue their shipmates and to save their ship.

You can be certain they ended up drenched, exhausted, scraped and bruised — but not broken. They kept that ship from foundering for 16 brutal hours. And they brought her back into port.

We received an email from a Navy Mother that raises serious questions. We will redact her name, while the rumors (and that’s how they must be categorized for now) reported by her son aboard the Fitzgerald are checked out. Here is what she wrote to us:

My son is assigned to the USS Fitzgerald. I am unable to share his rate with you.

The information is short and not so sweet. The implications are disturbing.

The ship is registered in the Philippines. We do not know who the owner is. The container ship neither had its running lights nor transponder on. That is an action taken willfully. Furthermore, for the container ship to strike with such accuracy is troublesome. Given what some have done with cars in Europe, what a feather in the cap it would be to sink a U.S. Navy warship. Think on that.

My son missed being washed out to sea by the blink of an eye. He was on his way to one of the berthing areas that was rammed.

Yes, language is important. “Rammed” is the perfect word.

Loving and Concerned Navy Mother

If there is any substance to this – that the ACX Crystal disabled protective systems and rammed the Fitzgerald at high speed aimed at crtical facilities (evident from the damage) 

…we have to consider the possibility of an asymmetric warfare attack designed to disable missile defense of a carrier strike group, as North Korea demonstrates the ability to make exactly such attacks on a multibillion dollar warship carrying thousands of sailors.

 http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2017/06/something_is_fishy_about_uss_fitzgerald_story_we_are_getting_from_the_media.html#ixzz4kNORFaw8 

More great articles here: http://americanthinker.com



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    Total 35 comments
    • last_layman

      If none of the radar operators or seamen on watch were unable to notice one giant ship on collision with their destroyer sadly We must put one huge giant ? about USN.

      • Anonymous

        I believe you have to put a question mark regarding large, surface vessels in principle, thinking these big ships can be protected in sophisticated warfare. Aren’t they more big targets? WWII brought the future of such big, slow targets, from the air, into question. It’s long been thinking by some military analysts that air warfare makes big surface ships obsolete. How long do you think even the most modern surface ship would last, against a concerted military attack by missiles or planes, of another fit, major power? Seems this is like thinking you can stop an onslaught of ICBMs hitting a city.

      • jafo2me

        I know “Nothing” about Naval procedures..
        The “OBVIOUS” is a container ship or any vessel that size.. aka a tanker is “NOT” the ship which must steer around other vessels. It has a straight path and it is not going very fast. It lumbers along without brakes..

        The container ship has “NO” reason to think other ships will not yield way to its size and the “UNDERSTOOD” operational protocols of ships this large..

        To state a US Naval Vessel OF WAR does not have the ability to stay out of the path of a big hulking Container ship “IS NOT” an exaggeration… IT IS RIDICULOUS…

        Ever watch the reaction in a realistic war movie of a Commander reacting to a jet closing within 3 Nautical miles of his War ship? Like all H*LL has just broken loose and that is a very fast jet. Reaction to a ship.. even a small fishing vessel would evoke the same reactions in the CCCC…

        At 5 Nautical Miles and closing The USS Fitzgerald should be taking “emergency” evasive course actions so that this never happened. Sad to say but… Someone .. more then a few people need to lose their job.

        • Boo

          jafo2me … would you be surprised to find out it was all cause by something as simple as the guy or guys on lookout were fast asleep or playing video games at the time.

      • seataka

        Transponders off? Lights off? Im sorry, this is bullshit. These cargo monsters sail on auto-pilot across most of the pacific ocean, with the crew asleep or playing cards.

        Tell me that a US destroyer is incapable of noting a craft of any kind with radar… Or was it American Exceptionalism and hubris expecting a container ship on auto-pilot to get out of their way?

        One rule at sea in passageways is man with burden has right of way.

        I call complete bullshit.

        Sorry for lives lost, but WWTF are we doing 4,00o miles from our shores, and evidently, asleep at the wheel?

    • ElOregonian

      This wasn’t an accident. Just the sea traffic in that bay would require a heightened sense of caution. For there not to be any mention of communications between the two ships prior to the collision, begs for alert levels to be raised to Red Alert status until a plausible answer can be determined.

      If this was a tactical engagement of our forces to see how our defenses are maintained, it has been blatantly obvious just how lax and unprepared we truly are. Fortunately, preparations can now be made in earnest to rectify such lapses on our overall readiness preparedness, and over-arching umbrella of protection of our defensive positioning throughout the world. Know your enemy.

      “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

      ― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

    • Boo

      If the Navy cannot defend itself against a Cargo ship with one of it’s most advanced vessels … can we get real here and admit we are not a Navy prepared for war time engagements against any perceived enemy. Looks like the last laugh was at our expense. Time to stop pretending our Navy is anything but an elaborate excursion into make believe …

    • gray fox 114

      Something fishy???? No shit! A destroyer getting rammed by a container ship is tantamount to a corvette being rammed by a loaded 18 wheeler i a large open parking lot!!! Realizing that all the details are not available yet, but someone on the ‘can was asleep at the wheel! Someone needs their ass keel hauled! And someone on the container ship is is a bad apple too!

      • TheJeffness

        A corvette being rammed by an 27 wheeler in the middle of the Gobi Dessert is more likely….even though 27 wheelers don’t exist. Its impossible almost, be careful how you assume this went down….it can literally be anything, it is a coverup of sorts for sure though…hard to tell if they are doing this intentionally or if they don’t want to be embarrassed….I am leaning towards this was intentional, designed to manipulate the public into a crisis….They will release what happened, but it will be something shocking, making people feel they are under threat. When the S Korean warship was sunk by north Korean submarine back in like 2010, killing 40 I believe, it was at first called an accident…..then, I think like a week or two later, sometime significant later, it was announced that a north Korean submarine shot a torpedo at it. There was artillery exchange between the two countries on some islands, killing a few people….it almost led to a war. Be very careful believing something a military person, you don’t know, within the media says….you say its the mom, but they can easily manipulate people here by simply just making it appear that normal military personel and their loving moms don’t lie….We have no reason to know that, or pretty much anything at this point….Disney is like 2 years away from making CGI where you cant tell the difference between a computer animated person and the actor it looks like….already the case, but where an expert cant tell….I assume they have the ability to do that almost or already in the military……USE PURE LOGIC AND REASONING when asking “why would they do it that way…that wouldn’t make sense if…”. We are to the point where we cant trust anything we see anymore…you worry about hologram UFOs, did you see Star Wars Rogue One? They brought an actor back from the dead….and you could barely even tell it was not him…the voice was the same, and most if they weren’t told could not tell he was computer animated…….Worry about everything you read and see online first, then worry about holograms being used. This is occurring now I assure you….voices being replicated and videos of people existing that aren’t real.

    • TheJeffness

      Something is fishy….like the way they are talking about it or writing about it…framing it as one big mystery. The tone is different, I feel some sort of shocking revelation is going to come from this…don’t buy it, its also a lie. North Korean submarine attack, Donald Trump losing his mind and telling the vessel to ram the phillipines one after a nasty call wiith phillopino prez….Hell they might even state it was a USO that rammed it….we are to the point where people will believe anything, and something with this, something with Iran firing missles at “ISIS”, and something with US shooting down Syrian warplane are all interconnected I feel. For the first time I have witnessed, foxnews, cnn, and msnbc comment sections ARE ALL DOWN, like they don’t exist. Something is about to occur, they don’t want people to discuss it rationally, they want to depict conspiracy theories as pure nonsense…all one in the same, all acrazy, they don’t want people discussing it beforehand because they want people to assume nobody saw it coming, they want people to eventually discredit every conspiracy theory ever, not just most which is totally logical at this point. They are using the internet against us, they have control of the media and social media outlets….be very careful how you act in the next coming days, post something saying that you think like nearly everyone else in your community. I’m going rogue, peace out…

    • DISPENSER

      They were obviously recreating the Philadelphia Experiment. The ship was teleported in front of the cargo ship while invisible, and they had no time to get their bearings before the collision.

      The alternative is a cargo ship the size of a small town can sneak up on one of our war ships, and ram it. I don’t care if it was intentional, the crew of the cargo ship was asleep, or what, nobody, and nothing should be able to get close to, much less ram a US Navy ship. How many radars, sonars, proximity warning devices, lookouts, etc does the navy ship have?

      • Boo

        Dispenser … it’s the satellite images of that Cargo ship making what amounts to U-turns and zig zag maneuvers in order to accidentally ram the Navel Vessel that’s totally throwing my mind off course here. Apparently that Cargo ship has excellent radar. Maybe our Navy can find out who the Cargo guys purchased their radar from and put in an order.

      • MediaMike

        I thought the same thing, but then in my head went “Nah!” The ONLY way a cargo ship could hit ANY advanced ship with satellite avionics is for
        1. The ship to be placed, at speed, within a few hundred yards of the target, or
        2. The satellite data was “altered” during the approach, AND the men assigned watch were asleep.

      • MediaMike

        I thought the same thing, but then in my head went “Nah!” The ONLY way a cargo ship could hit ANY advanced ship with satellite avionics is for
        1. The ship to be placed, at speed, within a few hundred yards of the target, or
        2. The satellite data was “altered” during the approach, AND the men assigned watch were asleep.

        There was either hi-tech cloaking, combined with radar spoofing going on, or the cargo ship was dropped into position at speed.

        One thing’s for sure. Whatever REALLY happened has already been classified TS, so don’t expect to see the truth soon.

        • Boo

          MediaMike…I’m looking for the fallout that results from this for the bottom line. If they retire or institute a court Marshall for the commander and some of his subordinates I will chalk it up to dereliction of duty or being asleep at the wheel.
          If all we hear is chirping in the aftermath I would make an educated guess that shenanigans are in play of the type that don’t bode well for a peaceful outcome and start shopping at my nearest army/navy surplus store.

    • Sucking Chest Wound

      Phase 1.
      Get tough.
      Make the container ship owners pay handsomely for all damage caused to the USN destroyer by negligent navigation, plus demand a most generous compensation package for the affected families of the lost crew members. Give them like 24 hrs to come up with full payments to cover the above.
      If no deal, go to phase 2.

      Phase 2.
      Take the container ship itself as collateral. Sell the cargo for compensation and target-practice the hell out of the container ship ship to demand respect in the future.

      • DISPENSER

        The question nobody has asked, is who had the right of way? The cargo ship, was 4 times the size, slower, and less maneuverable. I at least assume it had to be? Anyone know who would have the right of way?

        • MediaMike

          The least maneuverable is to be granted right-of-way. That would be the cargo ship.

    • Pink Slime

      There is not way a giant and basically un-maneuverable cargo ship can ram a high-powered destroyer. I posit to say the Fitzgerald allowed itself to get rammed.

      There is no other explanation. Check to see if the crew had a Muslim at the controls. :roll:

      • Pink Slime

        :idea: :arrow: :neutral:

        “not” should read “no”.

    • VirusGuard

      Sounds to me that the yanks were trying to push the big ship around and the captain decided to make a sharp left and caught the ship off guard.

      Well done Japan and now all you need to do is kick the yanky occupation force out since they have over stayed any wecome since WWII and are upsetting the whole region

    • Man

      so according to the AGCS rport on ship safety, in SOuth east asia alone, 250+ ships had ship related incidences like this

      so basically it is common. especially with older cargoships. the average age of a ship in that area is 29 years old

    • Anonymous

      American destroyer USS Donald Cook was effectively left helpless when a Russian plane used radar jamming technology while the vessel was in the Black Sea several years ago. This seems like a similar situation.

    • Mick

      If the US Navy can’t stop something much bigger and slower like a ship hitting one of their vessels, how on earth are they going to stop something much smaller and faster like a missile?

      • Anonymous

        If you are also in something big and slow, how are you going to avoid it, short of trying to blow the other vessel to pieces, sink it on the spot, and over what is possibly an accident, human or mechanical error? Ships routinely come within potentially dangerous distances. You do in your car, too, but you are forced to assume, for mere traffic reasons, the other guy isn’t going to turn the wheel and plow into you. Nor does it seem sensible to say radar has anything to do with it, since vessels come in close visual range all the time, military vessels passing by cargo vessels and the like: nobody needs radar to determine they’re in potential collision distance, don’t need radar for something in your face. Also, having a policy of being at a safe distance from everybody else has some real problems in the transportation scheme, where there’s traffic, this true for any sort of transport. You can’t go about doing your transportation things only where there’s nobody else around, like demand ports or waterways are cleared of everybody else, when you’re around.

      • Anonymous

        (The radar comment was to some other comments, sorry, didn’t mean to seem to say this to you. Should have broken up the comment into comments, or not done a Reply comment, but was in a hurry! The reply to you involved how big and slow can tend to meet big and slow, faster and by surprise? Yes, forget about it! Remember the USS Cole?)

    • FC

      message from the “mother” looks like Sorcha Faal prose. Something is fishy about the collision but not this.

    • dakota

      You’re trying to tell us there was no radar on the Fitzgerald? Cripe, a small piece of equipment called a ‘fish finder’ would have seen that cargo ship coming from under the water.

      What crap is being pushed on us now?

      Powers-that-be want us to believe that we are not capable of seeing the enemy coming.

      Either it was done on purpose and an inside job with co-operation or it never happened at all.

      Great photo op.

      Time to convince stupid American civilians that we can’t handle ourselves militarily and that we are oh so inadequate. Don’t believe that for a minute folks.

      When it happens to us for real, our miltry will have been told to stand down and not allowed to defend this country. That’s when it’s time to disobey orders that are not in the best interest of our country.

      Of course when foreigners have been put in charge of the highest positions of our miltry equipment, then they don’t give a damn about our country, and they will stand down. That’s the reason for putting foreigners in our miltry top positions. Listen up soldiers…..that will be MUTINY time.

      They are actively prepping our minds for the inadequacy of our troops. So starting today, myself and everyone who prays, start praying for our tried and true American soldiers on board with these foreign enemy soldiers and officers pretending to be American soldiers and American officers. We ALL need to start praying for them (our own) and do NOT stop. THEY NEED OUR HELP, AND THEY DESERVE IT. ACT.

    • dakota

      If this really happened, this is an ACT OF WAR.
      SOOOOOOOOOOOO?

      How convenient that powers-that-be are pretending they don’t know whose ship it is.
      That proves inside job (inside shadow powers USA). You can bet our enemies on board our own Fitzgerald, were well out of the way of that area of the ship at the predestined time of the collision.

      The powers-that-be within USA, don’t care about the lives of OUR OWN soldiers.

      Well, we ordinary citizens DO CARE. PRAY FOR THEM, FOLKS. DAILY.

    • jafo2me

      The Russians did it… No wait.. the North Koreans did it..
      Yea, I know the North Koreans can barley keep 2 street light on at night in the Capital City but you can never underestimate those
      slippery unhinged Marxist run by the Rothschilds..

      Seems the US is looking for a War… and any war will do… as long as the Deep State can continue on with their totalitarian agenda which is currently failing..

    • YellowRoseTx51

      Whats rather odd is there was a recent movie on, that displayed this particular weakness in the radar coverage for these types of US ships, recently. Radar is more long range capacity. Not something that is already close, or has passed by first screening. It was a problem that the ship didn’t have time to react when it did get that close, the ‘turn’ time for that size boat is a bit like turning a Boeing..slow. This recital of the tale, really rather sounds like a trial run for somebody, testing out ‘suicide car bomber’ techniques for sea. And had those boxes been explosives, it would have taken out that ship. Would be interesting to hear why radar of some type (for close proximity targets) is problematic for those types of ships.

    • jdpent01

      JDP… THE ALARM BELLS MUST HAVE BEEN RINGING OFF THE HOOK WITH ALL THE SOPHISTICATED RADARS ON BOARD, THE COMMANDER ASLEEP IN HIS CABIN WHAT HAPPENED TO THE 2ND IN CHARGE OR THE WATCHMAN? OR WAS THIS AN EXERCISE IN TOUGHNESS OF THE NAVY SHIP COULD IT WITH STAND A DIRECT HIT? RAW RAW FOR THE CREW BEING ABLE TO KEEP IT AFLOAT THEY GET A STAR BUT SAD FOR THOSE WHO LOST LIVES, WAS THE SHIP AT Anchor ?WHY DID IT NOT MOVE OUT OF THE WAY JUST A LEFT TURN OR WAS THE RADARS BLINDED BY SOMETHING? PATCH REPAIRS TO GET THE SHIP BACK TO HOME PORT.

    • jdpent01

      JDP…tHIS INCIDENT MIGHT HAVE A LOT TO DO WITH THE MISSING BOEING MH370 THAT DISAPPEARED, MANY PASSENGERS ON THAT FLIGHT WERE WORKING ON NEW CLOCKING TECHNOLOGY CHIP, WHAT IS NEEDED IS THE LAST PLACE THE SHIP WAS AT AND WHERE WAS IT HEADED? BUT ALL OF THAT IS MOSTLY CLASSIFIED NOT TO BE FULLY KNOWN. PERHAPS LEAKS WILL COME FROM FAMILY MEMBERS WHO KIDS PASSED.

    • MediaMike

      At a cargo ship cruise speed of about 35 kts, the destroyer would only have had ABOUT AN HOUR to get out of the way once the cargo ship appeared on the destroyer’s radar.

    • FC

      small URL for all the “USS Fitzgerald” posts on Before Its News -

      http://tinyurl.com/yb75wues

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