Japan Investigates Delay in Reporting US Navy Ship Collision; Other Mysterious Circumstances Abound
By Mari Yamaguchi. Japan’s coast guard is investigating why it took nearly an hour for a deadly collision between a U.S. Navy destroyer and a container ship to be reported.
A coast guard official said Monday they are trying to find out what the crew of the Philippine-flagged ACX Crystal was doing before reporting the collision off Japan’s coast to authorities 50 minutes later.
The ACX Crystal collided with the USS Fitzgerald off Japan’s coast, killing seven of the destroyer’s crew of nearly 300. The ships collided early Saturday morning, when the Navy said most of the 300 sailors on board would have been sleeping. Authorities have declined to speculate on a cause while the crash remains under investigation. (Read more from “Japan Investigates Delay in Reporting US Navy Ship Collision” HERE)
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As Japan Investigates, Other Contradictions Emerge
By Zachary Cohen.
[A]fter interviewing the ACX Crystal’s crew, the Japanese coast guard revised its crash time estimate to 1:30 a.m. [But t]he US 7th Fleet is maintaining that the collision occurred at 2:20 a.m. — and both US and Japanese officials have declined to explain why there is a discrepancy regarding timing.
Timing will play a critical role in determining exactly how the collision happened, particularly as the shipping data from Marinetraffic.com appears to indicate that the ACX Crystal made a sharp right turn at close to 1:30 am — the time that the Japanese coast guard said the crash occurred.
On Sunday, Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, commander of the US 7th Fleet, would not speculate on how the accident occurred, but said there would be multiple investigations into the collision, including one by the Navy’s Judge Advocate General and one by the US Coast Guard.
Other investigations could come from the Japanese and Philippine authorities, because of where the accident took place and the Philippine registration of the container ship. (Read more from Japan Investigates Delay, Other Contradictions Abound, HERE)
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