OT: US navy collisions

I left out horses and carriages; we even get them occasionally. And the Cushman meter-maid things. And wheelchairs, of course.

And boats, sort of.

It's the Wild West out here.

This all reminds me of the joke about the US aircraft carrier and the Canadian lighthouse.

It was a "divide by zero" fault that brought down the database server, and then everything else in the system. Someone was putting in stocks numbers - they typed in something like 1000 pencils on stock, in bundles of 0 pencils each, and asked the program to show the number of bundles. That left the ship dead in the water for a couple of hours.

Perhaps the captain could try looking out the window?

That's what txting smartphone users say after walking into lamp posts.

So we can look forward to one of those pranging some unfortunate island that failed to get out of the way of a "well oiled" US military machine?

I reckon they will have to halve the run ration.

I don't think smart phones matter much. I do a lot of walking and there doesn't seem to be a huge correlation between cell phones and people not looking where they're walking. They just don't. It's no wonder people are such lousy drivers - they can't even walk without running into others.

Islands don't move.

There is none, assuming you mean "rum" (reading your smart phone while typing again;-).

Actually there should be. There is a manual system redundancy that can be used to control steering closer to the actual mechanics. A warship needs this more than most sine it truly is dead in the water if it cannot continue to manouevre at speed after sustaining damage.

BTW They are claiming a steering casualty in some reports.

Pretty much my take on it too. Although the US ship was also large.

The surprise for me was that they got hit so precisely amidships. I'd have expected the tanker to turn slightly towards the other ships stern after spotting it which means their misjudgement must have been huge.

Drawing from my recent bicycle-car interaction with an apparently blind driver in a Buick, the analogy is impactful.

--sp

Cycling in urban environment is doubly dangerous...

Can you understand this? Is the last individual shown the one on the ladder?

Yes, the one in black shirt is the worker on the ladder. Does this have anything to do with cycling?

Jim Thompson wrote on 8/22/2017 11:36 AM:

I'm not certain of the distance, but they already consider approaching a warship without permission to be a threat. The problem is that if they don't know you are there, they can't shoot you out of the water... If they knew the tanker was there, why would they allow themselves to have a collision?

It doesn't work that way at all. All else equal the vessel to the right has the right of way, just like on the road. But there are exceptions when the ships are difficult to maneuver or not under power such as a sail boat or a tanker both of which have the right of way over any other powered vessel.

Keep in mind that a slower ship will appear to approach on a line that is less than 45 degrees off your bow. So "side" looking is not needed.

These smallish warships are probably 3 times faster than the ships that hit them--~60 kt vs. 20 kt on a good day. Acceleration of such a large object isn't instantaneous, of course, and confined waters are difficult, but it s ure seems like somebody was asleep at the switch.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Exactly wrong. As long as both ships are traveling in a straight line at constant speed the bearing will remain constant. Construct a triangle of the line between the two ships and the paths to the point of intersection, they will form a triangle. As the two ships move all angles will remain the same with the lengths of the sides will scale down to zero at the point of impact.

Impactful, indeed. However, I've found the bicycle riders are just as blind as Buick drivers. Hell, people can't even walk anymore.

If cycling is related to Navy collisions, then getting electrocuted on a ladder is related to cycling. This is a syllogism.

The official top speed of the Arliegh Burke class of destroyers is listed at 30kt. Rumor is that they can do 35kt.

Displacement hull ship's speed is limited by the hull length (bow shock wave).

Mostly they stand or slump while gazing blankly, bathed in the light of their precious 5" +/- screens.

--sp

Makes sense to me.

--sp