Here and on other forums on the Internets Tubes, people are asking the question," How could they not see the tanker?"

Well they probably did see the tanker. They are pretty big. However, seeing it and avoiding it in a narrow channel is different. These were not two big boats all alone in the middle of a big ocean. They were in probably the most heavily traveled 2 mile wide channel in the world.

Clearly mistakes were made and people need to be held accountable for any mistakes. But I really don't think that not seeing the tanker/destroyer was the issue.

I found this to be quite interesting read:
http://cdrsalamander.blogspot.com/20...nd-report.html
As poster points out this is one person's point of view and in no way complete.

Interesting post, and the comments too. The blog post and the comments seem to suggest that US Navy ships, or at least this particular ship, don't normally have a civilian type maritime radar with a master display on the bridge. Does anyone know if that's really the case? Judging by various pics of USS Porter I'm seeing at least two such antennas in the forward mast, and imho it would make no sense to put the master displays anywhere else except for the bridge.

Arleigh Burke class has two somewhat comparable radars.
AN/SPS-67 (AN/SPS-(V)2 onboard Burkes, pic below)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lton_radar.jpg
which is digital version of AN/SPS-10 (pic below)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...10_radar_2.jpg
and AN/SPS-73 (AN/SPS-73(V)12 onboard Burkes, no pic).

AN/SPS-67 is military radar used for surface search and navigation. AN/SPS-73 is militarized civilian Furuno radar. If I have understood this correctly both radar sets use console originally developed for AN/SPS-73 and that console is in bridge.

I would appreciate if some Navy people here could say is that true?

Ships going through the straits would have a special sea detail with the navigator, ood and radarman and sonar and CIC all on special alert.

Does anyone know what time this occured, day or night?

and yes ships do run over whales, but surely not on purpose.

My boat the USS Salmon SS 573 ran over a whale one time in the North Pacific.

Conn/sonar "what was that bump?"

Sonar/conn "not sure sir we are surrounded by biologistics"
"our best guess it that it was a whale sir"

Conn eye

We didn't go back to check lol

1 am (01:00) local time - early morning. (post #12)

My only collision EVER!!!...
 

I swear my only collision... and thats because I overly 1048X out of harbor which we all know is a NO NO... :arrgh!:

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c9...reak/WTF-1.jpg

So that being said with no 1048x in RL.. How many yin yangs did it take to screw this whole thing up? :o

That's to funny because I have a similar picture heading out of Pearl Harbor. Execpt they backed into me which was rather odd...

http://i50.tinypic.com/1651qo.jpg

End result he fell off and blew up afterwards. That guy lead that ship to the bottom of that straight.