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Monday 19 June 2017
Search for 7 Navy sailors ends after bodies found on ship
By MARI YAMAGUCHI sea. And as you can see
Associated Press now, the ship is still listing, so
YOKOSUKA, Japan (AP) — they had to fight the ship to
The search for seven U.S. keep it above the surface.
Navy sailors who went miss- It was traumatic.”
ing after their destroyer col- The Fitzgerald’s captain,
lided with a container ship Cmdr. Bryce Benson, was
off the Japanese coast airlifted from the ship’s
was called off after several deck after daybreak Sat-
bodies were found Sunday urday to the U.S. Naval
in the ship’s flooded com- Hospital in Yokosuka with
partments, including sleep- a head injury. Two other
ing quarters. crew members suffered
Navy divers found “a num- cuts and bruises and were
ber of” bodies in the USS also flown out by helicop-
Fitzgerald, a day after the ter.
destroyer collided with a Aucoin said Benson’s cab-
Philippine-flagged con- in was destroyed. “He is
tainer ship four times its size, lucky to be alive,” he said.
said Vice Adm. Joseph Au- Aucoin wouldn’t speculate
coin, the commander of on the cause of the col-
the Navy’s 7th Fleet. Au- lision, and said he would
coin, speaking at a news Damaged part of USS Fitzgerald is seen at the U.S. Naval base in Yokosuka, southwest of Tokyo order a thorough investi-
conference at the 7th Sunday, June 18, 2017. Navy divers found a number of sailors’ bodies Sunday aboard the stricken gation.
Fleet’s home base in Yoko- USS Fitzgerald that collided with a container ship in the busy sea off Japan, but a spokeswoman Conditions were clear at
suka, Japan, wouldn’t say said not all seven missing had been accounted for. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko) the time of the collision,
though the area is particu-
how many bodies were re- larly busy with sea traffic.
covered, pending notifica- The damage to the de-
tion of next of kin. stroyer suggests that
He said that much of the the container ship, the
crew of about 300 was ACX Crystal, might have
asleep when the colli- slammed into it at a high
sion happened at 2:20 speed. This has raised ques-
a.m. Saturday, and that tions as to whether there
was proper communica-
one machinery room and tion between the two ves-
two berthing areas for 116 sels, particularly given how
crew members were se- busy the waters where the
verely damaged. Aucoin collision occurred are.
said the destroyer — which The waters in the area see
returned to Yokosuka on as many as 400 ships pass
Saturday evening with the through every day, ac-
help of tug boats — was hit cording to Japan’s coast
on the side and there was guard. They are especially
a significant impact. congested in the early
The victims might have hours of the day, with ships
been killed by the impact carrying cargo for early
of the collision or drowned morning delivery in Tokyo.
in the flooding, said Navy The waters also have fast
spokesman Lt. Paul Newell, currents, making it a tricky
who led the media on a area that requires experi-
visit to get a firsthand look ence and skill to navigate.
at the mangled destroyer. The ACX Crystal weighs
Aucoin described the 29,060 tons and is 222 me-
damage and flooding as ters (730 feet) long, much
extensive, including a big larger than the 8,315-ton
puncture under the ship’s destroyer. The container
waterline, and said the ship’s left bow was dented
crew had to fight to keep and scraped, and it did not
the destroyer afloat. appear to have sustained
“The damage was signifi- any major structural dam-
cant,” he said. “This was age when it was docked
not a small collision.” in the Tokyo bay late Sat-
“You can’t see most of the urday.
damage — the damage But on Sunday, a group
is mostly underneath the of accident investigators
waterline, and it’s a large from the Japanese trans-
gash near the keel of the port ministry found dam-
ship,” Aucoin said. “So the age to the container ship
water flow was tremen- that had been hidden un-
dous, and so there wasn’t der the waterline when it
a lot of time in those spac- arrived in Tokyo the previ-
es that were open to the ous night. q
