Sailors found dead in US warship

The bodies of missing sailors were found in flooded compartments of the USS Fitzgerald, which came close to sinking after a collision with a container ship off Japan tore a gash under the warship’s waterline, the US Navy’s Seventh Fleet commander said on Sunday.

Vice-Admiral Joseph P Aucoin declined to say how many of the bodies of the seven missing sailors had been recovered, but Japanese media reported that all had died.

The search at sea had ended, Aucoin told a news conference.

The USS Fitzgerald could have foundered, or even sunk, but for the crew’s desperate efforts to save the ship, he said.

“The damage was significant. There was a big gash under the water,” Aucoin said at Yokosuka naval base, home of the US Seventh Fleet, the docked Fitzgerald behind him.

“A significant portion of the crew was sleeping” when the destroyer collided with the Philippine-flagged container ship, destroying the commander’s cabin, he said.

The Fitzgerald is salvageable, he said, but repairs are likely to take months. “Hopefully less than a year. You will see the USS Fitzgerald back,” Aucoin said.

A MAJOR PORTION OF THE CREW WAS SLEEPING WHEN THE DESTROYER COLLIDED WITH THE CONTAINER SHIP

Multiple US and Japanese investigations are under way on how a ship as large as the container ship could ram into the warship in clear weather.

Aucoin was asked if damage on the starboard side indicated the US ship could have been at fault, but he declined to speculate on the cause of the collision. Maritime rules suggest vessels are supposed to give way to ships on their starboard.

The Seventh Fleet said in a statement earlier on Sunday: “Divers were able to access the space and found a number of bodies.” They were transferred to a US naval hospital for identification, it said.

The Fitzgerald collided with the merchant vessel more than three times its size about 56 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka early on Saturday.

Three people were medically evacuated to the US Naval Hospital in Yokosuka after the collision, including the ship’s commanding officer, Bryce Benson, who was reported to be in stable condition, the navy said. The other two were being treated for lacerations and bruises.

The Fitzgerald limped into port on Saturday evening, listing around five degrees, a US Navy spokesman said. The flooding was in two berthing compartments, the radio room and auxiliary machine room, he said. There were 285 crew onboard.