Tragic finds in hit ship
Bodies recovered from USS McCain
Divers on Tuesday made the grim discovery of human remains tangled in the wreckage of the USS John S. McCain, which collided with an oil tanker near Singapore days earlier.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many of the 10 missing US sailors could still be trapped in the damaged destroyer, named after the war-hero senator’s dad and grandfather, who were both admirals.
“The divers were able to locate some remains in those sealed compartments during their search today,” Adm. Scott Swift told reporters at Changi Naval Base in Singapore.
“[It would be] premature to say how many and what the status of the recovery of those bodies is.”
The McCain collided with the 30,000-ton, Liberian-flagged Alnic MC at 5:24 a.m. Monday — or 5:24 p.m EDT Sunday — in the Strait of Malacca.
The guided-missile destroyer, despite a gaping hole in its portside aft, made it to a Singapore naval dock.
Investigators could not quickly get to some of the most gnarled compartments of the vessel, where bodies have now been found.
In response to the incident, the US Navy will relieve Seventh Fleet Commander Vice Admiral Joseph Aucoin (near left), who was in charge of the Pacific fleet. An official told Reuters “an expedited change in leadership was needed.”
None of the dead had been publicly identified as of Wednesday morning — and that non-news was agonizing to Megan Partlow, 20, whose fiancé, Jacob Drake (inset far left), is among the missing.
“I had a feeling he was one of the ones missing that night when he never messaged me back, because he always messaged me back no matter what,” Partlow told The Post Tuesday.
The McCain accident follows the June crash of the USS Fitzgerald, which collided with a merchant vessel off Japan’s Izu Peninsula, killing seven US seamen.
“It is truly extraordinary, not only that it should happen, and not only that it should happen to the US Navy, but that it should happen repeatedly within weeks in the same geographic region,” said John Blaxland, head of the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at the Australian National University in Sydney.