Officers, sailors punished for collision

The top two officers and the top enlisted sailor who were aboard the destroyer USS Fitzgerald are among about a dozen sailors who will face discipline following an early morning collision with a container ship on June 17 that killed seven crew members, a senior Navy officer said Thursday.

Adm. William Moran, the vice chief of naval operations, told reporters at the Pentagon that the majority of the punishments will be delivered Friday where the ship is home-ported in Yokosuka, Japan. One sailor received an undisclosed administrative punishment Thursday.

The discipline will include likely career-ending actions against Cmdr. Bryce Benson, the ship’s captain at the time, and his second in command, Cmdr. Sean Babbitt, Moran said. They and the senior enlisted sailor for the ship, Command Master Chief Brice Baldwin, will be removed as leaders of the ship permanently, Moran said.

The admiral said that sailors who were supposed to be on watch on the ship’s bridge — its nerve center — also will be disciplined. Neither Benson nor Babbitt was on the bridge at the time of the collision, in which the 505foot destroyer was struck off the coast of Japan by a muchheavier container ship, the Philippine-flagged MV ACX Crystal.

The container ship’s bulbous nose ripped a 13-by17-foot hole in the starboard side of the Fitzgerald, flooding one compartment where 35 sailors were inside within 90 seconds, Moran said. The ensuing flooding left disoriented sailors scrambling for their lives amid a soupy mix of personal items, electronics and mattresses, and some of the survivors were forced to seal a door with other sailors still inside in an effort to prevent the ship from sinking.

Benson’s stateroom also was flattened by the collision, injuring him. Five sailors broke down the door to his cabin to rescue Benson, who was hanging from the side of the ship.