This is the part that everybody shakes their heads over. In that situation, with that geometry between the ships, it's ingrained and almost automatic for the OOD to go right full rudder and all back full: turning the ship astern of the other ship and coming to a complete stop as soon as possible. At that range (2000-3000 yards), there's no way a collision would have happened.
But the OOD actually did the exact opposite: increase speed and turn to the left, which will almost certainly result in a collision, especially if the other ship maneuvers the way it's supposed to. Just thinking about giving those orders in that situation is giving me the shivers...
When tested on mental rotation tasks, men averaged 66 percent correct compared to 53 percent correct for women.
So the average man may be better than the average woman at these tasks, but it's not a dramatic difference to my mind, and individual women can certainly be excellent at this kind of spatial reasoning, just like individual men can be terrible at it.
Not surprisingly, the Navy actually tests people for these skills and gives them extensive initial and ongoing training. If you can't do this job because your brain doesn't work that way, regardless of gender, it's rather unlikely that you'll have the job in the long run.
8.4 Fatigue
The command leadership allowed the schedule of events preceding the collision to fatigue the crew.
The command leadership failed to assess the risks of fatigue and implement mitigation measures to ensure adequate crew rest.
Never thought I'd see reality approach fiction, when a navy is involved. Everybody down!
- Was going too fast for the number of ships in the area
- Did not call the captain when nearish other ships as procedure required.
- Had in fact gotten too close to several other ships that night.
- Gotten confused between which of two ships was where
- Did the calculations wrong on the closest approach of the collision vessel
- Denied a request to change course away from the collision vessel because then she would have to recalculate a new nearest approach distance
- When a collision was clearly in the future, did not contact the other vessel in any way
- Gave a late turn order, but then immediately countermanded it, keeping the ship on collision course
- spent the rest of the time until the collision freaking out (an enlisted man eventually gave the final turn order that saved some lives)
So it was about as bad as could be, and seven men died.
However, I have a feeling the Captain's court martial is going to turn out worse for him than this.