UTMC

This is slightly different, but only slightly - about the only thing missing is the US captain demanding the coral reef change course.

Agence France-Presse on smh.com wrote:Park rangers radioed the USS Guardian to say it was nearing the Tubbataha Reef on Thursday, but the captain insisted they raise their complaint with the US embassy, Ms Songco told reporters.

Full Story.



Now, I don't want to cast aspersion on the US Navy of make fun of the whole organization - they've got so much firepower and so many dedicated people ready to use it, it's not even funny anymore.
And I get that US Navy ships go wherever they please as a matter of course and COs will heed any radio warning only when they decide they should. The whole superpower thing.
But the specific CO of this boat, or whoever was in charge at the time ... did he (or she) not, at the time, think "Hm, this all sounds vaguely familiar..."?
Or did he, or she, when the radio guy announced there was an important call, just wave and say "Tell 'em to call the embassy and don't bother me again."?
That is the funny, and I'd be rolling on the floor with laughter, were it not that a world-heritage site, an irreplaceable eco-system, is under severe threat from a big tin-tub full of fuel-oil.

I wonder who's going to fall on their sword for this one.
The first picture I saw of the incident she was sitting on the reef pretty much T-boning it.
Being a wooden vessel, they most likely had a hull breach otherwise the would have backed off if they could. That they hadn't and she's now broadside to the reef sustaining further pounding from the sea tells me the liklihood of a successful salvage is pretty slim.

Heck, I totally spaced on that mine-sweeper aspect. A big wooden box full of fuel-oil, that sounds even worse.

Initial reports indicate it was *yawn* overconfidence in electronic charts. A-la Costa Concordia. For a Navy vessel, this is bullshit. Because the bridge resources available on a naval vessel are almost innumerable, and you just KNOW the radar guys were like, "Ah, sir. Sir? Sir, the radar image doesn't jibe with the chart picture, sir. Sir, can you hear me?" Meanwhile the GPS is telling you something different, the lookouts are reporting breakers ahead and to top it off there's someone yelling at you over the radio you're getting too close to the reef. Seriously, someone fucked up hugely.
I once spent about an hour on the wrong chart in the Sunda Strait, and let me tell you there are few things more terrifying than realizing you aren't where you thought you were in the middle of the night, and you haven't been where you thought you were for some time.
Check this out:
http://gcaptain.com/navy-identifies-erroneous-digital/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

One Philipino member of parliament said it best, I think:

ANDREO CALONZO on gmanetwork.com wrote:"The Guardian is a minesweeper, meaning it can find mines as small as a pingpong ball… How can it miss an atoll that is five kilometers by three kilometers in size?" Alvarez said.

Judging from this photo, in order to get something that weighs several thousand tons that far up onto a steep-to reef you have to be proceeding at something other than a "prudent" speed given the circumstances. I imagine that eventually the DOD will go after the software issuers, manufacturers, and everyone else associated with the electronic aid.
The person who bore ultimate responisibility hasn't been named as of yet, but it'd be interesting to see how his career fares.

oops

Wikipedia lists draft as 4.6 meters.
At least a model of that class of ship has no big protrusions from the keel downward.

So... that bit that is sitting on the reef in that pic was about 4.6 meters deep in the water. That's one and a half whole stories of a regular house.
I'm a terminal landlubber, but from what I understand, the white bits, they're called "breakers" and they happen where the water is shallow, right?
Looking at the rest of the sea in that picture, and the utter lack of huge waves lifting that boat off the reef, how deep can it be with such breakers?
So, considering that the hull appear to have a fairly even keel, and how shallow that water must be...wikipedia lists her speed as 14 knots. Would that be enough, with 1300 tons behind it, or has someone unwittingly revealed a military secret by this little booboo?

As a general rule of thumb, when the bottom that you can see is brown there's only about four to six feet of water there. So she's probably hard aground from just forward of the stack. Which would imply a breach in the vicinity of the machinery spaces.

Well, they've made up their mind - they're breaking her up.

AFP on phys.org wrote:A badly damaged minesweeper stranded on a World Heritage-listed coral reef in the Philippines for nearly two weeks will need to be dismantled before it is removed, the US Navy said Wednesday.

http://phys.org/news/2013-01-navy-disma ... -reef.html

Also, this image:


At least, no evident oil-slicks. So far.