Battleland

Bridge Amid Troubled Water

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Navy photo / MCS 3rd Class Jonathan Sunderman

Navy officials survey the damage to the USS Porter following its collision with a Japanese oil tanker.

History was made in a flash earlier this week, when the Navy’s jet-powered X-47B drone flew off an aircraft carrier for the first time. The official Navy video of the event lasted all of 10 seconds.

But actual recordings of history are far more profound when there’s a long period of anticipation before the key event.

That’s what the independent Navy Times newspaper brings us this week with its publication of a four-minute audio recording of bedlam on the bridge of the destroyer USS Porter last summer as it crashed into the supertanker Otowasan in the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

You know the old phrase “like an accident waiting to happen”?

Listen here, and hear for yourself.

Luckily, no one was hurt on either vessel, although the Porter’s captain found himself relieved of command three weeks later.