Dear readers, surely many of you were taught in childhood that doing several things at the same time, and even more carelessly, is not very good. It is even harmful, proven by fifth points, in case the head did not think about what the rest of the body was doing.
Today's story will be about the events of almost a century ago, but here's the thing: there are things that have no statute of limitations and can serve as examples even after 200 years.
All Moremans and knowledgeable people have already understood that it will be about the incident at Point Honda, or, as it is called in America, Point Honda Disaster.
But let's look at this event from a slightly different point of view. It will be more interesting this way.
To begin with, a small excursion into history. It was in 1923. The First World War ended long ago, countries have already begun to get used to a peaceful life.
For the entire First World War, the US fleet, which fought … no, fought, the losses of the fleet amounted to 438 officers and 6,929 sailors. And three (!) Warships.
The old (in / and 420 tons) destroyer "Chauncey" was rammed by the British transport "Rose" and went to the bottom with a quarter of the crew, the destroyer "Jacob Jones" (in / and 1,000 tons) and the coast guard ship "Tampa" (in / and 1,100 tons) were torpedoed by German submarines.
For a year of participation in the war.
And on an absolutely peaceful day on September 9, 1923, the US Navy lost seven new warships at once. And two ships that were damaged were saved.
Overall, one man proved to be more effective than all of the German navies of the First World War.
If you carefully analyze this incident, it turns out that a whole chain of events led to this nightmare. The most interesting thing is that knock at least one link out of this chain, and such an incident would not have happened.
But everything played out in such a way that the United States lost not just seven new ships, but seven newest destroyers, whose colleagues quite survived, served until World War II and took part there, though not in the first roles, but still served.
In theory, the commander of the unit who staged such a show should have been found guilty.
Meet Captain First Rank Edward Howe Watson.
Graduated from the United States Naval Academy in June 1895. Served on the cruiser Detroit during the Spanish-American War. After that he commanded the supply ship Celtic, served as a senior officer of the battleship Utah, after the battleship - the commander of the gunboat Wheeling.
Watson spent most of the First World War in command of the Madavaska troop transport, then the battleship Alabama, receiving the Naval Cross for "Exceptionally Dedicated Service."
Watson was a good sailor. By the age of 46, he became a captain of the first rank - this is an indicator. He commanded a large ship (battleship "Alabama"), was a naval attaché in Japan.
All in all, a good list for a campaigner who would like to die as an admiral. And Watson really wanted to, apparently.
However, according to the standards and regulations of the American fleet, the admiral had to be able to command ship formations and have real experience. That is, to be not a paper one, but a real naval commander.
At the headquarters of the fleet, they decided that Watson was worthy of the admiral's stripes and appointed him to command the 11th destroyer flotilla. This was the first mistake.
The commander of a destroyer or a group of destroyers is really not an ordinary officer. Based on the type of ship and the methods of its use, I somehow allowed myself to call the destroyer a "marine consumable". Indeed, a destroyer is a special ship. Fast, agile, but completely unprotected. The armor is more than conditional. Weapon…
In general, this is a ship that should be used differently from a battleship or a cruiser. Even against their own kind.
Hence, the commander of a destroyer should not be an ordinary officer. For him, speed and decisiveness in decision-making, a certain amount of adventurism and the ability to take risks are very important. These are very useful qualities for combat, but, as the practice of thousands of examples has shown, in peacetime such qualities of a person can become a source of additional problems.
And so it happened. True, it is not known to what extent Watson was endowed with these qualities, history is silent about this. But in the list of ships on which Watson served, there is no destroyer-like one at all. Troops transport, battleship, gunboat - these are ships of a slightly different nature.
Nevertheless, in July 1922, Watson was appointed to command a detachment of destroyers … In general, they themselves are to blame.
In the summer of 1923, the fleet began great maneuvers. The entire US Pacific Fleet took part in them and around and near California was somewhat lively. At the end of the maneuvers, the formations of the ships began to disperse to their places of deployment.
The 11th destroyer flotilla, lined up in a column of 14 ships, began to move in the direction of San Diego.
All destroyers in the formation were of the same type, the Clemsons, laid down at the very end of the war, from 1918 to 1919. That is, in fact, new. Each worth 1 million and 850 thousand dollars in 1920 prices. If you count in modern ones - about 27 million modern ones.
These were the destroyers of the last series, the so-called smooth-deck destroyers, which did not have a forecastle. Displacement "Clemsons" was 1250 tons, length 95 m, speed 35, 5 knots. The armament consisted of 4 102 mm guns and 12 torpedo tubes. The staff consisted of 131 people.
Watson flew his flag on the destroyer Delphi.
The flagship was followed by three columns of destroyers, divisional.
Division 31: Farragut, Fuller, Percival, Somers and Chauncey.
Division 32: Kennedy, Paul Hamilton, Stoddart and Thompson.
33rd division: S. P. Lee, Young, Woodbury and Nicholas.
The first link in the chain of events was the permission of Rear Admiral Sumner Kittel for the flotilla to move to San Diego on a 20-knot course.
In general, in peacetime, for the sake of economy, fuel consumption was normalized. The budget, as they say, is not rubber. Therefore, the destroyers were not allowed to exceed the speed of 15 knots on crossings. However, from time to time it was necessary to "burn" in the literal sense of the word in order to check all the systems of the ship. Considering that no campaigns were foreseen until the end of the year after lengthy maneuvers, Kittel AUTHORIZED Watson to march to base in San Diego at a speed of 20 knots.
Not ORDERED, but PERMITTED. There is a difference, obviously. But Watson took it not just like that, but as an order, according to which he will have some bonuses and preferences. It is possible that this is so, and the almost 900-kilometer passage in a short time would have given something to the future admiral. Especially fast and trouble-free transition. Daily, instead of one and a half daily.
The sea, as many eyewitnesses noted, was unusually calm. The destroyers were equipped with the latest radio equipment: direction finders. At that time, it was the most advanced equipment, an analogue of modern GPS, which actually made it possible to safely navigate ships from point A to point B.
But there was a problem. And it consisted in the fact that neither the commander of the flotilla, nor his navigator Hunter did not trust this system at all. Moreover, Watson forbade his subordinates to independently check the place with the direction finder, so as not to “load the channel”. Then the system could handle only one call at a time. You can call it the second part of the looming nightmare. It is quite possible.
On the day the flotilla left, the weather was good at first, but then it began to deteriorate. Fog fell on the sea, a thing that is not at all rare in the local latitudes in winter and autumn. And finally, the gyrocompass on the flagship broke down. But the real sea wolves said, "Well, okay!" and followed the magnetic compass.
And the weather continued to deteriorate. Visibility deteriorated, and Watson took a rather logical move: he lined up the ships from three columns in one wake. To avoid collisions with each other in the fog.
But Watson and Hunter did not take into account one more thing, which seems to have happened far away, on the other side … On the other side of the world, on September 1, 1923, Japan was hit by the Great Kanto earthquake of magnitude 7.9. It not only caused the death of several hundred thousand people, and practically erased Tokyo and Yokohama from the face of the earth, but also caused a 13-meter tsunami. The waves gradually rolled across the entire Pacific Ocean to the American coast, weakening along the way, of course, but not completely. Under their influence, the sea currents changed their speed, which ultimately led to a navigational error. Three.
And four at once. On board the Delphi, in violation of all possible regulations, there was a civilian passenger - Eugene Doman, Watson's acquaintance from Japan, whom the captain kindly decided to drop off to San Diego.
Of course, old acquaintances were united by many topics, so Watson did not bother much of appearing on the bridge, giving the reins to Hunter. And he himself, together with the guest, probably discussed some prospects and everything else. For a glass. A glass.
At 14:15, the coastal station bearing Point Arguello gave the squadron an azimuth of 167 degrees. According to the azimuth transmitted to Delphi, the destroyers were located south of the Arguello lighthouse, while they were only approaching it from the north. Before it was possible to establish the true azimuth, there was a fairly long radio exchange. Yes, Hunter had real complaints about the direction finding system, which in 1923 was generally normal. The imperfection of the equipment is quite an everyday matter.
In general, it would be nice to take, go to the lighthouse and precisely establish your place on the map. But Hunter didn't. Apparently, he hoped to do without the newfangled gizmos. And the column went further by dead reckoning.
However, the excitement intensified, not only did the currents drift in not quite usual directions, but also the screws of the destroyers often found themselves above the waves, spinning idly. This also had an impact on the calculations, increasing the discrepancy between the true and calculated positions of the squadron.
As the ship moves, a dead reckoning error accumulates: the greater the distance traveled from the starting point, the lower the accuracy of the result of calculating the current location. This happens for various reasons, both objective (lateral drift of the ship by the current or wind, decrease or increase in true speed due to the same factors), and subjective (all kinds of navigator's mistakes).
Therefore, as you move, regular location updates are required. When sailing along the coast, the easiest way is available: observing coastal landmarks with known coordinates, for example, lighthouses. The purpose of clarifying the location of the ship could also serve to measure the depth. But this is so … for those who are not entirely sure of their calculations or are too careful. Sea wolves do things differently.
At 20:00, when the flotilla had already been on the march for 13 hours, the flagship handed over to the ship commanders their calculated coordinates, but did not require them to indicate their place, although he was obliged to do so.
Of course, on some ships the navigators noticed discrepancies between their own plotting of the course and the data of the flagship, but no one helped to correct the coordinates. The initiative was punished in armies and navies at all times, and the American was no exception. Well, everyone said nothing. What if Watson really becomes admiral?
And following this course, an hour later, at 21:00, Watson ordered the Delphi to turn east towards the Santa Barbara Strait. The wake column followed the flagship.
Five minutes later, the Delphi at a speed of 20 knots crashed into Point Honda rock and ripped open the starboard bottom. A fire broke out in the engine room, three people died from injuries sustained in the collision.
Following Delphi, Somers and Farragut jumped on the rocks. They were much more fortunate, the Somers managed to stop altogether, and the Farragut bounced off the cliff and ran aground, from which he could independently get off. There were no casualties on these destroyers.
"WITH. P. Lee ", walking in the wake of" Delphi ", by some miracle managed to turn away and did not crash into the flagship, but found his rock. He could not get away from the cliff. There were no casualties either.
At the stern, the depth charges packages look so cute …
Destroyer Young. Many eyewitnesses were of the opinion that either no one was on the bridge, or everyone was numb, because the ship did not make the slightest attempt to get away from the rocks. As a result, the hull was torn apart, water gushed inside, and the Yang fell to the starboard side. 20 crew members were killed.
The Woodbury turned to the right and calmly sat down on a nearby rock. The Nicholas also turned to the right, ran into a rock and broke in half. There were many wounded on both ships, but no one was killed.
But the show didn't end there. The Farragut, having climbed off the stones, was backing so energetically that it bumped into the Fuller coming behind. And surprisingly, “Farragut” crumpled a new bucket, getting off with a slight fright, but “Fuller”, trying to avoid a collision, as expected, also hit a rock and flooded the engine room.
"Chauncey" managed to stop, but then gave speed and went forward in order to help the ships in trouble. And, of course, he also sat down on the stones.
Percival, Kennedy, Paul Hamilton, Stoddart, Thompson escaped the rocks.
A rescue operation was launched, and all the crews of the ships involved in the accident ended up on the shore.
All fourteen captains and eleven other officers were tribunal. The court found three guilty: Watson, flag navigator Hunter and commander of the "Nicholas" Resh. For company.
The most interesting thing is the sentences. Nobody was shot, imprisoned, expelled from service. They didn't even just fire anyone. The punishment was the delay in conferring the next rank. Watson, however, was removed from the ships far away, and he ended up serving as assistant commandant of the 14th naval district, which was in Hawaii. And in 1929 he retired.
Actually, a surprisingly lenient sentence to the gouges who crashed 7 ships worth under $ 10 million with old money.
There is a version that relatives helped here. The fact is that the mother of Captain Watson, Hermine Carey Gratz, nee, had a sister, Helen Gratz, who married Godfrey Lewis Rockefeller … Yes, the son of William Rockefeller Jr., the younger brother of "the same" John Davison Rockefeller …
Although it is quite possible that Watson's family ties had absolutely nothing to do with it. The court, a democratic and humane American court, took into account fog, storm, imperfect communication systems …
It remains only to say that the remains of the seven new ships, after the evacuation of all the equipment that survived and that could be taken out, were sold to a scrap metal dealer for $ 1,035. That is about 15,000 current dollars.
