John Cochrane

On November 12th, 1989, USS Kinkaid (DD 965) collided with the Panamanian merchant ship Kota Petani when the destroyer was on the wrong side of the heavily traveled Strait of Malacca.  The collision injured five sailors and killed the ship’s navigator. Kinkaid limped into Singapore and, after temporary repairs, returned to San Diego.  Her commanding officer, Commander John Cochrane, was removed from command on November 23rd.

1989 was a challenging year for the Navy.  Over the course of the year at least 65 people were killed in Navy disasters, including 47 sailors killed in a gun turret explosion April 19 aboard the battleship USS Iowa,  six killed in a fire May 9 aboard a combat supply ship in the South China Sea, two killed in a fire May 14 aboard USS America, five killed in an October 29 training jet crash aboard USS Lexington; a sailor lost overboard from USS Eisenhower off Cape Hatteras, N.C.; a sailor lost overboard from USS Carl Vinson in the Pacific; and a November 9 jet crash into an apartment complex in Smyrna, Ga., that killed two people.

Kinkaid was on her way home from deployment.  Commander Cochrane had been in command for twenty months.  A Navy rear admiral conducted a Judge Advocate Manual investigation that ran to over 500 pages and was completed on December 14, 1989.  The investigator found that both the bridge and combat information center watchteams were so focused on navigation that they were incapable of tracking the many surface contacts in the area and did not realize they were on a collision course until it was too late.  The report also found that the combat information center (CIC) was only half manned, the normal positions to monitor surface traffic were unmanned and unused, CIC leadership were unaware of the surface picture, the bridge and CIC leadership team were very inexperienced, and the Commanding Officer and Navigator did not prepare the ship for entry into the crowded straits.

The navigator, Lieutenant Sean Michael McPhee, was the sole fatality of the collision.  Commander Cochrane didn’t even know that the ship was in the Strait of Malacca because McPhee allowed the ship to enter the busy waters early.  The investigation recommended Article 32 hearings for Cochrane on charges of dereliction of duty and improper hazarding of a vessel. The report also recommended charges for the officer of the deck, Lieutenant Junior Grade Steven Michael Williams.  The petty officer in charge of navigation, the ship’s operations officer, and the CIC watch supervisor were recommended for non-judicial punishment and the former and current executive officers were recommended for nonpunitive letters of caution. The three went to NJP with Commander, Seventh Fleet, on January 5, 1990.  Williams and Cochrane were tried at court-martial. Williams pled guilty to charges of dereliction of duty and hazarding a vessel and was awarded a letter of reprimand and dismissed from the Navy.

Cochrane was acquitted of both charges after an eight-day trial that included over thirty witnesses.  Cochrane was the first commanding officer in ten years to be tried at court-martial for a collision. He was also the last until 2018 when Commander Alfredo Sanchez pled guilty to negligence for the collision between USS John S. McCain (DDG 56) and merchant ship Alnic MC.  Over the next six to twelve months the Navy will continue the court-martial proceedings for Commander Bryce Benson who commanded USS Fitzgerald (DDG 62) when she collided with merchant ACX Crystal on June 17, 2017.  Like Cochrane, Benson was asleep when his ship collided with the merchant.  And like Kinkaid, Fitzgerald’s officer of the deck pled guilty to her charges of negligence.

In the end, the causes of the three collisions - inexperience, inattentiveness, and careless action by junior officers - are similar.  The 2017 collisions were far more deadly, killing seventeen sailors.  Time will tell if Benson’s case resolves like Cochrane’s but history, and the law, is likely on his side.