[dctoedt]

> The CO and XO shouldn't be sleeping while their ship is crossing a busy sealane full of behemoth freighters driving on autopilot in the dark.

That was certainly how it worked 40 years ago aboard the USS Enterprise (the aircraft carrier, not the starship). Day or night, the CO would always come to the bridge whenever another ship got to within about two- to four miles and was predicted to come within one mile. And in traffic, e.g., transiting the Strait of Malacca, the skipper would be on the bridge pretty much continuously. (Not the XO; his full-time job was basically running the ship's internal operations.)

[ethbro]

It makes you wonder if this is a Nasa / Challenger situation, wherein the captain decided not to come to the bridge during one incident, nothing happened, and so that rapidly became SOP on this ship.

Or, as the broader lesson goes, taking a risk without it blowing up doesn't necessarily mean the risks are less. It might just mean you were lucky.

[hansthehorse]

Floated alongside the Enterprise in the 70's on a nuclear cruiser. In engineering we didn't change watch getting underway on entering port until past the sea marker or tied up.

[dctoedt]

Yeah, I was a nuke SWO on the Enterprise; it was the same in engineering as on the bridge. (I was there '76 to '79, so this is probably not the first time you and I have crossed paths <g>.)

[JohnBooty]

Would that have been feasible (in terms of the captain being a human being that needs rest) on a ship like the Fitzgerald that operates pretty much 24/7/365 in busy waters?

I'm not asking rhetorically -- honest question.

[dctoedt]

I never served aboard a "small boy" (a.k.a. "tin can" a.k.a. destroyer), so I don't know what their operational tempo is like. On the carrier where I did serve, if we had extended up-tempo ops, there'd be times when the most-senior officers other than the CO and XO would take turns as "command duty officer" on the bridge as a backstop for the more-junior officer-of-the-deck (OOD), so that the skipper could get some rest. Of course, a carrier has lots of pretty-senior officers — small boys, not so much.

And to be sure, it's not quite apples to apples. An aircraft carrier normally spends most of its time in the open sea: To launch and recover aircraft (other than helos and vertical take-off and -landing aircraft), the carrier needs miles and miles of room to steam at high speed into the wind without having to change course for traffic. (If you're steaming into the wind at, say, 30 knots, the aircraft being launched or recovered get a head start in staying above stall speed.) Depending on the circumstances, even in peacetime a carrier might have one or more weapons-loaded aircraft in alert status, ready for launch on comparatively-short notice as a combat air patrol (CAP). When that's the case, the ship would need to be away from traffic, in case it had to quickly turn into the wind to put up a CAP. That's why, except when entering or leaving port, or transiting, carriers usually stay away from highly-trafficked areas.

[JohnBooty]

This was really informative, and I appreciate it a lot. Thank you!