inside the secret Fitzgerald probe the Navy doesn’t want you to read

Worse than you thought: inside the secret Fitzgerald probe the Navy doesn’t want you to read

Fort determined that Fitz’s crew was plagued by low morale; overseen by a dysfunctional chiefs mess; and dogged by a bruising tempo of operations in the Japan-based 7th Fleet that left exhausted sailors with little time to train or complete critical certifications.

To Fort, they also appeared to be led by officers who appeared indifferent to potentially life-saving lessons that should’ve been learned from other near-misses at sea, including a similar incident near Sasebo, Japan, that occurred only five weeks before the ACX Crystal collision, Fort wrote.

Sailors Xavier Martin, Dakota Rigsby, Shingo Douglass, Tan Huynh, Noe Hernandez, Carlos Sibayan and Gary Rehm drowned in the disaster.

Coppock pleaded guilty to a dereliction of duty charge at court-martial last year.

The Fitz’s commanding officer, Cmdr. Bryce Benson, and Lt. Natalie Combs, who ran the CIC, are battling similar charges in court but contend unlawful command influence by senior leaders scuttled any chance for fair trials.

When Fort arrived at her CIC desk, he found a stack of paperwork Combs abandoned: “She was most likely consumed and distracted by a review of Operations Department paperwork for the three and a half hours of her watch prior to the collision,” Fort wrote.

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so what 'monkey business' was going on the Fitzgerald?

any guesses?