The collision of the USS destroyer Fitzgerald with a 730 foot-long container ship on 17 June 2017 at 1.30am off the coast of Japan, with the loss of seven lives, has sparked incomprehension in the naval world. The freighter stacked with 1000 containers seems to have been on automatic pilot. But the Fitzgerald should have had lookouts on watch on the port, starboard and stern, scanning the horizon with binoculars and reporting by headsets to the destroyer’s bridge. Radar officers on the bridge and in the combat information centre below should have spotted the freighter’s image on their screens. And under standard protocol, the captain should have been wakened and summoned to the bridge long before the ships could come near each other. Destroyers can manoeuvre quickly so there would have been no problem in avoiding what was effectively a zombie ship. None of that appears to have happened.
The collision chart has Pluto conjunct the MC with Uranus close to the Ascendant; and a crash-prone Mars in the 3rd in an over-confidence-leads-to-destruction square to Jupiter, and a trine to a narcoleptic Moon Neptune in Pisces. Neptune is also quincunx Jupiter in the 6th which latter can be lazy at work and overly indulgent. The Fire Grand Trine was in place with Saturn opposition Sun, which would have the Saturnine tendency to make the cost of corner-cutting high. And last but not least Mars in Cancer was moving towards the brutal opposition to Pluto, which even out of orb can trigger events early.
The Fitzgerald was laid down on 9 February 1993 and launched on 29 Jan 1994. Normally the laying down chart is the better indicator, and it has a bleak Sun Saturn in Aquarius square Pluto; with Mars in Cancer and Jupiter in Libra, both returning at the moment to their natal position almost exactly. Tr Pluto was within a degree conjunct the Fitzgerald Neptune Uranus in Capricorn which Ebertin describes as ‘loss of waking consciousness’, confusion and losses. Tr Neptune was also conjunct the Solar Arc Sun Sun Saturn. Were they all asleep? Defies belief.