Rear admiral to investigate fatal Navy collision off Japan

Rear admiral to investigate fatal Navy collision off Japan | iNFOnews.ca
In this Tuesday, June 20, 2017, photo, the container ship ACX Crystal with its left bow dented and scraped after colliding with the USS Fitzgerald in the waters off the Izu Peninsula on Saturday, June 17, is berthed at the Yokohama port near Tokyo. Japanese authorities said Thursday, June 22, they have obtained a data recording device from a container ship to help determine why it collided with a U.S. destroyer, killing seven American sailors. Japanese transport safety officials said they obtained the voyage data recorder, similar to an airplane's "black box," from the Philippine-flagged container ship, which is currently docked in Yokohama. (Haruna Usui/Kyodo News via AP)

TOKYO – A rear admiral has been named to head the U.S. Navy’s investigation into a collision off Japan that took the lives of seven sailors aboard the USS Fitzgerald.

The Japan-based 7th Fleet said Friday that Brian Fort would lead the probe into the crash with a Philippine-flagged container ship in the pre-dawn hours of June 17.

A large gash in the side of the destroyer flooded berths for 116 sailors. Navy divers found the bodies of seven in the listing ship after it returned to a U.S. base in Yokosuka, Japan.

Fort is a former commander of a squadron of six destroyers. He is a graduate of the University of Arkansas and the Naval War College.

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