The commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet said Tuesday that divers found bodies inside a damaged destroyer and another was recovered by Malaysia’s , while he vowed the will figure out the cause of four accidents involving American naval vessels in Asia so far this year.
Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the Hawaii-based fleet, told a press conference in Singapore that and Corps divers located remains in sealed compartments in damaged parts of the John S. McCain, which collided with an oil tanker east of Singapore early Monday.
Swift said Malaysia’s reported finding a body, possibly of one of the 10 missing U.S. sailors, but it remains to be transferred and identified. The Malaysian side, in a statement, said that the body will be transferred on Wednesday.
“We will conduct a thorough and full investigation into this collision — what occurred, what happened and how it happened,” he vowed.
Noting that the collision occurred within two months of one involving another destroyer, the Fitzgerald, off Japan that left seven U.S. sailors dead, and there were two other accidents in the region this year involving warships, the admiral said, “One tragedy like this is one too many.”
The Lake Champlain, a cruiser, hit a South Korean fishing boat in May and the Antietam, a guided-missile cruiser, ran aground in Tokyo Bay in January.
Swift said naval authorities will “find out whether there is a common cause at the root of these events and if so, how we solve that.”
He said the has so far seen no indications of sabotage, such as cyber interference, but he did not rule out that possibility, saying, “We are not taking any consideration off the table and every scenario will be reviewed and investigated in detail.”
Earlier, the top , Adm. John Richardson, ordered the entire fleet to take an “operational pause” for a day or two.
The said the collision caused significant damage to the hull of the destroyer, resulting in flooding to nearby compartments, including crew berthing, machinery, and communications rooms, but the crew managed to halt further flooding and the ship was able to sail under its own power to Singapore’s Changi Naval Base.
The John S. McCain was traveling to Singapore for a routine port visit when it collided with the Alnic MC, a Liberian-flagged oil and chemical tanker, in waters east of Singapore and the Strait of Malacca.
==Kyodo
