Seven sailors missing after a collision between a U.S. Navy destroyer, USS Fitzgerald, and a Philippine-flagged merchant ship on Saturday have been located, with officials now advising that all seven sailors are dead.
The Japanese coast guard said it received an emergency call from the container ship, the ACX Crystal, reporting the collision around 2:20 a.m. Saturday.
Naval commanders praised the sailors for containing flooding caused by the collision, stabilizing the ship and sailing it back to port at the USA naval base in Yokosuka.
Much of the crew was asleep, he said, and one machinery room and two berthing areas for 116 crew members were severely damaged, along with the captain's cabin.
Those who did not survive might have killed by the impact of the crash or drowned by the flooding, Navy spokesman Lieutenant Paul Newell said.
"This has been a hard day", Vice Adm. Joseph Aucoin, the commander of the Seventh Fleet, said as the badly damaged USS Fitzgerald, an Aegis guided-missile destroyer, limped back into its home port at Yokosuka Naval Base, south of Tokyo, after emergency efforts at sea to control flooding and before the deaths were announced. "The names of the sailors will be released after all notifications are made", the Navy said in a statement without specifying the number of bodies that had been recovered.
Investigations were being launched into how the collision, about 56 nautical miles southwest of Yokosuka, took place, Aucoin said. "This was not a small collision", he said.
The Navy says the ship was damaged above and below the water line. The water flowed into the ship through that gash in the hull with such tremendous pressure.
The USS Fitzgerald hit a container ship on Saturday. Bryce Benson, suffered a head injury in the collision and was airlifted to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Yokosuka.
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Benson was reported to be in stable condition, while the other two were treated for lacerations and bruises. "So it was traumatic", Aucoin said, calling the crew's efforts heroic.
"He's lucky to be alive", he said.
He thanked "our Japanese allies" for their swift assistance, and said the Navy will full investigate the cause.
The 154-metre Fitzgerald - commissioned in 1995 and deployed in the Iraq war in 2003 - was pulled by a tugboat back to its base on Saturday, where divers searched damaged areas of the destroyer.
There were seven sailors reported missing following the collision of the USS Fitzgerald, and while there was no official word on the number of remains found inside the ship from earlier reports, it is now confirmed the remains of all seven missing sailors have been found.
All crew members on board the ACX Crystal were unharmed. Maritime rules suggest vessels are supposed to give way to ships on their starboard. They are especially congested in the early hours of the day, with ships carrying cargo for early morning delivery in Tokyo.
Damage control teams have been working to get water out of the areas.
The Fitzgerald was struck by the Philippine-registered container ship ACX Crystal.
They were not injured and, apart from dents and scrapes on the left bow, there was little sign of damage to the ship.
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