Jan Van Tol, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington, D.C., said numerous lookouts should have alerted the McCain’s crew to any danger.
“I still find it almost incomprehensible how something like this can happen when you have so many individual watchers … that somebody doesn’t notice that another ship is getting too close,” said Van Tol, who captained two U.S. warships – the USS Essex and the USS O’Brien - through the straits before retiring from the Navy in 2007. “Where were the lookouts in those and where was the bridge, which is supposed to be checking to the side and behind at all times as well as ahead?”
Van Tol said he remained alert to the dangers of passing through such congested sea lanes.