Not enough info to really know what happened, but I can say with 100% certainty that what you suggested is not what happened.
It'll probably be a while until we hear the "official" story and even then, I wouldn't be surprised if nobody but the folks on duty that night will ever really know. But we all know that's how it works.
Dad's ship was the original Iwo Jima, LPH-2. It's listed as 11,000 tons light and 18,000 tons heavy. That thing was built like a brick s***house (I've been on it.) I'm quite certain if a commercial cargo ship hit it broadside, it would have won.
Interesting coincidence. My dad served aboard LPH-12. USS Inchon. I never realized you and your dad had a connection to the LPHs.
LPH-2 and LPH-10* were the only two that weren't sunk as targets.
Inchon is at the bottom of the Atlantic. She suffered a nasty fire (fuel oil in the bilges in port, fatal for one enlisted guy who saved his buddy before succumbing to smoke, eight got out of the nine in the space). Damage was so severe the Navy chose to decommission her rather than repair her. She had been converted from an LPH to an MCS Support ship, which was always the majority of her jobs anyway.
LPH-2 saw a lot more action as a Marine helo support ship for battles in VN than Inchon did. Inchon was always stuck doing the minesweeping mission for the most part. And acting as the Admiral's flagship in Haiphong Harbor during the signing of the armistice.**
(* For those reading along since I'm sure Sac is aware... the LPH Iwo Jima class wasn't numbered sequentially and the numbering scheme is ... odd.)
(** Or whatever you call that crappy piece of paper we signed...)
Inchon was also the first Naval vessel to deploy Harriers.
LPH-2 was broken up at Ingalls a while back.
LPH-10 Tripoli was used as a launch platform for some very interesting missile tests. We saw her moored in Hawaii when we were there last, which was quite a while ago. She was leased to the Army for that purpose when she was decommissioned in the 90s. Currently she's listed as being in the reserve fleet in mothballs down south. The last one afloat.
Funny thing was, we were just doing a standard tourist helicopter flight and we turn toward that part of the harbor and my eyeballs about bugged out of my head. Holy hell, that's an Iwo Jima class! I knew it wasn't still a commissioned ship at the time because the painted numbers had all been removed and she was obviously decommissioned and had some small support boats tied alongside with generators and what-not for pumps, so I knew she wasn't active, but neat to see, after all of those photos of dad's around the house growing up. Recognized the type immediately.
Pretty impressive service records for some old ships who's keels were laid in the late 60s. But they're all gone now.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/10/11/10111227.jpg
This photo has made its way around the internet over the last few years in digital format. I have one of the originals hanging on the wall here. Sea Sparrow launch circa 1970 or so. Dad helped rig the trigger system that clicked the Nikon that took the photo.
I also think that photo has a later than '70 date written on the back, but I'd have to look.
When I went digging a while back on Inchon history, the story was that someone found that missile launch photo that's been scanned onto the Internet buried in the back of a filing cabinet aboard the ship in the 80s and took it home with them. Dad's copy came home with him on a C-130 out of Italy in his sea bag AFAIK.
I'm probably not supposed to have the damned thing but whatever. It's hanging in the ham shack with a photo of him playing DJ aboard ship at the ships radio room, and his original nuclear weapons training certificate. Haha.
Makes for a nice little addition to the shack when folks bother to visit and look at the wall. Which is pretty much, never.
The ship photo posted above looks like a bulk carrier. Here's a photo of one of the Maersk Triple E container ships. They are huge and can carry about 18,000 TEUs, so they are larger than the accident ship.
Those Triple-E ships are just ungodly big in person. And that's probably an understatement.
Still have his books. Dated 72-75, but he was aboard before that. I suspect he never got the previous book or it was damaged somewhere along the way. I was born in '72 ad he was already aboard because he was called and told to get ashore as the ship had just tied up the night before and no one had been released yet, and since I was more than two months early to the party he thought his buddies were playing a practical joke. Meanwhile I was being born and was stuffed into an incubator at Travis AFB or I'd probably be dead.
Which probably explains the odd lifelong fascination with airplanes instead of boats.
