Yep Hutch, we had a lot of those incidents because they were underwater, with way less detection, especially back "then". And, it probably didn't help that they were often in situations where they were intentionally playing some pretty dangerous "games of chicken" with each other, to probe the other side and "practicing" for the real deal. People actually died in the "cold" war, and you're right, not many people know that. And, a surfacing submarine was the last military commercial collision a few years back, if I recall correctly.

Submarines are designed and operated so a sot to be detected, as opposed to a surface warship, which was navigating on the surface, in the highly active commercial sea lanes approaching Tokyo Bay.

Maybe this container ship did steer in circles and/or even come at or toward them, inadvertently, or otherwise, and may have been "at fault" in a setting and a course that would have hit the Navy ship. Commercial vessels hit each other every so often, but military vessel collisions with modern tracking and radar technologies are much rarer.

So I am still mystified by what other factors would have, or could have, caused the position, course, and heading of such a large nearby vessel to go possibly undetected and/or an intercept course not properly predicted, and avoided, with the much more sophisticated detection and predictive capabilities, and the highly trained crew, of a modern warship? And, that is why Admirals will probably be asking the same basic question.

Like some of the NTSB investigations of those "factors" leading up to train wrecks, this will be an interesting Navy investigation. It is an unfortunate event. But, like a few train wreck investigation we've seen over the past few years, it is also already an interesting mystery....