The news (and the rest of the web) has been reporting on the collision between the JMSDF Helicopter Defense Destroyer DDH-144 Kurama and a South Korean container vessel.
Not being a professional operator, I'll leave commentary on the ship operations to those more knowledgeable than I. I will note that the official cause of the fire which seems to have caused the majority of the bow damage to the Kurama is the ignition of a paint locker during the collision. In other words, non-combat volatiles stored on the ship managed to mostly melt a large chunk of the bow area.
A sobering reminder of the energies and risks that seagoing ships deal with on a daily basis, quibbles over storage methods and the like notwithstanding. It's also a troubling commentary on the firefighting status aboard. I will be looking with interest to see if there were material or procedural errors aboard which allowed things to progress this far. Although the fire started in the midst of sudden, unexpected and traumatic events on board, that is practically the definition of some combat damage...
(I couldn't find an image of the post-collision ship that wasn't obviously copyrighted, but Google is your friend, there.)
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