Metro Detroit Man Among Sailors Missing At Sea After Navy Warship Collision

MILFORD (WWJ/AP) - A Milford mother says her son is one of the ten sailors missing after the USS John S. McCain collided with an oil tanker just east of Singapore.

In a Facebook post, April Brandon says two naval officers visited her house Monday and told her that her 22-year-old son Kenneth Smith is missing at sea. Brandon says her son is a great kid and a hero.

The USS John S. McCain was damaged in a collision with a Liberian-flagged oil tanker at daybreak Monday, leaving 10 sailors missing and another five injured. The collision tore a gaping hole in the McCain's left rear hull and flooded adjacent compartments including crew berths and machinery and communication rooms. It was not immediately clear how the collision occurred.

Early Tuesday morning, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet said some remains of Navy sailors were found in a compartment of the warship. Adm. Scott Swift also said at a news conference in Singapore that Malaysian officials have found one body that has not yet been identified.

It's unclear if Smith is among those recovered.

Swift says the crew tended quickly not only to the five sailors who were injured, but also to their listing vessel. He says sailors they set up watertight boundaries and shored up the ship's internal structure.

Swift says helicopters were able to begin evacuating sailors within an hour or two of the collision, and that it was "quite extraordinary" for the McCain to be "up and running as an operational ship almost immediately after the collision."

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