Adrift 500 Feet Under

[Marlin]

This was just sent to me I thought some of you bubbleheads out there would like to read it. I found the end a little dificult to read I have spoken to Mr Ashley and attended a Tolling of the Boats Ceremony he was at, he still stays in contact with USSVI members.
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Adrift 500 Feet Under   The Sea, A Minute Was An Eternity -

By Christopher   Drew
APRA HARBOR, Guam -

Blood was everywhere.   Sailors lay sprawled across the floor, several of them unconscious, others   simply dazed. Even the captain was asking, 'What just happened?' All anyone   knew for sure was that the nuclear-powered attack submarine had slammed   head-on into something solid and very large, and that it had to get to the   surface fast. In the control room, a senior enlisted man shoved the 'chicken   switches,' blowing high-pressure air through the ballast tanks to force the   vessel upward. Usually, the submarine would respond at once. But as the   captain, Cmdr. Kevin G. Mooney, and top officers stared at the depth gauge,   the needle refused to budge.
Moments before, they had been slipping quiet   and fast through the Pacific. Now, they were stuck, more than 500 feet down.   Ten seconds passed. Then 20, 30. 'I thought I was going to die,' Commander   Mooney recalled. It would be close to a minute, but an excruciatingly long   minute, before the submarine's mangled nose began to rise, before the entire   control room exhaled in relief, before the diving officer, Chief Petty Officer   Danny R. Hager, began to read out a succession of shallower depths.
"I   don't know how long it was," Chief Hager said, "but it seemed like forever."   Last week, Navy investigators reported that a series of mistakes at sea and   onshore caused the
6,900-ton submarine, the San Francisco, to run into an   undersea mountain not on its navigational charts. One crewman was killed, 98   others were injured, and the captain and three other officers were relieved of   their duties as a result of the Jan. 8 crash, one of the worst on an American   submarine since the 1960's.
But what is becoming clear only now, from the   first interviews with Commander Mooney and 15 other officers and enlisted men,   as well as a review of Navy reports, is how much worse it nearly was, and how   close the San Francisco came to being lost.
The submarine crashed at top   speed - 33 knots, or roughly 38 miles an hour - about 360 miles southeast of   Guam. The impact punched huge holes in the forward ballast tanks, so the air   being blown into them was no match for the ocean pouring in. The throttles   shut, and the vessel briefly lost propulsion. As the emergency blow caught   hold, mainly in the rear tanks, the sub was just drifting in the deep, its bow   pointing down.
Luckily, the thick inner hull protecting the nuclear reactor   and the crew's quarters held. But within was pandemonium – bodies pinballing,   heads striking steel in the warren of lethally sharp surfaces in impossibly   tight spaces. There was so much blood on the instruments and on the   control-room floor that the place, Chief Hager said, 'looked like a   slaughterhouse.'
Then chaos gave way to improvised heroism and a perilous,   and finally futile, effort to rescue the most grievously injured sailor. The   merely battered ministered to the badly hurt, turning the mess hall and the   officers' wardroom into instant clinics, ripping off shirts to use as   tourniquets and creating splints from cleaning brushes. When they realized   that the only hope for the dying man, a young machinist's mate named Joseph A.   Ashley, was to get to a hospital, sailors cut off railings and fixtures to   thread his stretcher through narrow areas. They then rigged pulleys in an   effort to hoist him through the sail, at the top of the submarine, and onto a   helicopter hovering just above.
To avoid detection, submarines travel   silent and largely blind, relying heavily on charts, and their interpreters,   to navigate the undersea landscape. The meeting of this submarine and that   mountain beneath the Pacific was in many ways a stroke of hauntingly rare bad   luck: everyone relied on the one chart, from panoply of them that lacked even   a hint of the looming danger. But the submarine's fate was also the result of   a confluence of simple shipboard errors.
The Navy has placed the blame on   the captain and the crew, and Commander Mooney says, 'I accept full   responsibility.' He acknowledges several critical mistakes, including going   too fast, taking insufficient depth soundings and failing to cross-check the   route with other charts. Yet the fact that those errors happened on a boat   with a highly rated commander suggests a more nuanced calculus of   responsibility, raising questions about the relatively primitive state of   undersea charting and the training and support of submariners.
Petty   Officer Ashley's father, Daniel L. Ashley, a Navy veteran, refuses to let the   Navy off the hook. Sitting in his home outside Akron, Ohio, one recent   morning, with a memorial of flags and photographs on the family organ, Mr.   Ashley said he had forgiven Commander Mooney and the crew. "I know what these   men have to live with for the rest of their lives," he said. "I feel the same   pain." But if the Navy's systems for supporting submarines had not also broken   down, he said, "this would not have happened, and my son would be alive   today."
A Normal Saturday as the San Francisco prepared to shove off in   early January, spirits were high. Since taking over in December 2003,   Commander Mooney had pushed his 136 sailors through four months of repairs and   two intelligence missions. The San Francisco, previously known as a troubled   boat, was winning praise in the Navy as a "Cinderella story."
Now the   submarine was headed for Brisbane, Australia , and its first liberty stop   under the 40-year-old captain, a graduate of Duke University and a submarine   officer for 19 years. One thing, though, was bothering him, he recalled: the   basic routing instructions seemed to be late. So he told his navigators to   call the Seventh Fleet in Japan and hurry them along.
The goal of the   routings was to ensure that no other Navy ship would cross the submarine's   path, and they laid out a wide track to follow. But some officers had come to   view these navigational guides as suggesting a measure of safety. And as the   San Francisco left here on Friday, Jan.7, the team plotting the precise route   within that track focused on a single set of charts that, Navy officials   agree, usually gave the most detailed view of the seabed.
Since submarines   generally do not use active sonar, with its telltale pings, a good picture can   be critical in avoiding mountain ranges rising from the seabed. Relying on   charts, though, has always been somewhat hit or miss. Only 10 percent of the   oceans have been charted by Navy survey ships. Many charts only include   obstacles spotted by warships, commercial vessels or even 18th-century   explorers like Captain Cook. One poorly charted area was south of Guam , where   the Navy started basing subs in 2002. So by Saturday morning, when the San   Francisco entered the Caroline Islands mountain chain, there had been talk of   special precautions among some of the men. But to the plotting team, the   winding route down to Australia looked wide open.
To the rest of the crew,   it was just a normal Saturday, which meant cleaning the boat. Lunch began at   11 a. m. - hamburgers, French fries, baked beans - and at 11:25 Commander   Mooney went to the wardroom, where the officers ate. The crew's work shift   changed five minutes later, and when a line formed outside the mess, several   men, including Petty Officer Ashley, decided to have a smoke first in the   vessel's tail. Sailors said this was typical of Petty Officer Ashley, 24, an   unabashed country boy who loved motorcycles, Jeeps and the boat's diesel   engine, which he cared for. His nickname was Cooter, after a mechanic on the   old television show 'Dukes of Hazzard.' He was also known for his wicked   Michael Jackson imitation, which one sailor called 'moon walking in cowboy   boots.'

That afternoon, the   plan was to slow down for drills, so with everything humming along, Lt. Cmdr.   Bruce L. Carlton, the navigation officer driving the submarine, decided to get   ahead of schedule by bumping up to full speed and going deeper. A sounding   taken at 11:30 a. m. confirmed what was on the charts - the ocean was 6,000   feet deep there - and the submarine began to glide down to 500 feet from 400   feet. At 11:38, a decision was made to go to 525 feet, and a junior officer   recommended another sounding. But Commander Carlton did not think that was   necessary, the Navy reports indicate, and none was made.
Blood and Chos:   Chief Hager, wry and wiry at 39, unbuckled his seat belt and hopped up to jot   a note on a card taped to the jet-black control panel. Suddenly - it was just   after 11:42 - he felt his grip on a drawer handle tighten as the submarine   shuddered. Then 'came the real deal,' he said, a thunderous blast and what   felt like a warp-speed gale whipping through the submarine as it froze in its   tracks. The force spun his body around - like Spiderman twisting against a   wall, he said - and his hand punched through a Plexiglas gauge cover. His seat   ripped out of its runners and crushed his leg. Then one of the quartermasters,   who had been monitoring the charts 15 feet away, came catapulting into view.   He ended up knocked out on the floor, blood pouring from his forehead.
A   few feet away, three more men were unconscious. One - the junior officer who   had just suggested the extra sounding - was bleeding from his head and leg,   and could hardly breathe. Commander Carlton, who was still in charge, had been   thrown into a passageway, and blood streamed from the right side of his face   as he scrambled back to the command center. In the wardroom, Commander Mooney   had been pinned into his seat, while a cook came over his shoulder and crashed   into a television screen 10 feet away, cracking it in two places. Within   seconds, the captain was rushing up a ladder to the control room, where the   effort to blow the submarine to the surface had just begun.
Hundreds of   papers that had popped out of binders were streaking dark red on the floor,   and the microphones were crackling with injury reports. By 11:44, the   submarine had finally broken the surface, with the captain scanning through a   periscope. No ships. No wreckage. Nothing. 'I realized at that point that we   had survived a collision with the bottom that was just unbelievable,'   Commander Mooney said. But, he said, he 'literally had no idea' what it was   doing there. And no time to figure it out: there were also serious injuries in   the crew's mess, the engine rooms and the smoking room - the other relatively   open areas where men had gone flying. From the bridge atop the sail, Commander   Carlton could see that the bow was damaged, raising fears of flooding.
'We   were in shock,' Commander Mooney said. But everyone was running on instinct   and training. Damage-control parties quickly reported that the inner hull as   intact, the torpedoes and cruise missiles unscathed. The captain radioed for   help and turned the boat back toward Guam. In the stern, men began bringing   the injured forward, toward the wardroom and the mess.
In the smoking room,   Petty Officer Ashley had been thrown about 20 feet, fracturing his skull   against either metal equipment or a bulkhead doorjamb. Two sailors crouched   over him. I didn't know what to do,' said one of them, Bryan Barnes, a   22-year-old electrician's mate. 'So I just held his hand and talked to him   until doc came back.' When 'doc,' the ship's medic, James H. Akin, arrived, he   knew instantly that they had to get Petty Officer Ashley off the boat.  

Racing to Save a Life   - A submarine at sea is a self-contained world in a steel bubble. One thing it   does not have, though, is a doctor; the medic, an enlisted man with basic   medical training, handles the run of everyday illness and injury. Now, in a   full-out emergency, the medic's first job was to get Petty Officer Ashley   immobilized on a stretcher so he could be carried to the crew's mess. There,   the chief of the boat, William Cramer, the senior enlisted man, was commanding   the cleanup. His men unfurled large rolls of terry cloth to sop up the   slippery goo of blood and capsized lunch, and shoved the broken plates and   glasses into the galley. In the wardroom, Lt. Craig E. Litty, himself a former   medic, quickly set up a triage center, where he helped bandage most of the   injured men.
Corpsman Akin, at 6 foot 4 and 280 pounds the largest man   onboard, set up his medical supplies on the salad bar in the mess. He stitched   up the men with the worst lacerations. And he tried to keep Petty Officer   Ashley alive. The medic says he knew he was probably nursing a dying man.   Still, Petty Officer Ashley held on. For 21 hours, Corpsman Akin monitored his   vital signs, kept his air passages clear, and gave him oxygen and morphine.   Sailors took turns holding his hand. At one point, someone brought in a CD   player and put on some Hank Williams Jr.

The first rescue ship,   the Coast Guard cutter Galveston Island, arrived at 4:30 a. m. on Sunday. But   by then, squalls had moved in, and it seemed too dangerous to try to shuttle   Petty Officer Ashley over in a small boat. The alternative seemed hardly less   daring: using a helicopter to lift the wounded man and his stretcher out of a   hatch on the top of the submarine's sail.
By now, a second ship, the   Stockham, had arrived. It carried more doctors and two helicopters. Around 9   a. m., as one of the helicopters hovered 10 to 15 feet above the submarine, it   dangled a doctor and a corpsman into the submarine to help prepare Petty   Officer Ashley for the move. The pilots had to rely on a spotter in back to   keep the copter clear of the pitching submarine.
'He was giving drift   calls, saying 'Cut left,' Come right,' 'You're getting too close,' said one of   the pilots, Ricke Harris. Inside the submarine, Chief Cramer ordered a path   cleared for the stretcher. Several men unbolted or cut off ladder railings and   lockers. By late morning, men were stationed in doorways and stairwells to   pass the stretcher along; one even crawled underneath and supported the   stretcher on his back through the narrowest spots.

They climbed up one   level and under the sail, and then another group took over, heaving on a rope   and pulley to lift the stretcher up the 25-foot sail. The first effort failed   when Petty Officer Ashley's breathing tube came loose. With his condition   deteriorating, a second try made it to the top. That was when the men had an   awful realization: the hatch atop the sail did not quite open the full 90   degrees. No matter how much they tried, angling this way and that, the   stretcher would not slip through. A surgeon, Chris Cook, was then lowered by   cable from the copter. But Petty Officer Ashley's heart stopped, and the men   began CPR. Half an hour later, at 1:11 p. m., Dr. Cook pronounced him dead.   Still, one of the sailors kept pounding. 'I looked at him and said, 'we're   sorry,'' Dr. Cook recalled. ''There's nothing more we can do.''

Hard Lessons - When   the San Francisco pulled into Guam on Jan. 10, its bow slinking low in the   water, the flags on other submarines were at half-mast, their crews lining the   decks in tribute.
Looking at a picture of that moment, Commander Mooney   speaks with pride of the way his crew brought the boat home. But an image   discovered on the voyage back also remains seared in his mind, he says, one   that helped seal his dismissal and spark broader questions about the Navy's   navigational training and support.
That image is a small, light-blue circle   on a white background. It signifies a potential hazard two to three miles from   where the San Francisco crashed - close enough, Commander Mooney says, that if   he had known about it, he would have tried to skirt the area or asked for a   new routing. Charting experts now believe that hazard was the mountain, and   that its location was imprecisely reported in the days before satellites made   navigational fixes more precise.
Commander Mooney said he first heard about   the hazard from his boss onshore a few hours after the grounding. It is, in   fact, on every chart of the area except for the one that the boat was using -   the one that usually provided the most detailed picture of the seabed   contours. That revelation has been embarrassing to the Navy and the Pentagon   office that prepares the charts. Moreover, investigators have found that the   officer who gave the submarine its basic routing also relied only on that one   chart.

Under Navy rules, the captain and his crew are solely   responsible for the safety of their ship. After all, in wartime, submarines   must operate without help from shore. The captain acknowledged that he and his   crew should have cross-checked the charts. But some of his officers say it was   common to grab what seemed the best chart and run down the center of the basic   track, as the San Francisco did. They also said they were not alone in   believing that the routings were based on more substantial navigation checks.   'I look at it as just a lot of really bad luck,' said Lt. Cmdr. Rick Boneau,   the San Francisco's executive officer.
Commander Boneau, Commander Carlton   and an assistant navigator were relieved of their duties, and three enlisted   men were reprimanded. Commander Carlton did not respond to requests for   comment. But Navy reports have found that the sea charts are not updated   frequently enough and that the routings are often delivered late, limiting the   time for onboard navigation checks. The accident has also stirred concerns -   dating back to the advent of nuclear submarines under the legendary Admiral   Hyman G. Rickover - that Navy training places more emphasis on engineering   than on skills like navigation.
The approach to keeping the reactor safe is   to build in redundant checks and test sailors constantly. But even though   inspections had found some navigation deficiencies on the San Francisco in   2004, the reports said, squadron officials in Guam did nothing to make sure   the problems had been fixed.
Since the accident, the Navy has briefed   hundreds of officers on the lessons to be drawn. Capt. Matt Brown, the   spokesman for the Pacific Fleet, said the Navy is also looking at other   changes to improve safety. Some of the younger sailors said they had not   realized how close they had come to dying until they saw the San Francisco's   mutilated bow at the dry dock here.
'Your jaw just kind of dropped open,   and you wondered why you were still alive,' said Mr. Barnes, the electrician's   mate who held Joseph Ashley's hand right after the collision. As many as 10   sailors have asked not to return to submarine duty.
Commander Mooney is   working a desk job until he can retire next year. Last month he visited Petty   Officer Ashley's grave in a family plot on a hillside in West Virginia. The   captain and the sailor's father said a prayer together as they placed a Navy   marker by the grave. They embraced. Then, the captain left one final offering   - his command star, buried in the dirt.

[a|F]

Thanks for sharing, Marlin. 

One thing I've always found disturbing about the Navy is their lackluster Root Cause and Corrective Action Program.  They often seemed quick to hold one or two people accountable, rather than the culture that lead to and created the issues.

[roadhp]

Was onboard the USS Dixon back in 1989 or '90 when the USS Gurnard came in with half of its dome ripped off in the same manner.  Took 3 emergency blows before they were free.  Guess maybe the Navy should update their OE's.  If you haven't read the above story, take the time.

[Marlin]

Thanks for sharing, Marlin. 

One thing I've always found disturbing about the Navy is their lackluster Root Cause and Corrective Action Program.  They often seemed quick to hold one or two people accountable, rather than the culture that lead to and created the issues.

   This was a poorly charted area, reports of disturbances indicative of shallow water had been reported several times but they never made it into charts or navigational information networks. This could have been avoided.

[GLW]

   This was a poorly charted area, reports of disturbances indicative of shallow water had been reported several times but they never made it into charts or navigational information networks....

How would you (Marlin) know this to be the case and the CO, XO and Navigator of an SSN do not know it?

....This could have been avoided.

Sure could have, the same CO, XO and Navigator mentioned above could have avoided it with no more information than what you know, making good decisions with those reports is their job and not just an interesting anecdote to toss out on an internet forum.


The Navy found the CO and others to be culpable, as they should have been, with no more evidence necessary than what you posted here;

This was a poorly charted area, reports of disturbances indicative of shallow water had been reported several times,...

I made several submerged rides through that very same piece of ocean between 1982 and 1985, we never hit a mountain,...

You can attribute it to luck, I attribute it to a CO, XO, and Nav who knew their primary business was steering a ship,...

Engineering was the Engineers job,...

....The accident has also stirred concerns -   dating back to the advent of nuclear submarines under the legendary Admiral   Hyman G. Rickover - that Navy training places more emphasis on engineering   than on skills like navigation....

Old Navy keeps chipping away at the anachronism which was Rickover,...

Casting blame towards a dead guy, retired before this CO was out of elementary school, and dead before this CO graduated from Duke,...

The 711 hit an undersea obstacle for the reasons described below:

....That afternoon, the   plan was to slow down for drills, so with everything humming along, Lt. Cmdr.   Bruce L. Carlton, the navigation officer driving the submarine, decided to get   ahead of schedule by bumping up to full speed and going deeper. A sounding   taken at 11:30 a. m. confirmed what was on the charts - the ocean was 6,000   feet deep there - and the submarine began to glide down to 500 feet from 400   feet. At 11:38, a decision was made to go to 525 feet, and a junior officer   recommended another sounding. But Commander Carlton did not think that was   necessary, the Navy reports indicate, and none was made.....

[DLGN25]

One poorly charted area was south of Guam , where   the Navy started basing subs in 2002. So by Saturday morning, when the San   Francisco entered the Caroline Islands mountain chain, there had been talk of   special precautions among some of the men. But to the plotting team, the   winding route down to Australia looked wide open.

Apparently some of the crew were concerned, but were over ruled.  It also appears the Captain was not privy to these expressions of concern as he was in the wardroom.

The Navy has placed the blame on   the captain and the crew, and Commander Mooney says, 'I accept full   responsibility.' He acknowledges several critical mistakes, including going   too fast, taking insufficient depth soundings and failing to cross-check the   route with other charts. Yet the fact that those errors happened on a boat   with a highly rated commander suggests a more nuanced calculus of   responsibility, raising questions about the relatively primitive state of   undersea charting and the training and support of submariners.

IMO, the inquiry findings were correct in that over confidence, in the face of uncertainty, couple with no mission critical reason not to take precautions, lead to this incident.   

The question of importance to this forum is does this same overconfidence also happen in engineering?

[BetaAnt]

SSBNs were based out of Guam since 1970. The Navy base there was built for Blue/Gold crew training.

It is never the military's fault when an accident occurs (bad charts, SL-1, USS Scorpion, etc.).

As long as the military can makeup (not find) a scapegoat it will since it controls the flow of information.

[GLW]

SSBNs were based out of Guam since 1970. The Navy base there was built for Blue/Gold crew training.

It is never the military's fault when an accident occurs (bad charts, SL-1, USS Scorpion, etc.).

As long as the military can makeup (not find) a scapegoat it will since it controls the flow of information.

I can't go with the "scapegoat" scenario,...

No one "forces" anybody to be a Ship's Captain,...

Quite the opposite,...

And a Captain gets an awful lot of privilege,...

As a matter of fact, a Captain gets a whole huge 20 yard bucketful of privilege,...

And I don't begrudge any Captain that privilege one whit,...

And I got no problem with the CO being held accountable when his ship slams into a navigation hazard and sailor(s) die,...

If you want to give him a free pass and focus on charts and bureaucratic bungling more power to ya,...

I say if you don't want the responsibility, don't sit in the chair, don't assume the privilege,...

Anecdotally, it appears Commander Mooney is good with it too,...

His junior officers seem to have a different take, that indicates he was a good CO respected by his subordinates,...

None of which alleviates him from the responsibility that goes with the privilege conferred by the command star, bad luck or otherwise,...

peace,...nee 1575

[BetaAnt]

Commander Mooney is not without blame but neither is the US Navy for providing incomplete charts.

When the government tries to exonerate itself by claiming no culpability, that sticks in my craw.

The blame was limited to the lowest level available (USS San Francisco) and never spread to COMSUBPAC or CINCPACFLT levels. If the hazard was known on one set of charts, why wasn't a notice to mariners listed in the errata sheet for other charts?

It is a tragedy that a sailor lost his life, but it is a travesty that other responsible parties were not held accountable for their inaction or incompetence. Ignorance is not a defense but, neither is incompetence. In this day and age of digital mapping and OCR technologies other parties knew of the location of this sea mount (it was probably listed as a fishing ground).

Then again, you can always blame George Bush.

[GLW]

Commander Mooney is not without blame but neither is the US Navy for providing incomplete charts....

The service does not need to spend 500 million dollars on witch hunts every time something goes bad,...

The buck stops at the CO, beyond that, you already know nobody went back to business as usual the next day,...

You were there once upon a time, you already know how they deal with these things internally, how many hours of liberty did you lose because so and so over in Squadron X blew a routine evolution just because he was stupid that day?!?!?

Would you really prefer a top to bottom, complete stand down, all liberty and leave cancelled until everybody has been vetted and this mistake can never happen again paradigm?!?!?!?

You're looking at this from the eyes of a guy who goes home every day after putting in his shift, or, when he just dam well feels like it,...

These guys are 24/7 unless they have permission to go home, never ending root cause analysis until it's fixed doesn't look good from the "permission to go on leave or liberty" angle, and I wish that on no one,...

It's not a perfect accountability system, but it works for the Submarine Service, I don't see a better one, and I don't have a better answer,...

...It is a tragedy that a sailor lost his life, but it is a travesty that other responsible parties were not held accountable for their inaction or incompetence. Ignorance is not a defense but, neither is incompetence. In this day and age of digital mapping and OCR technologies other parties knew of the location of this sea mount (it was probably listed as a fishing ground).....

I tend to doubt that letters of reprimand and other career disabling or killing measures were not doled out all around the groups and commands,...

Not everybody involved deserves to be publicly pilloried for a business as usual root to fruit tragedy, it's called business as usual for a reason, many submarine skippers have transited that area without loss of ship or life, their business as usual optempo avoided loss of ship or life,...

This CO didn't make it, perhaps he never transited this piece of ocean before and should have been more cautious, I don't know, I wasn't there,...

I do know back in the day the Soviets were mapping the oceans far better than we did, because as aggressors their skippers needed to be able to run at flank speed in oceans they did not know as well from personal experience,...

I do know back in the day the Soviets kept dossiers on every US Submarine Captain, where he was ever posted, where he ever sailed to, all the transits he was likely to have ever made, partly so their skippers would know if they were up against a guy operating in his own personal experience backyard, or if they were up against a guy operating in strange surroundings,...

I do know back in the day they used to let some nukes play on the tracking party, and QM's used to be assigned to submarines, I remember a nuke friendly, sharp QM2/SS telling me once, "Charts are like SALT, trust but verify.",...

....Then again, you can always blame George Bush.

Now, that's a stretch,...

We may end this agreeing to disagree, but I have enjoyed the flameless, well reasoned discussion,...

[BetaAnt]

I was there. I saw the SubGrp workings and message traffic. Yes, officially the CO is ultimately responsible. And I'm sure the junior officer giving the order for FULL at a greater depth while transiting the Carolina Islands will never forgive himself. The CO is still responsible. An standing order for 5 min. soundings should have been given while transiting the island chain. As they say, hindsight is 20/20.

The Navy does not have an effective fleet wide OE program. Mistakes are repeated time and again. I am not asking for a witch hunt, only change in thinking (Integrated Safety Management System).

There was no system of double checks (or peer review). The boats are happy to get their transit lanes and get underway to make the almighty schedule. My GPS updates maps three times a year. My cell phone mapquest has hourly traffic updates. The Navy has no way to keep up with modern technology. When Tomahawks first came onboard, we had to use a laptop to program the flight path via serial port cable. Hopefully the Navy has advanced magnetic pickup or microwire.

I have pulled those 72 hr shifts to get the boat put back together and chase an Akula around Hawaii on Christmas Eve. As to the Soviet Block precision mapping, I can attest to that after a sounding charge was dumped close to my boat in the 80's.

The Navy is very resistant to change. The Army is more flexible and adaptable to newer tech.

BTW, how many 'ticket punchers' have you known and served under? Let us not forget the 'ring knocker' mentality also. The Navy can be a large corporation that will sacrifice an accountable member, but will change little in overall practice. NavCorp has its golden boys that snuggle up to the right butts. And NavCorp will also blacklist or backwater any capable boat CO that makes targets (CVN, CG, AG, etc.) look foolish. NAvCorp is more concerned about PC than safety (but, that is another discussion).

[DLGN25]

The Enterprise was grounded twice.  Both captains made Flag, one went to four stars.

Admiral Nimitz grounded DD-5, was court martialed, found guilty, and look where he went. 

Sometimes connections work or in the case of Nimitz, you evolve if you are junior enough, or as others have done, get out.

One may ask, if you can repair the ship, why not the skipper?

[GLW]

The Enterprise was grounded twice.  Both captains made Flag, one went to four stars.

Admiral Nimitz grounded DD-5, was court martialed, found guilty, and look where he went. 

Sometimes connections work or in the case of Nimitz, you evolve if you are junior enough, or as others have done, get out.

One may ask, if you can repair the ship, why not the skipper?

Nimitz, Beach and others were repaired,...

Others were not,...

Timing,...fate,...circumstance,...perseverance,...luck,...

[Frankie Love]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Damage_to_USS_San_FranciscoSSN-711_showing_bow_sonar.jpg

Interesting article...Thank you! I went to Wiki to read more about the boat. The picture referenced above has black squares showing. Are those part of the boats navigation system?

[eaton1981]

No.

Interesting article...Thank you! I went to Wiki to read more about the boat. The picture referenced above has black squares showing. Are those part of the boats navigation system?

No. They're part of the sonar system.

[HydroDave63]

That link didn't work, but this one currently does, as open source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SSN-711-damages_02.jpg

[Frankie Love]

A much better picture. Thank you. Says a lot about the building process. American ingenuity at it's finest!

[HeavyD]

She's actually two boats now.  The HONOLULU was under construction at the time.  So, the Navy simply cut off the nose of the SAN FRANCISCO and welded the nose of the HONOLULU onto it.

Actually much more complex than that, but I think everyone gets the gist

[roadhp]

She's actually two boats now.  The HONOLULU was under construction at the time.  So, the Navy simply cut off the nose of the SAN FRANCISCO and welded the nose of the HONOLULU onto it.

Actually much more complex than that, but I think everyone gets the gist

Agree with the two boat statement, but the Honolulu was actually being decommissioned instead of being refueled.

[HeavyD]

My fault on that one

Ex-carrier ELT here.

[roadhp]

Me, too, but spent 2 yrs on sub tender

[GLW]

Me, too, but spent 2 yrs on sub tender

WTH is that?!?!

The Holiday Inn Express qual ?!?!?

gafba!!!!!,...   

[Marlin]

How would you (Marlin) know this to be the case and the CO, XO and Navigator of an SSN do not know it?

I read one of the reports shortly after the incident, inadequate charts and failure to use other navigational updates was in the report, if I find it I will post it. Until then here is an article on the incident.

******************************************************************

Navy Faults navigational procedures In crash Of Sub San Francisco's Crew Failed To Recognize Warnings, Report Says

A Navy report on the submarine that hit a sea mount in the Pacific three months ago will conclude that there was a serious breakdown in navigation procedures that led to the accident, which killed one sailor and injured more than half the crew, Navy sources have told The Day.

The report, which could be released as early as this month, will cite problems with the USS San Francisco's chart preparation methods and, more seriously, the crew's failures to recognize specific warnings that the submarine was headed into trouble.

Soundings showed the bottom was more than 1,200 feet shallower than on the charts that were in use, a difference of more than 20 percent, the sources said. In addition, the ship's fathometer showed the water was shoaling, or getting more shallow with each reading, over an extended period of time, the sources said.

Either one of the warnings should have prompted the crew to slow the submarine down and proceed far more cautiously, the sources said. Instead, the ship plowed into an underwater mountain that was nearly a sheer cliff at a speed of about 30 mph.

In addition, the navigation team was not laying out the ship's projected track far enough ahead of the ship's actual position to determine whether it was sailing into safe water, a particularly dangerous practice in the island-studded area of the Pacific where the San Francisco was operating, the sources said.

One of the sources said he was on a submarine that nearly ran into another uncharted sea mount, but the navigation team recognized and responded to the early warnings and avoided grounding.

•••



http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1380422/posts

How would you (Marlin) know this to be the case and the CO, XO and Navigator of an SSN do not know it?

Sure could have, the same CO, XO and Navigator mentioned above could have avoided it with no more information than what you know, making good decisions with those reports is their job and not just an interesting anecdote to toss out on an internet forum.

This was also in the report. Not saying it's fair just the way it is, Captain's are relieved for far less than this.

[GLW]

I read one of the reports shortly after the incident, inadequate charts and failure to use other navigational updates was in the report, if I find it I will post it. Until then here is an article on the incident.

******************************************************************

Navy Faults navigational procedures In crash Of Sub San Francisco's Crew Failed To Recognize Warnings, Report Says

A Navy report on the submarine that hit a sea mount in the Pacific three months ago will conclude that there was a serious breakdown in navigation procedures that led to the accident, which killed one sailor and injured more than half the crew, Navy sources have told The Day.

The report, which could be released as early as this month, will cite problems with the USS San Francisco's chart preparation methods and, more seriously, the crew's failures to recognize specific warnings that the submarine was headed into trouble.

Soundings showed the bottom was more than 1,200 feet shallower than on the charts that were in use, a difference of more than 20 percent, the sources said. In addition, the ship's fathometer showed the water was shoaling, or getting more shallow with each reading, over an extended period of time, the sources said.

Either one of the warnings should have prompted the crew to slow the submarine down and proceed far more cautiously, the sources said. Instead, the ship plowed into an underwater mountain that was nearly a sheer cliff at a speed of about 30 mph.

In addition, the navigation team was not laying out the ship's projected track far enough ahead of the ship's actual position to determine whether it was sailing into safe water, a particularly dangerous practice in the island-studded area of the Pacific where the San Francisco was operating, the sources said.

One of the sources said he was on a submarine that nearly ran into another uncharted sea mount, but the navigation team recognized and responded to the early warnings and avoided grounding.

•••



http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1380422/posts

This was also in the report. Not saying it's fair just the way it is, Captain's are relieved for far less than this.

Got it,...

[roadhp]

WTH is that?!?!

The Holiday Inn Express qual ?!?!?

gafba!!!!!,...   

For those who know, no words are necessary.  For those who don't, no words will suffice.

Just an attempt, try working 36 hours on, 12 hours off for months keeping two sub squadrons supplied with demin water and repairs and PET tanks, while trying to maintain your own spaces and quals and keeping all of the sub captains happy.  I don't know when you were in, but back in the late 80' toward the end of the cold war, we had quite a few subs, and when the other tender went out to sea, we had to take up the slack.  
And no, I never went into a sewer pipe sealed at both ends and dropped in the water, although I was a subvol.
But, as Marlin would say, this is off-topic.

This was also in the report. Not saying it's fair just the way it is, Captain's are relieved for far less than this.

Captain of the Gurnard was met with a sedan driven by Marine guards, and his relief got his orders and his command star the same day they pulled into port.

[GLW]

For those who know, no words are necessary.  For those who don't, no words will suffice.

Just an attempt, try working 36 hours on, 12 hours off for months keeping two sub squadrons supplied with demin water and repairs and PET tanks, while trying to maintain your own spaces and quals and keeping all of the sub captains happy.  I don't know when you were in, but back in the late 80' toward the end of the cold war, we had quite a few subs, and when the other tender went out to sea, we had to take up the slack.  

Yeah I did that and more, SSN, SSBN, R-5, MM1/SS/RCSS/ELT/yadda, yadda, yadda,...

Zip your pants back up, mine's still bigger,...

And don't even start with 'Zilla, he's abnormal,...



PS - I could go on about those orders to DD-827 between A school and NPS except just because I saw the Lexington launch jets doesn't mean I'm SW, or even know much more than running between the boiler rooms getting samples and sounding feed and fresh tanks for the water king,...