Sources Say Crew's Heroics Saved Sub

It is increasingly clear that the submarine that hit a seamount in the Pacific Ocean last week came close to being lost and that only the valiant efforts of its crew kept it afloat, Navy sources said Tuesday. With uncontrolled flooding in its forward ballast tanks, the USS San Francisco had to run a low-pressure air pump for 30 hours straight to maintain buoyancy on its trip home, Navy sources said. The pump is rated for only intermittent use.

In addition, the submarine ran its diesel engines, channeling the exhaust into the forward ballast tanks in an effort to force out more of the water and make the ship lighter. “Based on the information I've seen so far, they're very lucky this ship didn't sink,” said retired Navy Capt. John C. Markowicz. “Only through the heroic efforts of the crew did that ship survive.”

The San Francisco, homeported at Guam, was traveling more than 500 feet below the surface at more than 30 knots — about 35 mph — when it slammed into the seamount about 360 miles southeast of Guam.

The New York Times, in its editions today, reports that the submarine hit so “incredibly hard” that about 60 of its 137 crew were injured and that the one sailor who died was thrown 20 feet by the impact, according to internal Navy e-mail messages sent by Rear Adm. Paul F. Sullivan, the commander of submarines in the Pacific.

The messages sent by Sullivan paint a more dire picture of the accident than had previously been disclosed, The Times reported.

The accident came just minutes after the crew had finished a “field day,” a cleaning process that involves breaking down a lot of equipment. If the accident had happened an hour earlier, the situation could have been much more serious because the loose equipment hatches and other parts could have become missiles, one source said.

Submariners also noted that if the boat involved had been a newer version of the Los Angeles class, the results could have been catastrophic.

The San Francisco, SSN 711, was commissioned in 1981. Starting with the Groton-based USS Providence, SSN 719, Los Angeles-class submarines have 12 missiles in vertical launch tubes in a compartment just behind the sonar dome. Several submariners acknowledged that such an incident involving a newer boat could have led to a fire in the missile fuel systems, which could have led to a low-order detonation of up to 12,000 pounds of high explosives.

“It could have been a real Kursk-type situation,” one Navy source said, referring to the Russian submarine that sank in August 2000 after a fire broke out in its torpedo compartment.

Submariners around the country were poring over charts of the area where the San Francisco hit the seamount and were coming to the same conclusion: The ocean bottom was supposed to be more than a mile below where the San Francisco hit.

In fact, sources said the San Francisco had just submerged from periscope depth and had taken a bottom reading with its Fathometer four minutes before it hit the seamount and that the reading indicated the bottom was 6,000 feet below the keel.

The damage to the submarine, which includes a cracked sonar sphere and severe damage to three of the four ballast tanks near the bow, and some buckling of the forward pressure hull, all argue that the submarine hit something akin to an underwater cliff.

“Going from 6,000 feet to almost nothing in four minutes is a very steep seamount, no question about it,” Markowicz said.

The local chapter of U.S. Submarine Veterans has started a fund-raising campaign for the crew of the San Francisco. John Carcioppolo, the local base commander, said the group just finished raising $3,800 for the family of the Canadian submariner killed in a shipboard fire last October, and one of the first pledges has come from the group's counterpart in Canada.

“Before I even announced I was doing fund-raising, I already got a commitment from Buster Brown up in Canada,” Carcioppolo said. Brown is the head of the Submarine Association of Canada, Eastern Branch, and a former high-ranking enlisted member of the Canadian Navy.

Carcioppolo said he would send any money raised to the captain of the San Francisco, Cmdr. Kevin Mooney, “to be disbursed as he sees fit.” Carcioppolo is a mentor of one of the young enlisted men on the San Francisco, and is acquainted with Mooney as well.

“There's been a very strong outpouring of good wishes for Kevin and for everyone on board,” Carcioppolo said.

San Francisco was on its way to Brisbane, Australia, just before noon Saturday when it ran into the seamount, crushing the front end of the submarine.

At that depth, the water pressure was almost 250 PSI, or about 16 times atmospheric pressure, so the chief concern was to get to the surface as quickly as possible. The crew executed an “emergency blow,” forcing high-pressure air into the ballast tanks to make the submarine rise sharply.

Once on the surface, though, the crew realized the ship was experiencing severe flooding into two of the three forward ballast tanks, and had to come up with some type of quick fix.

The low-pressure air system normally used for short periods of time was pressed into continuous service, and the ship started its diesel generators and used the exhaust to augment the blower to keep as much water as possible out of the ballast tanks.

With those emergency procedures in place, the ship limped home to Apra, Guam, where the Navy has rushed flotation devices, underwater engineering gear and technical experts to begin analyzing the damage.

Machinist Mate 2nd Class Joseph A. Ashley, 24, of Akron, Ohio, died from a head wound he sustained when he was thrown against a pump in the machinery spaces. Another machinist mate on duty in the engine room also received a serious head injury and was listed in stable condition Tuesday.

The Navy said 22 other men were injured badly enough to be taken off the submarine, so crew members from the USS City of Corpus Christi and the USS Houston, which are also homeported in Guam, as well as the tender USS Frank Cable, met the ship on its return and took over many of the injured crewmen's functions.

Anyone have a comment on uncharted sea mount, in reasonably well traversed waters, that went from zero to 6000 feet in two miles?

Such seamounts are relatively common, particularly in tropical waters where coral atolls can form

Seafloor crust is denser than continental crust, so it sinks over millions of years (compared to when it was created at mid-ocean ridges) until it eventually dives under one of the lighter continental plates.

So what can happen is that an atoll can form when a small island is near enough to the surface so that light supports coral growth. Over the eons the original island sinks but if slow enough sink-rate, the coral can continue to grow (vertially) as the original island gets deeper and deeper. Imagine it like a slowly growing chimney on a sinking base.

Eventually the sink-rate can become fast enough that coral growth can't keep up and the near-surface living coral dies from lack of sunlight. Now you have a seamount that may be anywhere from less than a mile wide to much larger, with its base thousands of feet deep.

Unfortunately the ocean is a huge body of water in area and we have soundings that are relatively far apart (3 - 10 miles for most of the oceans) so many seamounts escape detection until they rip off some trawler's nets... or get in the way of a submarine.

(From another thread..FYI)
This in from a chief on the San Francisco; [I've put explanations for some terms inside brackets just like this for folks not in the sub profession]:
To All, I thought that I would put out a note since a lot of you have been calling and writing to find out how things are and if I'm OK and what happened. If you hadn't heard, my boat hit a uncharted submerged sea mount at the highest speed we can go at about 500ft below the surface. There were about 30 of us that were seriously hurt and unfortunately one of my shipmates didn't make it.

First off I am OK. I am pretty beat up with my entire left side and butt as one big bruise. My shoulder is separated and may require surgery. They will evaluate later this week. I am very fortunate that I hit the wall and didn't go down a ladderwell that was right next to where I hit. If I had gone down that, I would have got really messed up. I took a tremendous shot to my left thigh from something. If it had been slightly lower in the knee area it would have been really ugly. But all in all I am in good shape.

We hit it at about noon right after field day (where all of us clean the boat for several hours). Thank God we didn't hit while we were doing this or it would have been much worse. We would have had flying deck plates through the air and such. Not good. As it was, it happened while chow was going on and most people were either sitting and eating or on watch.

I don't remember much of the collision. People describe it as like in the movie the Matrix where everything slowed down and levitated and then went flying forward faster that the brain can process. My mind has blanked it out exactly what happened. Adrenaline kicked in and I have no real memory of how I got down to middle level [of 3 in a single large compartment forward of the reactor and engineering spaces. Upper level is control area, CO/XO staterooms radio room, sonar etc. Middle level is crews mess, crew's berthing, storage, reefers and some environmental control equipment. Lower level is for the torpedo room, more berthing, auxiliary equipment, freezers and so forth. Below all that is the battery well,] or what I did immediately following. I helped carry several shipmates to the crew mess deck (adrenaline is a wonderful thing - my shoulder was wrecked and I had no idea until about 4 hours later). I sat with several of my junior guys that had bad head wounds and talked with them to keep them conscious until doc could see them. It seemed like an eternity but I'm sure wasn't that long. For those Navy folks that ever wondered why Chief's stomp around and preach "Stow for Sea" This was a perfect example. It definitely saved lives.

I am extremely proud of the crew to do damage control, help the wounded and get the boat safely to the surface (for the boat guys we blew the tanks dry on the emergency blow but unbeknownst to us we were missing some ballast tanks/some didn’t have integrity). The ship's control party did every thing exactly right even though they were hurt as well. The Diving Officer of the Watch had just unbuckled his belt [watchstanders in control such as helmsman, planesman, etc. must wear seatbelts when running submerged 'at speed' - for just such an eventuality as this incident] to update a status board and hit the Ship's Control Panel hard enough to break some of the gages. To add insult to injury his chair came up right behind him. Several people were injured in the Engine Room Lower Level area. Lots of metal and sharp edges in the area as well as that's were the boat's smoking area is at. Several crew members are reevaluating that habit now.

Once again we got lucky in the fact that we had an extra corpsman [essentially a highly qualified EMT - certified to be the only medical support on subs] onboard. One of our officers was a prior enlisted corpsman that was a Fleet Marine Force medic so he was a Godsend for us. Our Corpsman did an outstanding job getting everyone stabilized and did the best he could for our fallen shipmate. I am surprised that he got him to hold on as long as he did. Our corpsman is definitely a hero in my book. He didn't sleep for 2 or 3 days.

We finally put him down when the SEAL docs helicoptered in to help. Like I said, I am extremely proud of my crew and how they handled themselves. My Chief of the Boat [COB - the senior enlisted man aboard and right-hand man to skipper and XO] was an inspiration of what a leader should be and my Captain was as well. My XO took out an EAB manifold [Emergency Air Breathing - a series of manifolds throughout the boat into which the crew plugs in air masks if the air in the boat is unbreathable] with his back but still managed to help coordinate things. No matter what happens later, these men did a superior job under difficult circumstances. I am humbled by the entire crew's performance from the CO down to the Seaman that I was checking in two days before.

For those of you wondering, I am sure there will be an investigation into what happened and no I was not part of the navigation preps for this voyage. I work on the inertial/electronic navigation and interior communications part of my rate and didn't have anything to do with the conventional navigation part of it. I will be lending support to my comrades who were, to help them prepare for the pending investigation.

I thank you all for you concern and appreciate your prayers not only for myself, but for my shipmates. We are doing well, we band of brothers and will pull through just fine.

Thanks,

Xxxx Yyyy Zzzz

1,047 posted on 01/11/2005 6:19:27 PM CST by IonImplantGuru (PhD, School of Hard Knocks)
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