Navy Faults Navigational Procedures in Crash of Sub

TheDay.com ^ | 4/9/2005 | ROBERT A. HAMILTON

[Pan_Yan]

Only three submarines currently have the latest version and they’re all homeported in Norfolk, Va. – Oklahoma City, USS Hampton (SSN 767) and USS Jacksonville (SSN 699).

Given the J-ville's history it really needs curb feelers. Big ones.

[ProudVet77]

Question for a fast attack sub guy -
The CNO claims that going to a Blue/Gold crew arrangement on fasties wouldn't work. You agree? What about yardbirds doing the work for you when you pull in so you get some good at home time? (assuming you can get a yardbird to do anything without bribing them with a 5lb can of coffee)

[Pan_Yan]

From what I saw the Navy can be pretty discriminating about commands. The better warriors tend to get deploying ships to command. The best administrators get new constructions or ships going into long refits. They do sometimes let a screwball loose, but usually they have a reason for who goes where.

As I recall in the late 80's early 90's somewhere between 40% and 60% of sub commanders did not complete their tour. Tough job.

[raybbr]

Thanks for that post. The only real ship I ever worked was the ex-McClane known as the MANATRA when I was in the Sea Scouts. Top speed of 13knts. I don't much about subs other than what I have read.

This was a very unfortunate accident. It's my opinion that the captain should be held responsible regardless of the circumstances regarding the charts and his orders. He is, after all, in charge of the lives of everyone on board.

[Pan_Yan]

The only thing more impractical than two crews would be adding women on board. Our schedule was written in mud. In seven years I never left or returned the day I was supposed to. Not once. You can't emergency deploy a ship in the middle of crew changeover.

Heres a story for you. We had a new MM1 transfer from a boomer. He kind of stood around and watched how things worked for a while. After two weeks he asked the chief "When does this end" - meaning the frantic pace. The chief replied "It doesn't." He was used to a two week refit followed by months of mundane activity. To his credit he rolled up his sleeves, jumped in, and never looked back. Boomer crews don't have the sense of ownership it requires to keep up the fast attack pace. Sub tenders and shore facilities were great for helping us with shuff we couldn't do very well ourselves like insulation, machine shop work or welding. but they never worked on the equipment we depended on out at sea. Never.

Did you ever notice the can of coffee you buy at the store says Grade A on it? Did you ever wonder what that meant? Our big square coffee cans only had one thing written on them:
COFFEE
GRADE B
5 LB

[Rockpile]

",,,,,,,,,and the Subnote routed the ship through the area of the sea mount."

====================================================

To me this just about summarizes it all.---"We routed the San Francisco straight into a mountain but it's not our fault."

Higher command is NEVER to be blamed or held liable for anything that goes wrong--------it's the American way.

[Pan_Yan]

Here's a few oldies for you:

(sung to the tune of 'Welcome to the Jungle')
Welcome to the Greeneville
We've got fun and games
We've got every kind of drill
We even know their names
We've got loss of PLO
And steam line ruptures too
And if you try to get some sleep
We'll run a scram on you
On the Greeneville
Welcome to the Greeneville
Your going down !!!

(you'll recognize the tune)
Grab a scrub brush
Grab a greenie
Get your a** in the bilge
It's Christmas time on the J-ville ...

There are several more verses to each of course.

[BykrBayb]

Thanks. I think I'm making sense of it now.

[Doohickey]

The XO and the Contact Coordinator from Jax's '95 collision were both from my first command, USS Batfish.

[SteveH]

Thanks for the informative post.

These days, virtually all commercial entities are fully computerized. Think UPS.

Subs should IMHO be built such that they can support a certain amount of redundancy and fudge factor engineering. The redundancy can be used to support temporary parallel operation before phase-over to a new information system. That's how it's done in successful commercial organizations. The others tend not to survive.

Since the SF is a nuke, if they (we) don't have the money, then they (we) should get the money. The right tool for the right job (or so the expression goes).

[Pan_Yan]

I helped man the lines topside when they pulled the j-ville outboard us after hitting the Turkish freighter just out of Norfolk. They made them wait until after dark so the base was closed to the public. Hense the reason nukes were up pulling lines across.

It was bad ... fairwater plane hanging off, stern plane twisted around.

[Terabitten]

That should be the fix implemented from this disaster. The Army needs paper maps - kinda hard to lug a laptop around in your rucksack, and plus, they don't work too good in the rain. For the Navy not to have all this on computer is not only inexcusable, but unbelievable. For pete's sake, haven't they heard of Mapquest?

[Doohickey]

It was '96, not '95...Jax did just about the exact same thing with a Saudi merch. We'd just come back from the Med and I was on duty the night she came in. The thing must've had something against shipping from Muslim countries.

[Pan_Yan]

It might have been the Saudi ship I was thinking of. Having blocked most of my memories of those years for a while its hard to dredge them back up in order.

My first boat was under the Saratoga when they shot a Turkish destroyer with a live missile. War games come to a halt in a hurry when that happens. Tracking contacts during war games in the Med is a nightmare.

[GATOR NAVY]

I don't know. How close is a BQN-17 to a UQN-4?

[Doohickey]

I don't know; did it look anything like this:

[Doohickey]

Hmmmm...I'm in favor of electronic for many reasons, but I don't think they completely fix this problem. The main reason is that submarines lack the high data rate link capability to maintain mapping products up to date in an automated fashion - which means that manual entry of NTM, HYDROLANT/PACs and other chart updates is still necessary.

There's pleny of blame to go around here - SUBPAC should have not routed a transiting submaring within 50NM of a known navigation hazard. A sounding is ALWAYS taken prior to going deep. If the sounding didn't check with the charted depth, they should not have proceeded deep.

Here's what I think happened - this is just my opinion, based on eight years of sea duty:

The boat conducts field day on the morning (06-12) watch. Field day normally lasts an entire watch. Near the end of the watch, the boat proceeds to PD to clear the broadcast, get a fix and conduct other evolutions such as ventilate, pumping sanitaries, etc. The watch is relived while at PD, and the oncoming OOD notes that the boat is at the back of it's moving haven. He gets CO's permission (or already had it) to run fast speed MCPs to get back on PIM.

Now here's where it gets sketchy. Before proceeding deep, the OOD orders a sounding. The QMOW takes the sounding and reports to the OOD that the sounding checks with charted depth. Either the sounding was never taken, the QMOW misread the charted depth, or the OOD chose to ignore the discrepency. The rest, as they say, is history.

[SteveH]

Hmm, could they have used sneakernet to carry a laptop which had been previously uploaded with the latest map info onboard at Guam port prior to embarking?

[ProudVet77]

One last question on this subject. What if they had a blue/gold crew on attack subs where the crews were mostly married men. I know attack subs have "dynamic" schedules but I would think a longer patrol followed by longer time with family might be beneficial. And let those boats have more mission days/year.

[AndyJackson]

for under a $1000 you can buy a commercial GPS that gets it's updates off the internet and automates it without having to sort through pages and pages of notice to mariners.

Well there you are. The Navy pays $10's of millions for the navigation system on a submarine. You are not just going to junk that because someone operend a cracker-jack box and found a magic decoder ring. We are talking serious professionals here . [/sarcasm]