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[Hostel]

PING

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Previous FR threads on the sub collision:

Submarine Collision Photo

Officials: U.S. submarine hit undersea mountain

Damage To Submarine Believed Severe

[68skylark]

Nature is very unforgiving in this particular line of work.

[Prost1]

I'm not a sailor or seaman, but perhaps knowing more about the officers and crew might help in understanding how they could have ignored such danger signs.

Incompetence, since they did everything wrong...
But why? Why would they not be qualified to command and to monitor and to steer and make course and speed adjustments in dangerous waters?
Why would they not be able to recognize dangerous waters?
Why would the command not respond to a seaman's concern, if expressed?
Why couldn't the seaman discern the differences?

There seems to be lots of unanswered questions. Do the answers go to the Admiralty, by chance?

[raybbr]

1. The team apparently believed it was a faulty reading — moving through the water at 30 mph, fathometer readings can be inaccurate — and the team kept hoping that perhaps the next reading would correlate with the chart.

2. In retrospect, it's clear that the readings were accurate, the water was shoaling, and the San Francisco was heading for what was nearly an underwater cliff.

Okay. So which is it? Are the readings accurate at 30knts or not?

The author writes as if he has information that fathometer readings are innacurate at that speed and then contradicts himself. Does he have a source that tells him this? I find it very hard to believe that they would driving the sub at that speed if soundings would be that erratic. Pretty sloppy writing.

[greasepaint]

What is the longitude and latitude of the
'newly discovered' seamount?

Have Navy charts been updated?

[sonofatpatcher2]

I'm looking forward to the History Channel or NatGeo Channel doing a program on this...

The crew did a top notch job in keeping the San Fran afloat and able to limp back to port.

[Balata]

"Having the Subnote get to the ship so late provided the ship little time to prepare, and the Subnote routed the ship through the area of the sea mount."


Wait a minute. The ship was only doing 30 knots, which seems to me plenty of time for the Nav to prepare the chart and route.

[SW6906]

Ping!

[Publius6961]

The next day, a little more than 400 miles southeast of Guam, as sailors were sitting down to lunch, it slammed into the sea mount in an area where official Navy charts list 6,000 feet of water.
This is inexcuseable, on an administrative level. If charts are not maintained and updated constantly electronically, there is criminal contributory negligence higher up the chain of command. A corrected electronic version of the chart could have been and should have been transmitted and distributed world-wide to anyone who needed it in seconds...
On a ship or boat, the buck stops with the captain --- but only if the captain has ultimate control of where he is and when he gets there. I have the uneasy feeling that he was facing conflicting orders, one explicit the other implicit by reference, and his choice came back and bit him on the butt.

That notice is 58 pages long and covers hundreds of changes worldwide, including four — the sea mount, an obstruction and two depth changes — on the specific chart, number 81023, the San Francisco was using when it ran aground. And it is one of 15 notices issued so far this year.
It is so easy, after the fact to assume that the captain and his crew had the time and the resources to wade through 58 pages of data to find four changes that affected their immediate task, given his orders and the time frame they were given in which to execute those orders.

There's plenty of blame to go around, and procedural errors to be corrected.

[SteveH]

Under submarine-force regulations, the navigation team might prepare the charts, but the captain, executive officer, navigation officer, assistant navigation officer, and senior electronics technician responsible for navigation would have had to review the voyage planning process, and signed the charts as acceptable... Navy sources said putting your signature on that chart makes you personally liable for its accuracy, a responsibility that naval officers cannot take lightly.

But the captain is probably the guy that writes the others' periodical evaluations? If anyone else in the crew gets into the hint of a habit of disagreeing with the captain on paper, I wonder how far his career would go...

Also, issuing 58 page reports containing map numbers and warnings about suspected uncharted sea mounts doesn't seem anywhere close to what is needed by a modern submarine. This seems as if it would be the kind of thing someone could write up a software tool for in a few person-weeks. The crew should have had a software map tool that points out suspected underwater hazards (sheesh).

I've never served but have relatives who have. And I have worked in government jobs. From a distance, this reeks of cover-my-@@@ for higher-ups, and scapegoating for the five operating under the captain and perhaps the second in command who in my mind have more than reasonable doubt as to whether they were ever given a realistic option to object. Six signatures to a procedure from the same line of command seems like at least four too many.

[cherokee1]

It's still INCREDIBLE! If the ship was where they say it was ie 400 miles south of Guam it is virtually impossible to avoid hitting something. By definition the bottom should have been shoaling since there is an island chain directly ahead of them. The gaps between those islands are best not shot at flank speed---that's been known since the days of Mush Morton and Ed Beach. Damage to the ship looks more like they had orders to burrow under the closest island. It seems like the Navy is determined to whop up a "bad Navigation" cause for the incident but that doesn't explain the extremely light punishments. The rapid captain's mast tells me that many levels of management have their butts hanging out in which case the whole bunch belong in a well-padded cell.

[Squantos]

Not being a bubblehead myself but have been cargo on the Polk once.....can't these subs pop up to periscope depth and get a GPS lock as to exact location when such a conflict in nav aids and sensors exists ?

Just a question.....as I don't know their SOP.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

ping

[Doohickey]

Ping!

And here you have it, folks.

[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.

[G Larry]

"But updates are expensive and take time."

As opposed to the sub repairs which Earl Schibe will complete this weekend for only $99.95!