The nuclear submarine San Francisco last week in Guam. It crashed into an undersea mountain in January.
(An interesting interactive graphic of the sub is at the Times' story site.)
Posted on 05/18/2005 5:59:47 AM PDT by OESY
APRA HARBOR, Guam, May 16 - 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....
[mandatory excerpts now in effect]
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Her nose looks much better...........
WHY WOULD YOU NAME ANYTHING IN THE MILITARY AFTER san francisco?. A CITY NOTORIOUS FOR BELITTLING AND UNDERMINING THIS COUNTRY'S DEFENSES?
Maybe because it's filled with seamen....
LoL!
WHY WOULD YOU NAME ANYTHING IN THE MILITARY AFTER san francisco?...
Well, looking at the picture, ...
Never mind.
Just to bug the San Franciscans?
The San Francisco attacked...
The San Francisco unleashed devastation...
President Bush ordered the San Francisco to...
You can just hear the liberals gnashing their teeth. :-)
MR BURNS: What do you think, Smithers?
SMITHERS: Women and seamen don't mix, sir.
MR BURNS: Bah, we know what you think.
So the officers were relieved of their duties for what reason?
It is an excellent example of the dangers that airmen, soldiers and sailors face daily, even when they're not in a combat zone, that ordinary civilians will never face.
Everyone should keep that in mind this Memorial Day and salute our service members for their sacrafice, courage and patriotism.
Yeah, the mountain pulled right out in front of the San Fransisco and didn't even have it's clearance lights on.
The article states that it wasn't on their charts. Other than sonar, how else would they know? Think they deliberately smashed into the mountain?
--former "bubblehead" (RM1/SS)
From the article:
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.
Also:
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.
If I recall correctly from a previous article, there are periodic updates to the charts and those updates did reflect either the object they hit, or the fact that the area was poorly documented.
However, because of the nature of the orders received, the captain/crew did not take the updates into consideration.
My memory is a little fuzzy, but I believe that the summary of the situation was that the captain/crew weren't acting recklessly, but had they followed procedure, the obstacle would have been avoided, or steps would have been taken to proceed more cautiously.
ROFLMAO!
Why did we name an attack submarine the USS Jimmy Carter?
Ping.
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