A friend sent me this photo from Guam. I think it says a lot about both the crew and the builders that this boat made it home
v/r,
Cob

Agreed Rob, I can see where that boat could have been lost very easy! Those guys had there stuff together.

Cheers,

Garry

LOL... Good Damage Control.... LOL
Bet they are happy as a pig in S*** for all those drills...... :-) :-) :-)

In a couple of articles ive read on the San Francisco's "little" accident, the impact breached the outer hull but the inner hull remained intact. It was running at 500' at "crusing" speed for a sub when it hit. When it surfaced and was on the way back to Guam, they had to continually pump air into the forward ballast tanks to keep the boat afloat. One article released by the Navy said that because the sonar dome was flooded, it acted as a cushion when the boat hit the underwater mountain.

This is a new pic. In the ones the Navy released, the sonar dome was covered in a blue tarp because it is classified.

I dunno if anyone knows but, not all of the crew made it home alive from this accident. One sailor was killed when he struck a pipe valve while being thrown forward during the incident. While trying to evac him to a chopper waiting above, he died from his injuries when they were moving him through the hatches to get topside.


Matt

It is amazing that there was so little loss of life. That is some damage to that sub. What speed is flank submerged? Any guesses?

Scott,

Flank speed in the 688I LA Class SSN's is around 30-35 mph. I just looked back at the article and it wasnt operating at "flank". Flank speed is actually emergency speed. Used only in battle.

Heres a link to one of the articles about the San Francisco.

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20050128103609990019

Sorry about the mixup in my earlier post. Ill go back and edit it now.

HTH

Matt

Out of a crew of approximately 140, nearly 100 suffered injuries. The man who died struck his head and never regained consciousness. The attempt to get him off the boat would not have made a difference.
The pressure hull was not breached but nearly all forward main ballast tanks were damaged.
v/r,
Cob

I heard the other day that the captain of the boat has lost his job as commander of the sub.

Thanks for the reply Matt. That is awful fast to strike an object in the water. They must have been a well trained crew to bring her back home.

I don't know what the final outcome will be, but certainly during the investigation of the incident the commander will be relieved of his duties. From what I have heard, the entire crew credits the captain with getting the boat home (along with the rest of the crew of course.) As has been mentioned earlier, most of the crew sustained injury, some pretty severe.

No doubt the invesitgation will look into the commanders culpability in what happened, and despite the fact that his actions after the fact were heroic, and deserve commentation, I suspect that there will be some blame attached to how the incident occurred, and as a result the commander will not get his boat back. Even if he did (and assuming it is decided to repair the boat which I don't know is a given yet) the sad truth is that he will not get another command and for all practical purposes, his career is over. That's just the way the system works.

Tom

The Military is pretty vindictive. Of course as a battlefield leader, you goof and men die. They aren't going to give you a chance to do it again. I am just curious that with all the sofisticated sonar and underwater maps. how did they run into a mountain? Not being sarcastic here, I know you can't just look out a window and see the thing coming at you like you can in a plane or tank

The sonar is definitely sophisticated, but passive sonar isn't too good at hearing what doesn't make noise, and generally speaking an underwater mountain doesn't make any. I know that the really technical will point out that if you were in front of an obstacle that size, the simple fact that the sound return from that area would be different would tell that something solid was there.

OK, true. But at 35+ knots?

As far as the active sonar is concerned, sure you could use that to find out there's an inanimate object in front of you. But submarines don't use active sonar to navigate for the same reason that in combat you wouldn't use your tank searchlight to help avoid obstacles if you were trying to sneak across a field to approach an enemy position. (See also Murphy's rules of Combat #25, i.e. "Tracers work both ways")
You have to rely on charts.

As far as those are concerned, my son tells me that some of the data being used for certain areas of the Pacific goes back to WW II and some of it even further. That's a HUGE area, and not only is it difficult to get all of it mapped perfectly, it isn't static either.

I understand that NIMA MAY have had some better data that the boat didn't have. Whether that's true, and whether it actually shows the obstacle they hit, and whether that could have prevented the collision will probably be part of the board proceedings.

If the skipper was where he was supposed to be, doing what he was supposed to be doing, the way he was supposed to be doing it, and had NO ability to predict or avoid the obstacle, he should be held blameless. But he probaby won't be which is a damn shame given what happened afterwards.

And even if they don't hold him responsible, the only PRACTICAL effect is likely to be the avoidance of any criminal charges under the UCMJ.

It's sad, but that's just the way command works.

Tom

no matter what the findings are, the best that skipper can hope for is to get pushed into some backwater job until retirement time comes. He ain't gonna see the Eagle short of a major big time shooting war. But if a man dies under your command in a non-combat related death, it is unlikely that the CO will escape without anything directly punative