my question, as a retired Sub Sonarman is how the frack did the Montpelier shack let them get so close before going to PD? Something doesn’t sound right here
It is sonar’s problem is they didn’t hear it (unlikely).
It is fire controls problem if they didn’t track it (ie Hawaii) and the officer of the deck’s for not keeping the big picture in his head.
In my 8 years as sonar supervisor aboard three SSNs, the closest I got to this was coming to periscope depth along side a large cruise catamaran off Hawaii. Bit of a shock to both the office of the deck, and those on catamaran, when the periscope was broke the surface 100 ft away. Luckily we were on a parallel course. Of course we went deep quickly and retried later.