I’ve only ever been on a museum sub in Charleston, SC. I’m not a submariner, but would hope for comment from those in the know. Wouldn’t it be standard protocol, before surfacing, to come up to periscope depth, sweep the horizon 360 degrees, and then surface?
Not a submariner, but a US sub had a similar incident in 2001 when performing an emergency surfacing drill. It came up below a Japanese fishing vessel off Hawaii, resulting in the boat sinking and killing 9 passengers. There are details in the Wiki describing what they checked on before surfacing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville_collision
I have seen two submarine surfacings in the western Pacific, back in the 1980s. Each time, the sub sent up white smoke flares that burned on the surface for at least five minutes and a red paraflare before the sub appeared. The correct response for any ship encountering these pyros was to keep her propellors turning and give a wide berth to the smoke cannister location.
Well, that IS when you get hit by the surface ship: You (the submarine) are trying to stay under control going to periscope depth at 3-4 knots so you can get your periscope up and verify that there are in fact no surface ships in the way. But if the sub's keel is (for example) 66 feet, then the top of the sail is 10-15 feet from the surface. Very, very easy to get hit under the wrong circumstances.
That there are so few sub-surface collisions (maybe 1 per decade for thousands of surfacing evolutions by every submarine the world's fleets) is a mark to the effectiveness of the underwater search and sonar checks now being done.
What fun would that be...
Sometimes you just have to use the force Luke😁