There I go again, confusing fact with fiction. ;-)
Posted on 01/12/2005 1:19:46 AM PST by Boot Hill
By ROBERT A. HAMILTON
Day Staff Writer, Navy/Defense/Electric Boat
Published on 1/11/2005
Photographs of the USS San Francisco returning to Apra Harbor in Guam Monday show the submarine's sonar sphere and forward ballast tanks were heavily damaged when it hit an undersea mountain, experienced submariners said.
One man was killed in the collision, and 23 others, about one of every six crewmen on board, were injured and evacuated from the submarine, making the incident one of the most serious undersea accidents in memory.
“This is the first time in my memory that anyone was ever killed in one of these accidents,” said retired Navy Capt. John W. “Bill” Sheehan of Waterford, who commanded a submarine in the 1970s.
The bow of the submarine normally rides high in the water, but the San Francisco's was steeply angled down as the submarine passed the Orote cliffs in Guam, Navy photos showed. That indicated it was carrying many extra tons of water.
Sources said the sonar sphere was cracked, which would allow in about 20 tons of water [equal to 10.6 foot diam]. The ballast tanks were cracked and flooded as well, the sources said, and portions of the hull near the bow were buckled.
Retired submariners said the sonar dome, which is always flooded, probably absorbed enough of the impact to keep the pressure hull from cracking, allowing the crew to save the ship.
The reactor, located amidships, and the rest of the propulsion plant in the rear of the ship were undamaged, the Navy said.
Navy sources said the ship was traveling more than 500 feet below the surface at more than 30 knots, about 35 mph, when it collided with the sea mount about 350 miles south of Guam.
Retired Navy Capt. John C. Markowicz of Waterford said the injuries were not surprising.
“Put yourself in an automobile going 35 mph and you hit a brick wall without even having a seat belt on,” he said.
The crewman who was killed, Machinist Mate 2nd Class Joseph A. Ashley, 24, of Akron, Ohio, died from a head wound he sustained when he was thrown against a pump in the machinery spaces.
•••During the Cold War, the Navy focused on charting the Atlantic because of the threat the Soviet Union posed from that direction. Submariners said that until recently some of the Pacific Ocean charts carried warnings based on soundings made by Captain Cook in the 18th century, and even modern charts can be based on soundings taken 20 miles or more apart.
Local submariners say the area where the sub was traveling is notorious for no-warning sea mounts; the water depth can change 1,000 fathoms in seconds.
“We know more about the backside of the moon than we do about the bottom of the ocean,” said retired Navy Capt. James Patton, president of Submarine Tactics and Technology in North Stonington.
The area in which the San Francisco was traveling, through the Caroline Islands chain, is one of the worst, with dozens of islands rising out of the water and many more uncharted seamounts between them.
“It's just bad water,” Patton said.
Submariners said that if the navigation team was operating a Fathometer, the San Francisco probably would have had time to change course no matter how steep the seamount. But if it thought it was in deep water, it might not have been running that piece of equipment.
“The Fathometer sends a signal out, and you can be tracked when you're sending that signal,” said retired Navy Capt. Raymond D. Woolrich of Waterford, a previous commander of the Undersea Surveillance Program in the Pacific.
“One of the things I found running the undersea surveillance system is that earthquakes happen all the time in the Pacific, and that's how the earth changes,” Woolrich said. “Could there have been an unknown, uncharted seamount? Sure there could have been.”
Markowicz recalled that during a transit to the North Pole, passing near Iceland, where a lot of volcanic activity occurs, the water depth could shift hundreds of fathoms in four or five seconds, which would not have been enough time to turn a 7,000-ton submarine traveling at 35 mph.
“The slope comes up very quickly,” Markowicz said. “You have very little reaction time, and you may not even have as much warning in the Pacific (where the slopes can be even steeper.) I'm sure that the board of investigation will look at the situation very carefully.”
"Wasn't a transparent steel product recently developed? The front of a sub sounds like a great place for a window." Yep and a screen door on the side to catch the breezes. If they did have a nautilus clear nose to see they would not see a thing in that darkness in time to take any action.
There I go again, confusing fact with fiction. ;-)
This all smells like dead orca to me. If the area is notorious for seamounts, then what the hell are they doing at full throttle.
How come the sub hunters and thumper ships never plotted the area considering chinese subs are sneaking all over the area?
Why is the senate approving to station 8 subs in the area if it's not plotted out?
This story gets more fishy as time goes on.
Glad to hear we have such a program. Guess we refer back to an earlier post, sit and contemplate a good map, or better a globe, They be one hell of a lot o' water out there. "Here there be dragons" probably ain't far off for some of it.
What I think his statement (ie:“This is the first time in my memory that anyone was ever killed in one of these accidents,”) was meant to mean is accidents in which subs have hit undersea obstructions.
The Thresher disaster was caused by inferior welding in the construction process
What's with the "bubbleheads"? Back when I was in, we never called ourselves bubbleheads.
that is a Submariner's biggest nightmare. Remember the movie "The Abyss"? it was banned from the boats by the navy, because the first 10 minutes were very realistic of how a boat would flood at that depth with that large a hole in it.
I had a buddy that was the throttleman on the Tautog when they nailed the Russkie. He was still shaking months later.
this crew did an outstanding job above and beyound, from all that I've read and are a credit to all of us who wear dolphins. Unfortinuately, after talking with my neighbors here, one who's a Seawolf (SSN-21) Plankowner, and another who helps run the Flooding wet trainer here at Sub base, we think that because of the damage done that the San Fran may meet an early Decommissioning. which is sad, but the same thing happened to the Nathanel Hale (SSBN) when she found an uncharted sea mount in the Irish sea back in the mid 80's.
The nuclear submarine that ran aground Saturday in the South Pacific hit so "incredibly hard" that about 60 of its 137 crew members were injured and the sailor who died was thrown 20 feet by the impact, according to internal Navy e-mail messages sent by a top admiral.
The messages said the submarine's hull was severely damaged after the head-on crash into what Navy officials believe was an undersea mountain that was not on the navigation charts. One message said the submarine, the San Francisco, was traveling at high speed, and the impact practically stopped it in its tracks and caused flooding in parts of the bow.
The messages were written by Rear Adm. Paul F. Sullivan, the commander of submarines in the Pacific. They paint a more dire picture of the accident, which occurred 360 miles southeast of Guam, than had previously been disclosed. They also hint at the extensive efforts to steady the vessel and save the sailor who died.
The e-mail indicated that the Navy had tried to evacuate the fatally injured man, Machinist Mate 2nd Class Joseph A. Ashley, within hours after he had been thrown forward and hit his head on a metal pump, which knocked him unconscious.
Petty Officer Ashley's father, Daniel L. Ashley, said in an interview he had been told that as a helicopter hovered over the choppy seas, crew members could not maneuver a stretcher carrying his son through the submarine's hatches before he died.
"They tried numerous times to maneuver him through various hatches," Mr. Ashley said. "But it just didn't happen."
Admiral Sullivan, who is based in Hawaii, sent the e-mail messages to other Navy officials. As the messages circulated within the submarine community, two people provided copies to The New York Times, and Navy officials confirmed their authenticity.
The e-mail also indicated that about 60 crew members had been injured. All the Navy had said publicly was that 23 crew members were treated for broken bones, cuts and bruises.
The messages said those 23 were hurt seriously enough that they were unable to stand their watch duties as the submarine limped back to Guam. Mr. Ashley said the submarine's captain, Cmdr. Kevin Mooney, told him by phone on Monday that among the injured crew members, "there were a lot of broken fingers, broken arms and legs and one fractured back."
-snip-
Not to mention being blasted by mines for hours where they had miscalculated the actual blast wave due to improperly accounting for the bottom reflection in shallow water.
Navy officials said yesterday that the rest of the injuries were minor.
The admiral's e-mail also said an outer hull ripped open at the submarine's nose, causing flooding in a dome with sonar sensors and in four of the ballast tanks used to submerge the vessel or take it to the surface.
The flooding caused the submarine to sit deeper in the water and made it hard to maneuver on the trip back to Guam. Sailors had to keep pumping pressurized air into the tanks to prevent the water from rising and to maintain buoyancy.
An inner hull, which surrounds the crew's living and work spaces, held firm, the e-mail said. The nuclear reactor and critical propulsion systems were not damaged.
In the e-mail, Admiral Sullivan did not discuss why the vessel ran aground. The Navy is investigating, and the admiral, who ultimately will have to decide whether to reprimand any of the submarine's crew members, did not respond to requests for comment.
Navy officials have said that the submarine, which was headed for Australia, appeared to have smashed into an undersea mountain that was not on its charts. Mr. Ashley, who lives in Akron, Ohio, said Commander Mooney told him the same thing on Monday.
"He said, 'On the charts we have, this is a clear area all the way through to Australia,' " Mr. Ashley said.
-snip-
Navy officials said the San Francisco was traveling at 30 knots when it careened off some part of the undersea mountain range. In one of the e-mail messages, Admiral Sullivan wrote that on impact, the vessel made a "nearly instantaneous deacceleration" to about 4 knots.
Mr. Ashley said Commander Mooney told him that his son had just gotten off watch duty in the engine area and was chatting with other sailors when the accident occurred.
Mr. Ashley said his son, who was 24, "loved the Navy and that submarine" and had just re-enlisted.
Mr. Ashley said Commander Mooney, who could not be reached for comment, also told him that his son's condition seemed to worsen as sailors labored to tilt the stretcher through the evacuation hatch.
Mr. Ashley said that at the end of the conversation, Commander Mooney told him that he took full responsibility for the sailor's death. Mr. Ashley said he replied that he had heard all he needed "to know that you and your crew did everything you could do to save my son's life."
Is that Rickover?
One would think the NAvy would have every square meter of water mapped into navigation computers already. Obviously not.
Hear hear. Much as people hated him cause he was such a set-in-his-ways pain in the ass, he was VERY concerned about top notch training for submariners and the quality of the submarines construction.
Is it possible the Chinese deployed systems to confuse the boat's avionics? They have been in the area, recently.
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