Posted on 02/13/2005 10:23:15 AM PST by NCSteve
The captain of a submarine that hit a seamount Jan. 8 in the western Pacific Ocean, killing one crewman and seriously injuring 23 others, has been found guilty of operating the submarine unsafely and has been issued a letter of reprimand, effectively ending his career.
Cmdr. Kevin Mooney, the captain of the USS San Francisco, was permanently relieved as skipper after an administrative proceeding known as an admiral's mast. The proceeding was convened by an order of the commander of the Seventh Fleet, Vice Adm. Jonathan Greenert.
Cmdr. Ike N. Skelton, a spokesman for the Seventh Fleet in Yokosuka, Japan, said late Friday night that Greenert determined during the investigation that Mooney failed to follow “several critical navigational and voyage planning” standards.
“By not ensuring those standards were followed, Mooney hazarded the vessel,” Skelton said, reading from a statement issued by Greenert.
The mast concluded that Mooney's crew had access to charts that showed there might have been an underwater obstruction in the area, and that a sounding taken just minutes before the accident did not correlate with the charts that were in use at the time, which should have prompted him to be more cautious.
The news stunned several Navy sources who have been following the accident investigation, particularly because Mooney's actions after the accident were characterized as heroic by everyone familiar with the situation. Despite extensive damage to the ship, he and his crew got it to the surface and kept it floating long enough to limp back to its homeport of Apra Harbor, Guam.
The San Francisco was heading to Australia when it came to periscope depth a little more than 400 miles southwest of Guam to fix its position accurately. Minutes after diving, and while traveling at a high rate of speed, the submarine slammed into a seamount in an area where official Navy charts list 6,000 feet of water.
Other charts of the area, however, show muddy water in the area, which normally indicates shallowness, and other government agency charts show evidence of the seamount less than 150 feet below the surface. The grounding destroyed three of the four ballast tanks in the submarine's bow, shattered the sonar dome and smashed the sonar sphere. In addition, a bulkhead at the front end of the ship was buckled.
Machinist Mate 3rd Class Joseph Ashley was killed when he was thrown more than 20 feet and struck his head on a large pump. Almost two-dozen others were injured so badly they could not perform their duties, though they have all since been treated and released from the hospital in Guam. Seventy-five others received less severe injuries.
The crew saved the ship by constantly running a low pressure blower meant for only intermittent use to force water out of the badly damaged forward ballast tanks, as well as using exhaust from the ship's diesel motor to augment the blower.
Despite the force of the blow, the nuclear reactor and the ship's turbine generators continued to operate normally, and even sensitive electronic and navigation gear continued to function.
On Jan. 20, Mooney was reassigned to Submarine Squadron 15 in Guam, pending the results of an investigation to determine the cause of the sub's grounding. Cmdr. Andrew Hale, the squadron's deputy commander, assumed duties as captain of the San Francisco.
The mast means that Mooney will not face a more serious proceeding known as a court martial, but the letter of reprimand and the decision to relieve him of command “for cause” means that his promising career is over, the Navy sources said.
In a related development, Lt. Cmdr. Jeff A. Davis, a spokesman for the Pacific submarine force commander, said late Friday night that assessment of the damage to the San Francisco is proceeding and that shipyard workers in Guam are planning to make temporary repairs to the bow of the ship so it can be moved under its own power to a shipyard where it can be repaired.
Although the location where it will be repaired has not been determined, Navy sources said it would likely be Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, or Bangor, Wash.
“These temporary repairs will be engineered to ensure a successful transit,” Davis said. “As part of having on-hand materials for potential use in these temporary repairs, a large steel dome about 20 feet high and 20 feet in diameter will be arriving at Guam in the next few days. As of now, no decisions have been made about when USS San Francisco will depart Guam, where it will go, or what her final disposition will be.”
Other Navy sources said that if the assessment determines it makes sense to repair rather than scrap the San Francisco, the Navy will likely use the entire bow section from the recently decommissioned USS Atlanta to replace the badly damaged bow of the San Francisco.
Attached is a brief letter I sent to CDR Mooney. With support I hope to find the answers to why known hazards were ignored by those resposible for keeping our submarine sailors safe.
CDR Kevin Mooney,
We are so sorry to hear the news of the Admirals hearing. Be sure, we still can find no place in our hearts to hold you and the crew responsible. There are those who knew of the hazard but did not change the charts to provide safe "road maps" our fleet requires. In the very near future I will be contacting my appropriate legislators to find out why. Not just for my son Joseph, but for all submarine sailors that depend on this information.
Our prayers are with you.
Dan & Vicki Ashley, MM2 Joseph Ashley's Parents
Our sympathies and prayers go out to the family of Petty Officer Ashley, as well as all the injured men.
At the same time, I'd like to offer a "Well Done" to Captain Mooney and his crew for saving the boat without even more loss of life.
Which boat is that on your home page? Sturgeon or Permit/Thresher class?
This reply is the best that I have seen on any of the threads relating to this subject. Thanks, there sem to be alot of armchair admirals around.
LTJG
USS Trepang SSN 674 71-74
Welcome to Free Republic and thank you for your bit of insight. it's good to hear from somebody that's been there.
Nice ice in the photo. Pole shot? or just a survey mission?
I think that was the pole surfacing. There so many you lost track. You don't actually surface at the pole because the ice is always drifting; but just kinda pick a spot that will pass through.
I can't give a roll call answer that includes anything starting with "SSN" - and I admire Submariner's more than anyone knows.
As a civilian contractor, I worked with 16XX's for 28 years, felt like I was part of the Navy although a "tech rep", living and working FOSIF/FOSIC's - every damn one of them, the only site rep who can make that claim to fame.
I don't think CNO understands how much Intel was done at those locations, nor does he have the faintest idea about how to resurrect ASW Intel.
I'm a former Naval Intelligence Professional, who would gladly serve my Country and the USN again.
Mr.and Mrs. Ashley realize that Captain and crew saved San Francisco from a real tragedy.
Godspeed to MM2 Ashly and God bless them.
Is it possible that this seamont is a recent formation?
I'm not a geologist, nor do I play one on TV. However, I have to believe that it is possible, if not likely.
There are incidents on record of Volcanic formations growing thousands of feet in a very short period of time. However, for something to have appeared in what was believed to be 6,000 feet depth of open water without causing enough of a disturbance to be really obvious just doesn't seem likely to me.
Then again, we still haven't viewed this "sea mount" since the incident, so far as I know. The following scenarios played out in my head a few days after the incident:
Maybe a really big space ship landed and it decided to hide in deep enough water so that it's top would be just below the surface.
Imagine, if you will, the Supreme Commander of the Grnak deep space cruiser SNRF Lookithat, explaining to his Overseers why his mason detection dome is crunched in so bad. "You chose to park your cruiser in the path of one of these primative Earthlings warships? You know that your career in the Anti Matter Space Fleet is finished, don't you Mister?
The other thought that crossed my feeble little mind was some pod of whales with one very bruised adolescent. The older whales keep saying "I told him not to play with the humans, but noooooooo! He had to try and cut them off before the thermocline! Keep doing that and he'll never grow up to enjoy the trips to Hawaii!"
I know. I've got way too much time on my hands.
The short answer is not bloody likely! The other S.F. threads contained a lot of input from knowledgeable folks indicating that this seamount didn't 'suddenly' appear... whether from the Sumatra quake or any other geological event. It's been there a long time, although it may have been undetected or imprecisely located until the grounding of the S.F.
Whoever didn't update the charts needs to be drummed out with the Captain.
Cavitation is also dependent on the depth. As the surface of the propellor goes through the water, there is a local pressure drop. So, the local pressure at that point would be static pressure due to depth minus the pressure drop due to the Bernoulli effect. Bubbles will form if the local pressure is less than the vapor pressure of water (Pv is also temperature dependant). What causes the cavitation is as the bubble travels to a point where the local pressure goes above the vapor pressure (back to the static head pressure) the bubble implodes. Makes a lot of noise. Where it implodes also matters. If it implodes in close proximity to a solid object, the local pressure due to the implosion can be on the order of 100,000 psi. That's high enough to cause some severe local erosion. Nothing secret, I run into a similar phenomenon with control valves (power plant, refinery).
So, if the boat was running at xx knots (yes, I'm censoring here!) at below 500 foot depth, cavitation would be less likely than at a 150 foot depth.
Due to surface turbulance sonar is useless at higher speeds. Don't ask me where the cutoff is, I don't know (I don't have a need to know, but there is a cutoff. For the sake of argument, the Harpoon naval simulation uses a figure of 19 knots.).
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