Posted on 04/09/2009 9:51:47 AM PDT by GATOR NAVY
BREMERTON
The USS San Francisco wrapped up its 3 1/2-year stay in Puget Sound on Tuesday morning.
The Los Angeles-class submarine, which arrived at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in September 2005 after sustaining damage in a crash with an undersea mountain, ferried out of Puget Sound waters with a tug escort for the last time. The crew of roughly 140 is taking the vessel, with its transplanted bow, to its new homeport in San Diego. The vessel was formerly homeported in Guam.
The submarine stalled not far from the Bremerton ferry terminal on its way out of Sinclair Inlet at about 8:45 a.m., giving onlookers a good view. But Navy personnel said the submarine was conducting planned tests of some systems on board while in the harbor.
The tests were completed and the submarine continued on its way, according to Lt. Kyle Raines, a Navy spokesman.
The submarine arrived at Naval Base Kitsap in September 2005 and entered the shipyard in October 2006 for repairs on its damaged nose. Shipyard workers replaced the damaged portion with the nose from the USS Honolulu, which was decommissioned and recycled at PSNS in late 2007. The cost of transplanting the bow was $134 million.
The fast-attack submarine smashed full speed into the mountain near Guam on Jan. 8, 2005, killing one sailor and injuring 97 of its 137 crew members.
This story has been corrected since it was originally posted. The date the boat entered PSNS in October 2006.
Yeah.
Shit happens.
That is of course a given, but no sailor can combat 15 atmospheres of water pressure if the hull is breached catastrophically. The picture looks like the boat was ripped open like a tuna fish can. I'm just amazed that it didn't fill with water in about 5 seconds.
I’m sorry, rednesss; but for me, Wikipedia is full of errors. I never know when they are correct. They could be correct this time, but I just never know when they are.
There was a lot to it. The seamount was reported on one chart as an area of “discolored water” (which could mean many things) but was not on the chart they were using.
FWIW, as a surface navigator in the Navy for 24 years, I would have been using the same chart they were. It was a bottom contour chart. For many years these charts were classified because of the detail of their bottom topography and everyone assumed because of that they were the most accurate open ocean charts.
At least that's what I read. I actually was on that sub (well before the crash), but I was in the engine room and know little of what they guys in the cone do.
Radar doesn't work underwater. The sub uses passive sonar, so if the underwater mountain made no noise, it would be undetectable. There is also a fathometer, but it isn't forward looking.
Yeah. If the pressure hull had been breached, it would have been game over.
I suppose it’s remotely possible that some miracle of luck and skill would have allowed some of the crew to survive.
The sea-foam green insides you are looking at in that photo or of the three forward ballast tanks and not inside the pressure hull. Still amazing though. And I served aboard that ship. We used to have to calculate how much water would flow into the ship from a 1/4" crack at 700ft for example on written tests from time to time. IIRC, a hole that small at such a depth would overwhelm the main drain pump.
I guessing they repaired her in a dry dock. It can be difficult to see what’s in a dry dock unless you are adjacent to or in the dry dock.
Makes sense.”
Actually it is MONEY it can do Amazing things.
You probably already know this, but sonar is useless at high speed due to the amount of noise being generated by the submarine's hull during its passage through the water. So you cannot use sonar to detect the growing undersea volcanic mountain as an obstacle in the ship's path. The only defense the ship has against this type of accident is thorough voyage planning prior to the start.
The board felt the navigation team should have noted evidence of “disturbed water” in the vicinity of the collision site (caused by underwater volcanic activity) in the satellite photographs provided to them prior to the voyage. Had they noticed this and evaluated it properly, the correct action was to replot the high speed course to pass well away from the suspect area.
I've learned some new things...
Thanks very much.......
It makes sense now that I take a look at this pic.
Thank you.
It was flat lined and on support at another place.
The San Fran is SSN-711 which did not have vertical launch tubes. That started with the SSN-718 I think. We could fire Tomahawks out of the torpedo tubes however.
Thank you for that information.
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