Retired COB (1987)
“...heavily redacted...” would seem to indicate there could have been additional non-cooperative players in the area as well. Everything would have been passive in that case guaranteed.
I suspect there is way more to this tale than is being disclosed to the public.
Thank you for your service, Chief...:)
When I first heard of it, I viewed it as the wages of having a combat ready military, an unfortunate accident. I wasn’t ready to hang everyone up by the yardarm.
But one never knows.
On its face alone, that released verbiage might indicate an absolute fever swamp of ineptitude like what was seen on the USS Fitzgerald collision.
But again...I always keep in mind, this is the NIS and Navy brass dedicated to keeping their image pure. I never trust them to be impartial.
“I suspect there is way more to this tale than is being disclosed to the public.”
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Of course that’s always the case with subs right.
We had a radioactive leak on a sub I was on, supposedly it was just pumped out and never reported at all. It eventually made it through the grapevine what had occurred. Then when we had come in to port from 3 months out at sea (a couple of days after the spill), we were sent back out for an additional two weeks clean-up before they let us get off the boat. Talk about a disappointed crew. One guy had apparently sat in the leak and tracked some of it into the birthing area and it was nightmare.
They never told us how much radiation was on our TLDs. But I did get a letter, sent to my mother’s address, after I had been out of the Navy for a while that states I had exceeded my maximum lifetime acceptance of radiation and that I should receive no xrays or spend time in the sun etc. I’ve pretty much ignored it. So far, so good.
The guy who supposedly sat in the water was removed from the boat immediately upon return and I never heard from or about him again. If I remember correctly, his name was Rex Herkert. I didn’t know him well and I believe he was he was a nuke MM, I was just an non-nuke MM that just qualified that patrol, probably 20 at the time.
Anyhow, the point is, I don’t think the Navy reports half of what they do regarding subs, understandably. And when they do report it, it’s half of the story and a quarter of that gets released to the public.
We of course had war games and on two occasions we had collisions, one with an underwater mountain and one with another submarine we were hunting. Both times we were patrol quiet and practically hovering we were moving so slow.