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After five years of testing, the U.S. Navy is finally entering the digital age for navigation. Five years ago, the first all digital navigation system was installed, in the USS Cape St. George (a cruiser). Called the Voyage Management System (VMS), this version used 29 CDs containing the 12,000 paper nautical charts that were stored in several large filing cabinets on the Cape St. George. The current version of VMS puts all the electronic charts on one high density DVD, or a portable hard drive. The navy has been working on VMS since the 1990s, and the first thing they...

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...

PAKTIKA PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN (NNS) -- Life has been full of surprises for Petty Officer Matthew P. Julian of Greece, Rochester, NY. As a culinary specialist assigned to the submarine USS San Francisco, Julian didn’t expect the tour to include a rotation in the mountains of Afghanistan as an Individual Augmentee, pulled from his normal job to directly support Operation Enduring Freedom. But despite being an IA deployed more than eight thousand feet above sea level and half a world away from his boat’s homeport of Bremerton Wash., Julian found that out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind. Julian was...

NEW FRANKLIN - Joey Ashley played drums and clarinet in the Manchester High School marching band. On Friday, Oct. 28, during the halftime band show at the Manchester football game against Cuyahoga Valley Christian Academy, the 1999 Manchester graduate who died in a submarine accident will be honored by the band. A patriotic halftime show will be dedicated to Ashley, band director Nathan Sensabaugh said. After Ashley's death, his parents, Dan and Vicki Ashley, donated his clarinet and his quad drums to the high school. On Friday night, Kelly Robertson, 18, a senior, will play Ashley's clarinet and Nate Duncan,...

Navy Cmdr. Kevin Mooney, who has accepted responsibility for a fatal submarine crash in January, received a standing ovation at a Memorial Day celebration in San Francisco . "I appreciate it. But I don't feel like I deserve it," Mooney told the crowd of about 200 -- most of them gray-haired veterans dressed in neatly pressed uniforms pinned with polished medals. The Navy reprimanded Mooney and relieved him of duty after the crash, which injured nearly 100 sailors, one fatally. A Navy investigation concluded this month that its own key charts didn't show the undersea mountain the submarine San Francisco...

The crew of a US submarine that ran aground in the Pacific Ocean in January did not adequately review navigation charts, a Navy report says. The grounding could have been avoided if the crew had observed "prudent navigation practices", it says. A sailor died and several were injured in the accident 600km (350 miles) south of the island of Guam, one of the most important US Pacific bases. The nuclear reactor on the USS San Francisco was not damaged. Data not transferred The vessel was on its way to Australia, when it ran aground and suffered severe external damage. The...

Navy: Sub Crash Could Have Been Avoided Sunday, May 08, 2005 HONOLULU — The crew of an attack submarine that struck an undersea mountain in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year did not adequately review navigation charts that warned of an obstacle in the vessel's path, according to a Navy report released Saturday. The USS San Francisco (search) was en route to Australia (search) when the accident occurred Jan. 8 about 360 miles southeast of Guam, killing one sailor and injuring 97 others. Had the submarine's crew "complied with requisite procedures and exercised prudent navigation practices," the grounding could have...

HONOLULU - The crew of an attack submarine that struck an undersea mountain in the Pacific Ocean earlier this year did not adequately review navigation charts that warned of an obstacle in the vessel's path, according to a Navy report released Saturday. The USS San Francisco was en route to Australia when the accident occurred Jan. 8 about 360 miles southeast of Guam, killing one sailor and injuring 97 others. Had the submarine's crew "complied with requisite procedures and exercised prudent navigation practices," the grounding could have been avoided, the 124-page report said. "Even if not wholly avoided, however, the...

A preliminary report on the submarine that hit a seamount in the Pacific three months ago concludes that numerous warnings of shortcomings in the ship's navigation department existed at least a year before the accident. In a January 2004 inspection, the USS San Francisco crew did not properly use its fathometer warning system and its electronic Voyage Management System, or VMS, which were both factors in the accident a year later, according to the report, a copy of which was provided to The Day. In August 2004, during another inspection, the San Francisco navigation team was found deficient in the...

Navy Faults navigational procedures In crash Of Sub San Francisco's Crew Failed To Recognize Warnings, Report Says By ROBERT A. HAMILTON Day Staff Writer, Navy/Defense/Electric Boat Published on 4/9/2005 A Navy report on the submarine that hit a sea mount in the Pacific three months ago will conclude that there was a serious breakdown in navigation procedures that led to the accident, which killed one sailor and injured more than half the crew, Navy sources have told The Day. The report, which could be released as early as this month, will cite problems with the USS San Francisco's chart preparation...

Six submariners assigned to the submarine USS San Francisco have been punished for dereliction of duty or putting a vessel in danger in connection with a Jan. 8 incident in which the submarine slammed into a seamount in the Pacific, killing one sailor and injuring 98 others. The San Francisco was making a trip to Australia when it came to periscope depth to fix its position accurately a little more than 400 miles southwest of Guam. Minutes after diving, and while traveling at a high rate of speed, the submarine hit a seamount in an area where official Navy charts...

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,...

TOKYO -- The commander of an attack submarine that ran aground in the western Pacific Ocean last month has been relieved from his post after an investigation found that critical safety procedures were overlooked.

Story Number: NNS050212-01 Release Date: 2/12/2005 8:27:00 AM YOKOSUKA, Japan (NNS) -- The commander of U.S. 7th Fleet, Vice Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, relieved Cmdr. Kevin Mooney of his command of USS San Francisco (SSN 711) Feb. 12. The decision to relieve Cmdr. Mooney was made following non-judicial punishment (NJP) proceedings held in Yokosuka, Japan. Additionally, as a result of the NJP, Mooney received a Letter of Reprimand. Following the submarine striking an underwater seamount Jan. 8, Greenert reassigned Mooney to the staff of Commander, Submarine Squadron 15, based in Guam. During the conduct of the investigation into this incident,...

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...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The captain of a U.S. submarine that hit an undersea mountain last month in the western Pacific, killing one sailor and injuring 23 others, will be relieved of command, Pentagon officials said Friday. Navy Cmdr. Kevin Mooney will not be charged with any crime and will not be court-martialed. He received a nonjudicial punishment, most likely in the form of a letter of reprimand from his commander, this week, officials said. Such punishment typically ends an officer's career. Mooney was reassigned pending an investigation after the severely damaged the USS San Francisco returned to its home port...

The skipper of the nuclear-powered submarine that crashed into the side of an undersea mountain is quietly being sent before an “admiral’s mast” in Japan this weekend to face charges of endangering his ship, according to several active-duty and retired Navy sources familiar with the case. Cmdr. Kevin Mooney was slated to appear before 7th Fleet commander Vice Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert in Yokosuka on Saturday morning, the sources said. The Navy’s highest form of nonjudicial punishment, admiral’s mast falls short of the criminal proceedings of a court martial, but can result in anything from full exoneration to fines, reprimands,...

<p>The American nuclear submarine USS San Francisco hit an uncharted seamount on January 7th, killing one sailor and injuring sixty others, 23 of them so seriously they could not perform their duties. Facts about the incident were slow to emerge. It appears that the sub was traveling on a course it was ordered to follow, at a depth of 500 feet and a speed of about 56 kilometers an hour. This was the first time the navy had given the speed of a Los Angeles class sub as anything but “25+ knots” (45 kilometers an hour.) It has long been believed that these subs could make more than 55 kilometers an hour.</p>

By ROBERT A. HAMILTON Day Staff Writer, Navy/Defense/Electric Boat Published on 1/15/2005 New London -- The galley crew had started to serve lunch as the USS San Francisco checked its position against a global positioning system satellite, checked the water depth with its fathometer, and announced that the ship was going to dive, all routine operations aboard an attack submarine. Four minutes after it submerged, that routine was shattered one week ago today as the San Francisco crashed into an undersea mountain at more than 35 mph, sending sailors crashing into equipment and bulkheads and destroying the bow dome and...

The U.S. Navy released this photograph last Thursday of the nuclear submarine San Francisco, which crashed headlong into an uncharted undersea mountain near Guam on January 8. Standing more than three stories high and with classified technology veiled by a tarp, the fast- attack submarine is shown awaiting repairs in a Guam dry dock. The impact shredded the submarine's nose, killed one sailor, and injured 60 more. The sailors were largely protected by the vessel's reinforced inner hull, which did not rupture. After the wreck, the crew quickly ascended and sailed along the ocean's surface back to their base in...