US Nuclear Submarine in Underwater Crash

[rob justice]

Acording to the news over here last wednesday (12-1-05) - a US Nuclear Submarine USS San Francisco (SSN-711) was involved in an underwater collision with a subsea 'mountain'.
The sub was travelling at approx 30 knots when the collision took place.
1 member of crew was killed and many were injured. The submarine managed to resurface but is in a bad way.
Since that report nothing else has been mentioned - any further news? I cannot find anything in relation to this incident.

[Adam]

That's really bad news.

djmcmath might have heard something... I just did a quick search and found this.

[Adam]

Lots of other news stories, but Navy Times has a more specific article on the incident, too.

[djmcmath]

I have heard a few things, including an interesting phone call with a friend that started out with "Do you have a secret connection?" It's actually not as bad of news as many would like to paint -- the crew (mostly) survived. Historically, a submarine that will never go on another mission doesn't have any survivors. The fact that most of the crew lived is really encouraging, and a tribute to both engineering and training.

Typically, subs run aground because of stupid people, poor leadership, or bad navigation. This one looks to have been an uncharted sea mount. That's the problem with driving blind. The sub was running at "all ahead git there," which is what you do when you have a lot of good water and a long ways to go.

Assuming the sea mount was like most sea mounts, and sloped up pretty quick, there wouldn't have been much (if any) warning on the fathometer. I suspect there was one (or perhaps two) shallow readings on the fathometer. An astute watchstander would have queried the quartermaster as to any reason for it, then dismissed the first reading as spurious. A second reading (if one came at all) would have confirmed the first. (shrug) At that speed, there probably wasn't a second reading. Had there been a second warning, it would have come (probably) far too late to take any action. It would have been a fantastically paranoid Conn to slow on one reading, and a fantastically quick one to get the ship slowed in time to make a difference after the second reading. .... But that's all speculation, really -- the official investigation report won't be out for a few months.

The crew had a lot of good things to say about the skipper, which is a good indication. (Adam, I believe that the first post in your first link is authentic -- I have the same message delivered via a friend in Pearl.) He demonstrated heroism and quick thinking in saving the ship. In fact, a lot of guys took some pretty quick actions to get that sucker back to the surface. Had a few more pieces of gear been broken in the collision, we wouldn't be hearing any stories from these guys. There were a couple of really encouraging e-mails, and some message traffic from an Admiral quoting some crew-members. It fires me up to know that we still have guys like that in my Navy.

But I guess that's what I like about submarining. My fellow submariners are a hardy lot, and even the lowliest deck-hand is often pretty sharp. There's a closeness that comes when you know that stuff like this can happen, and your life really depends on your sailors. I may not be the sharpest fork in the drawer, and I may not understand everything that my sailors are doing -- but that's ok, because I trust them.


Dan

[Jared at Pelican Parts]

When I was growing up, there was an older gentleman across the street who was a sonar operator on a submarine during WW2. He told me some pretty interesting stories about how those crews operated. He said that when you finished your tour, you'd smell of diesel oil for weeks afterward.