Collision at sea - SSN 711

Since 03-19-05

From: Waspscpo@aol.com
Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2005 10:32 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Collision at sea

Shipmates:

For those of you that do not subscribe to Navy Times,I suggest you read this article posted in their March 21 issue.

Collision at sea

A catastrophic accident left a machinist’s mate dead and damaged a commander’s career. Two chiefs’ e-mail accounts tell what happened.

Editor’s note: On Jan. 8, the nuclear-powered attack submarine San Francisco and its 137 crew members were making a submerged transit from Guam to Brisbane, Australia, for their first true liberty port in months. Just after noon, the 362-foot submarine was moving east at top speed – in excess of 30 knots – in what officials have described as a submerged moving haven, or an underwater passage thought to be free of obstacles.

Suddenly, and without warning, the submarine rammed headlong into an undersea mountain partially crushing the boat’s bow, killing one sailor and seriously injuring 31 others.While details of the mishap remain under investigation, 7th Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert decided at a Feb. 12 admiral’s mast hearing that the San Francisco’s skipper, Cmdr. Kevin Mooney, deserved a large portion of the blame.

Mooney was relieved of his command and given a career-damaging letter of reprimand.

Details surrounding the efforts of the crew to save themselves and their boat — including any heroic achievements — have been kept under wraps pending the conclusion of formal investigations. An awards ceremony for the crew, originally scheduled for March 4 in Guam, was abruptly canceled and has not been rescheduled. Requests by Navy Times to interview crewmembers have been denied by Navy officials, citing the ongoing investigation.

In an e-mail exchange with colleagues and friends describing the collision of the attack submarine San Francisco with an uncharted undersea mountain Jan. 8, Senior Chief machinist’s mate (SS) Danny Hager — the sub’s diving officer of the watch and part of the control party — painted a post-impact scene of utter chaos, carnage and courage.

Just moments before the sub unknowingly slammed head-on into the “seamount” — going from flank speed (about 40 mph) to 4 knots in less than four seconds — Hager was standing in the ship’s control room alongside the chief of the watch and quartermaster of the watch.Leaning against the ship’s control panel, one hand clutching a hand grip, Hager was busy changing the expected soundings for a new depth on his charts.

The ship had just moved into deeper water. And then it happened. A submariner’s worst nightmare became reality: undersea collision.

Hager plowed headfirst into the control panel, punching his palm through a thick Plexiglas gauge. His leg was crushed after the quartermaster of the watch rammed into Hager’s chair, sending it “flying more than 15 feet,” and pinning Hager’s leg against a hydraulic valve and the control panel. In his e-mail, obtained and verified by Navy Times, Hager described the force of the impact in layman’s terms. Imagine a recreational vehicle full of people slamming into a concrete wall at about 40 mph, he said, and then trying “to drive the damn thing home” while dealing with serious casualties.“I didn’t know it, but I did a greater than 3G ‘Spiderman’ against the panel,” he said.

“If I had been buckled in, I don’t think I would be writing this.” In a separate e-mail written by Chief Electronics Technician Brian Frie that was obtained by Navy Times and verified by Navy officials, Frie described a similar scene.Frie said the noon-time collision happened right after “field day,” where all of the crew cleans the boat for several hours. Thankfully, most of the men were sitting down for chow or on watch, he said, and not lining the passageways or control rooms. Frie was standing near a wall and ladderwell at the moment of impact.

He took a “tremendous shot” to his left thigh from something, he said, and separated his shoulder. He described his entire left side as “one big bruise.”

Fellow crewmembers, he said, described the ramming like a scene from the movie “Matrix,” where everything “slowed down and levitated and then went flying forward faster than the brain can process.” That included the crewmembers themselves. The chief of the watch was bashed against the base of the ballast control panel, injuring his right arm. Everybody else “in control,” with the exception of the helm, was violently smashed to the deck — or up against anything that was in the way. All hands, Hager said, were decidedly “dazed.”

Despite his injuries, the chief of the watch leaped back into action within five seconds of the “deceleration.”

He clawed his way from the deck back up the ballast control panel and actuated the emergency main ballast tank blow, forcing water out of the sub’s main ballast tanks using ultra-high pressure air. Though some of the tanks were damaged and had lost ballast, the maneuver emptied the San Francisco’s remaining tanks within seconds, lightening the ship and allowing it to get to the surface. The sub was reportedly at a depth of about 500 feet when it struck the mountain. As the sub stabilized, her crew still reeling from the impact, the sounds of air ruptures in the control room were heard.

Amazingly, no flooding was reported, but “4MCs” (reports over the ship’s emergency-use-only sound-powered system) for injured men were coming in from all over the boat.

Teams of able-bodied men were immediately formed to inspect the sub’s forward elliptical bulkhead, lower levels and the ballast tanks below those spaces.

Hager and others had no idea how much forward structural damage had been done to the sub, but they knew it wasn’t good. The damage to the unsuspecting crew, however, was painfully obvious.

Hager said the entire control room deck was “covered in paper from destroyed binders, and blood. It looked like a slaughterhouse.” The collision had sent many crewmembers flying, injuring at least 60 and killing Machinist’s Mate 2nd Class Joseph Ashley, who was thrown forward 20 feet into the propulsion lube oil bay, where he struck his head and never regained consciousness.

Hager described Ashley as one of his best men, and one of San Francisco’s best sailors.“He was like a son to me,” Hager wrote. He fought the urge to go below deck to see how Ashley was doing. “I had a boat to keep on the surface and fight,” he wrote, and “the ship needed somebody who knew her.”

Frie also managed to keep things moving. Though he has no memory of how he got down to the boat’s middle level, Frie helped carry several injured shipmates to the crew mess deck, which became a makeshift hospital. He sat with several junior sailors who had suffered bad head wounds, and talked with them to keep them conscious “until Doc could see them.” It seemed like an eternity, he said.

Frie said the time-honored (and highly enforced) chiefs’ mantra of “Stow for Sea” — securing loose gear and equipment — helped prevent further injuries that day.“It definitely saved lives,” he wrote. Frie described Hager and the rest of the sub’s control party as doing everything right, even though they were hurt as well. He hailed fellow shipmates who immediately turned to damage control, helped the wounded, and worked to get the boat safely to the surface.

Frie gave special praise to the ship’s corpsman.“Our corpsman is definitely a hero in my book,” he wrote. “He didn’t sleep for two or three days.” The sea state was too rough for officials to transfer passengers from the crippled submarine to other ships or aircraft. Additional medical people were brought aboard via helicopter transfer, an inherently dangerous maneuver at sea. Hager said the transfer was especially dangerous and that the San Francisco’s sail almost hit the helicopter a couple of times.

Immediately after the collision, Frie said the chief of the boat “was an inspiration of what a leader should be.” So was the captain, he said. The executive officer, despite taking out an Emergency Air Breathing manifold with his back “still managed to help coordinate things.” Frie said he was “humbled” by the crew’s performance, from the top to the bottom. “No matter what happens later, these men did a superior job under difficult circumstances,” Frie wrote.

In a parting nod to the obviously tight-knit crew now under investigation, Frie added: “We are doing well, we band of brothers, and will pull through just fine.”

Meanwhile, Navy officials continue their investigation of the mishap.

Questions remain concerning the accuracy of the charts the crew were issued and using.Hager wrote that the charts the San Francisco carried were “up to date as far as we can tell,” adding that no “modern geographic data” for the area they were traveling in were available, given the remote nature of the terrain. Hager seemed confident, however, of the boat’s situational awareness.“

We knew where we were,” he wrote. The exact cause and scope of the incident won’t be known until the investigation report is released. Hager seemed resigned to the future ahead, and had nothing but praise for his captain.

“The investigation goes on, and I have a new CO,” he wrote. “I will only say that the San Fran was the best damn sub in the Navy under Cmdr. Mooney’s leadership. We proved that. God bless him and his family, no matter what happens in the future. He is a truly good man.”

As for himself: “I just need to get my leg healed and get back to fighting my favorite steel bitch.”