Here's a Sub for Lunch
Friday, April 22, 2005
Potentially, I will be too busy to blog this evening, so I'll dash off a couple of quick entries over lunch.
Via fellow ex-submariner Willy Shake, I've learned that The Day (New London, CT) has a story on the Navy's preliminary report on the January grounding of the submarine USS San Francisco. In an earlier post on the matter, I accepted the Navy's rationale for "burning the captain" based on an argument made by the submariner-blogger Chap, but with the following concern.
Did someone aboard see this coming, raise his concern, and then get blown off? No matter who this was, all roads lead to the captain. Did a new quartermaster or some lowly Ensign point out the age of the charts and get laughed at? Whose boss tolerated that? Did the Navigator not worry too much about the charts because he'd gotten away with lax practices in the past? He reports directly to the CO. Did the CO himself note the age of the charts and decide not to raise the issue, or did, but backed down too easily?Willy Shake seems to side with the Navy on this one. And I still buy Chap's arguments concerning the captain, at least. He knows and accepts, after all, how the Navy reacts to mishaps like this.
One thing I am in absolutely no position to speculate on is this: Just how much could the captain himself have done against institutional inertia? Could he have refused to set sail without serious repercussions? Would such a maneuver have seen him get relieved of command, sent to admiral's mast, and then laughed off as a crackpot for worrying about some "imaginary" sea mount? In the meantime, would the Navy have found someone else willing to set sail with the very same charts? (And collide with the sea mount anyway?) I can see the captain taking the fall but for this one reservation.
This is not to say that the Navy needn't look at fixing a few things in places besides just that boat, however. Bubblehead posts at more length on this. His post is worth a full read, if for no other reason than to see a humorous and interesting take on the kind of classified inspection results used in the investigation and how the Navy might have spun them in the news media. In sum, he echoes the some of the concerns I had (and quoted above) and raises others. It's a must-read as his hypothetical "deficiency list" from an inspection of a crew making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches is hilarious, while capturing the essence of the kinds of inspection reports he is talking about. (For example: "g. Contrary to the scenario requested by the board, grape jelly was substituted for strawberry jelly.")
And I wholeheartedly agree with his closing sentiment: "Hopefully the powers that be in the Submarine Force are working behind the scenes to correct the root causes of this tragedy, and won't be satisfied with simply offering up the crew of the San Francisco as scapegoats."
-- CAV
PS: Chap, in addition to making lots of good points in his comment below (and greatly enhancing the value of this post), expands on this a bit at his blog and has interesting comments on the reporter who broke the story at The Day. There are some good comments to the post as well.
Updates
Today: Added PS with link to Chap's post.
1 comment:
And it said the submarine should probably have been doing more than one sounding every 15 minutes — and certainly should have done one when the submarine changed its depth from 400 to 525 feet at 11:39.
Yikes! That error, if done correctly, could have saved the ship. (So what was the usual practice of using the fathometer? How much risk did the watchstanding team put themselves into for the long period of time previous to this voayage? How long did this practice be the "normal way of doing things" before the opportunity for disaster presented itself?)
Generally ships are told to use caution within 12 nautical miles of land; the San Francisco team was under the impression that two miles was sufficient.
Two miles? Four thousand yards? At high speed?
The report found that the Subnote did route the San Francisco through the area where it hit the seamount, and it recommends that in the future the group take more care to route submarines around known navigational hazards. It also said the Subnote “specifically states that navigational safety is not provided by the Subnote and rests with the ship.”
I can't comment here but would if I could. Suffice it to say I know some of the measures being taken--email me and I'll tell you the one that affected me directly.
“Each member (of the navigation team) had an initial reaction of unease when viewing the charted transit through the Caroline Islands,” the report says. “However, each member convinced himself, without careful assessment of risk and evaluation of possible offsets, that the transit could be made safely as laid out on their chart.”
“After failing to conduct a proper assessment, the ship was left with a ‘business as usual' attitude exemplified by the CO's comment that he was operating on a 40 (nautical mile)-wide highway,” it continues.
First was a watchstanding error. Second was a navigational process error. Third could be understood as a command climate error.
The pieces fall together. The Day article indicates that my initial gut reaction was correct.
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