US Navy Cruiser and Submarine Collide 236
An anonymous reader writes "Despite billions of dollars in advanced electronics, radar, and sonar it seems the Navy needs to install backup cameras on their boats. 'The Pentagon said late Saturday that it is investigating why a Navy submarine collided with an Aegis cruiser during routine operations at an undisclosed location.' According to ABC, 'the two ships were participating in a “group sail” along with another vessel. The three ships were participating in an anti-submarine exercise in preparation for an upcoming deployment as part of the strike group for the aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman."
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Uh... (Score:2, Informative)
So, tell us, captain, how is it that a sub, in "anti-submarine exercises," comes up ahead of its target? WTF happened that this sub doesn't know where it is, relative to the target?
Hot Dogging Sub Commander (Score:5, Informative)
Generally, an incident like this will be traced to the submarine commander skipping the surfacing protocols spelled out in the exercise tasking. The submarine CO has everyone tracked, knows where everyone is and can torpedo at will. The reality is there are surfacing protocols, signals and course/speed specified to avoid collisions built into any ASW exercise. USS Leftwich [wikipedia.org] collided with submarine in 1982 during exercises. The Leftwich CO and bridge watch were cleared and commended for rapid damage control reaction and rendering assistance. The submarine CO was selected to pursue other career options.
Re:Basic seamanship (Score:4, Informative)
Because you know exactly how to do his job, right?
He also has a keen grasp of basic physics, apparently. Hint: a warship does not steer like an Indy race car. (I was qualified master helmsman in the USN a couple decades ago. I do in fact know how this works.)
Re:Basic seamanship (Score:5, Informative)
"All back" is how you say "hit the brakes!" on a ship.
The ship in question displaces 9900 tons (full). It does not turn on a dime. Ordering all back shifted the pitch on the controllable-reversible screws so that they were pulling the ship in reverse (without having to reverse the rotation of the shafts, so it happens pretty quickly).
Maneuvering to either side while doing this would have simply placed a larger portion of the ship in jeopardy by exposing it in profile to the head-on threat.
Clearly you have never sailed a warship. (I have - actually, one that I sailed was a Belknap class CG, a predecessor of the Ticonderoga class, which is what the San Jacinto is).
The CO and the OD (Score:5, Informative)
just lost their jobs. For the CO ( commanding officer ) his career just ended. The JO ( Junior Officer ) that more then likely had the Deck and the Con ( In other words he was in charge of operating the sub at the moment and a single person is normally the Officer of the Deck and the Conning Officer generally referred to as the "OD" ) more then likely will get a punitive letter of reprimand ( A kiss of death) and here is why:
Periscope Depth (PD) is ~ 65' feet of water over the Deck ( The top of the submarine you see ). When preparing to go to PD the sequence is: The Conning Officer gets a round ( a spoken list ) of contacts from the Sonar Supervisor on watch, eg: "Sonar, Con give me a round." and the list of all known contacts is told to the OD orally. In addition to there is a display repeater to show the OD what the sonar guys see on their displays.. Generally if the CO is awake the OD informs the CO that he believes all is clear to come up to PD from ~ 150'. At this point the sub is going slow enough to raise the #2 Periscope ( they have two ). So the OD raises the Scope and the takes a look around. He looks for shadows or hulls form in the vicinity. When he is satisfied he then gives the order to the Diving Officer ( Normally a Chief Petty Officer that is in charge of the Chief of the Watch, the Helmsman ad the Planesman), "Dive make your depth 65 feet." the Diving officer responds, "Make my depth 65 feet, aye sir." and he will then tell the Helmsman and Planesman to position the control surfaces to accomplish that.
At this point the OD is just basically on the Scope spinning around looking for anything that will ruin his day and focusing most his attention to a 30 degree area in front of the sub and should be calling out to everyone in the control room, "No underwater hull shapes or forms, no shadows." When the Scope lens breaks the surface, he calls out, "Scope Clear, no close aboard contacts." This lets everyone in the Control Room chill out a little. Meantime he is still looking everywhere to make damn sure that they are not going to get run down."
So a chunk of the officer corp is now fucked but my SWAG on this is that it will go a little deeper then that. My guess is that the Sonar Supervisor ( an enlisted guy ) will at minimum get his Watch Supervisor certification yanked ( possibly for good ) and quite possibly demoted since an Aegis Class Cruiser is VERY damned obvious to submarine sonar and the Fire Control guys should have had a continuous plot on the damn thing and the SONAR system should have had them locked on with Automatic Target Following.
The Submarine Squadron Commander more then likely met the boat at the pier and relieved the CO on the spot as that is pretty much SOP for the Navy. The CO of a naval ship at sea is responsible for everything except when the Bow of the sub crosses over the sill of a dry dock ( at which point it shifts to the docking officer ) and when transiting the Panama Canal ( The Co takes orders from the Certified Canal Pilot as far as navigation and speed ) and even then he will still get singed of the shit goes wrong.
And yes I was a Submarine Sonar Tech ( SSN-650 and SSN-692 ).
Re:Basic seamanship (Score:4, Informative)
Actually the turn was hard to port, and the command as given in modern times would have been "hard aport". The damage was on the starboard side.
Confusion exists because in those days "starboard your helm" meant "turn the ship to port". Think of it as how you work a tiller. To turn to port, you push the tiller handle to starboard, which turns the tiller to port, which shoves the stern of the ship to starboard, which turns the ship to port ... in due course. The British were really big on historical convention.
The actual command on Titanic by the accounts I have read was "hard astarboard", which is more than a bit mystifying until you realize it was a less time consuming way to order "starboard your helm HARD". This was all common usage in the British mechant marine at the time. It wasn't until 1932 that the Merchant Shipping Act of 1932, which brought British convention into line with the rest of the world. Since that time, no matter what service you are in, "hard aport" means "turn the wheel (and the ship) hard to port".
"Aegis" cruisers. (Score:2, Informative)
It seems weird to me to call it an "Aegis"cruiser. Aegis [wikipedia.org] is a combat system. If I recall, the Aegis is specifically a integrated system of radars, weapons, and computers.
Broadly speaking, the surface ship involved (the USS San Jacinto [wikipedia.org]) is a cruiser [wikipedia.org]. More specifically, it's a Ticonderoga-class [wikipedia.org] cruiser. ("Ticonderoga" is a "class ship". That is, there was an actual ship named USS Ticonderoga, and the San Jacinto has the same general design, so it's called a Ticonderoga-class ship.)
Another class of U.S. ships which sometime (always?) are carry the Aegis system is the Arleigh Burke class of destroyers [wikipedia.org].
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Informative)
As a former submariner, I applaud your unwavering defence of fellow boat people. But please remember, folks make mistakes. Unless there was some sort of emergency on board the boat, I cannot see how they would have come to PD directly in front of a Cruiser. Had the Cruiser been making a turn towards the sub, the periscope watch keeper should have seen that and called to go to safe depth. The only way the Cruiser could have been a fault here, is if they knowingly charged towards the submarine. We know from the article, that as soon as the boat was sighted, "All Back" was ordered. There was no time for the Cruiser to stop.
Someone will be found at fault here, my money is on the CO of the USS Montpelier for at the very least, failing to ensure that proper procedures were followed when bringing the submarine to PD.
Comments?
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Informative)
Wait until the investigation determines what actually happened. Even "billions of dollars" of electronics can fail, or glitch, or human error can misread or miscalculate (Mars Climate Orbiter, anyone?).
But I'll add this: the Montpelier is a Los Angeles-class attack sub. Their captains aren't exactly chosen for their shy, retiring natures. (I once worked with a guy who served on such a sub. He couldn't talk about what he did, but it was obvious that he'd been in some hair-raising places, doing some hair-raising things.)
My first full-time job as a broadcast engineer was with a 100,000 watt FM in Southeastern NC. After I moved on, they built a new tower near the NC/SC border. Air Force guys would hot dog all around that tower -- they apparently took dares to fly under and between the guy wires. Sure enough, one of these guys finally misjudged a bit, nicked a guy wire, pulled the tower down and crashed the jet. (He ejected and survived.)
Don't get me wrong: political correctness and shy, retiring natures don't really belong in the military, not if it's going to be effective. But hey; sometimes, they DO hot dog and show off. :)
Re:Divert your course now! (Score:4, Informative)
I first encountered this joke around the mid 90's, and it was US/Canadian then. No recent ugly nationalism to blame here. It hasn't lost any humour value, so you can laugh if you want.
Snopes even have an entry about it, and they do go into the history of the joke, which is quite interesting.
http://www.snopes.com/military/lighthouse.asp [snopes.com]