Nuclear sub runs aground in Pacific

CNN) -- U.S. Coast Guard and military aircraft Saturday are en route to the western Pacific, where a nuclear attack submarine ran aground, wounding several crew members -- including at least one critically -- according to the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

The USS San Francisco ran aground some 350 miles south of Guam -- the nearest land mass -- while it was conducting submerged operations. It has since resurfaced and is heading back to Guam, according to the USPF's news release.

"At this point there does not seem to be damage to the (nuclear) reactor," Lt. j.g. Adam Clampitt told CNN, from his base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

The accident happened Saturday at noon, Guam time (Friday 9 p.m. ET, 4 p.m. Hawaii time).

...
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/US/01/08/nuclear.submarine/

Maybe Exxon is hiring.

I wonder which Bush donor was driving this time???

Won't be the driver.

They'll have a full investigation, after which the following careers will be over:

Definitely over

Captain
XO
Navigator
Officer of the Deck
COB (enlisted)

probably over

training officer
helmsman
quartermaster in charge of charts
combat systems officer
communications officer
operations officer

They'll lose at least half the officer corps on the boat, and at least 3 or 4 senior enlisted. Could be a maintenance issue, a navigational issue, all sorts of stuff.

But the officers who aren't court-martialed will likely have negative entries in their records, and that means the end of the career.

The injuries mean the torpedo room was likely damaged. Here's hoping the sailors recover.

This post was written with the able assistance of Chief Haele, my wife, USN-Retired.

Considering the type of injuries (head injuries), this could only have happened if they were maneuvering at high speed in an area without the assured depth to permit it. It's really inconceivable. While I doubt the helmsman can be held responsible, I'd be in favor of some brig time for the command. This is beyond mere incompetence - it's criminal negligence, imho.

intact ( no stress factures or such) they'll decommision it. A stress facture at 100 feet is not a problem. A stress facture and Test depth could spell doom.

Thats why someone is in a whole lot of trouble.

The sub I was on hit bottom going flank in around 200' of water doing EM Log calibration. This entails going back and forth over the same route over and over to make sure the speed gages are accurate. Control room is rigged for red because at the end of each run you have to go to PD and take some bearings. The QM (quartermaster) has to chart the subs position on a map so when you are going to go back and forth over the same spot they usually put tracing paper over the chart, so they don't have so much to clean.

In my case the QM plotted a course right over an undersea mountain and because the control room was rigged for red and the tracing paper was on the chart he didn't see it. The sub glance off the side of the hill, stove the MBT vents on the bottom in about 2'.

The navy couldn't determine there were no stress fractures anywhere so they had to decom it about 15 years ahead of schedule.

Needles to say a lot of people were quite PO'd about it.

Just curious as to what sub you were on. It wasn't the Baton Rouge, was it??

and this grounding didn't make the front page anywhere. I'm a little apprehensive about giving out the hull # with the current pricks in charge. Who knows they'd probably charge me with being a traitor over something that happened 20 years ago.

You put it all so well, there really is no need for further discussion.

Heads need to roll all the way to the top.

I can tell for a fact the CO is gone. And the navigator and nav petty officer on watch. The OOD is probably history also. If the XO is on someones shit list he might get caught up in it too.

But that is about all.

Pretty stupid thing to do and avoidable.

Someone was fuking off

It will happen. I just don't know which ranks. And besides that, we have to pay for sub repairs. :thumbsdown:

these dayy

will make the individuals involved an example for the rest of the fleet. Kinda keeps stupid shit like this happening too often.

I was stationed on an aircraft carrier -- the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. Coming back from a mediterannean deployment, we ran into another ship that was anchored in the harbor. The currents were strong that day and whoever was doing the "driving" didn't account for that. The ship we ran into opened the side of our ship like a can opener causing about three million dollars in damage.

Our CO wasn't on the bridge when it happened, but he was gone the next day. We never saw him again.

It is too bad we don't hold our Commander in Chief to the same level of responsibility.

Grounding a nuclear sub? :wtf:

A sub is still a big boat. It's different from an airplane in that a sub can be grounded and a stealth would shred a tree.

Can we blame this on Clinton?Maybe the Gods do not like people who ride around on things called SF. Isn't that one of the Blur State cities?

It always is!

The root of all evil in this world, I tell you.

Bill would have been paying attention and 911 would never have happened! Oh, that was on * watch, wasn't it? Nevermind!

Something distracted him!

Maybe it was a goat under his desk!

(No goats were harmed in the production of this post.)

After all, he's a lightweight compared to her. She has a sex act named after her! :)

would they tell us? I think not! :(

in the world. Its actually a containment compartment that could stand up to a melt down of the core. The sea water would keep the outer hull from melting and the melted core would not melt through.

3" HY-80 stell is some pretty tuff shit.

Gotta remember the sub probably hit bottom near the front of the ship.

RC (reactor compartment) is safe

... as the chassis of an automobile is to an engine block. Those babies are removed intact when 'refueling' ... and the "USS Whatever" is barged up the Columbia River to Hanford as radioactive waste. The sub is then retrofitted with a new RC and recommissioned.

How does it work on subs? 30 days seems like a very short break for submarine work.

"December 10, 2004

USS San Francisco returns from deployment
By Kelly Nicholas
Pacific Navigator Staff

Family members of the crew of USS San Francisco got the chance to welcome loved ones as the submarine returned home Dec. 1 after a two-month deployment.

It was the crew's first operational deployment since the boat's arrival on Guam in December 2002. Capt. Brad Gehrke, commanding officer for Commander, Submarine Squadron 15, was pleased with their performance."

http://www.guampdn.com/guampublishing/navigator/data/EEpkylkEuEfZrEeZNK.htm

a year.

Really suks for the crew and family

One is stationed on the sub -- and the other one is undergoing training and retraining.

The sub can be out for nearly a year -- but with two crews -- generally they aren't out longer than 6 months at a time.

This applies to the Trident fleet -- but I am told that the fast attack sub fleet has similar 2 full crews per sub. UNLESS the Navy is having staffing problems just like the rest of the branches of the military.

I'm a Navy brat -- when 6 month deployments were standard. Pappy bush changed that -- and his son shares his father's contempt for military families.

In 1978 the USS limpscomb (sp) pulled next to my boat the day before xmas. I was standing topside watch and got talking to there TS watch and he said they were away from home port over 330 days in 1978.

The Lipscomb was a special projects boat that had a special propulsion system in it so it was always out. But away from home port for 300 days I believe is quite common.

Anyway if SSN's now have 2 crews (which I don't really think is true) it would be a great thing. I rode boomers (SSBN) and yes we had 2 crews

I believe they are referred to as the Gold crew and Blue? crew -- I could be wrong about the second color. I know for sure that the Trident subs do have 2 crews.

When I asked about other classes of subs -- the answer was yes -- in order to keep these highly trained crew members the Navy opted for 2 full crews. Families would be screaming bloody hell if fathers were deployed for 300 days and only home for 30 days a year. Pappy bush assorted wars caused a whole lot of early retirements. I live near one of the sub bases -- and know of several early retirements due to over extended military from that bush era. I also know a sub commander (fast attack sub) -- but he won't be back to his sailboat until this coming summer. I have some new questions for him!

The cost of training for each crew member is expensive -- the training facilities are extremely expensive to maintain. Plus each crew need to be brought up to date when modifications are done to the subs -- and it is easier to teach this at a training facility -- where all matter of on-board crisis can be simulated.

My knowledge of the Trident subs is more accurate than the other subs -- but when I have a chance I question people who are associated with the other sub classes.

Remember 1978 were were still in the "Cold War" and the sub service was vital to that effort -- but by the 1990s we were in an era of the Professional Military and the Navy was attempting to make the Navy more family friendly.

...I don' care what you heard.

The SSBN (Trident subs with nuclear warheads) are undergoing changes -- since the prime mission of the Trident is supposed to be over.





http://www.submarinewivesclub.org/generalfaqs.html

but they also do not deploy for 300 days straight -- they have one long deployment and several shorter deployments. There are a hell of a lot of the SSN subs and these bastards were lobbing missiles in 2003 at Iraq. It seems that any branch of the military with new toys that go boom used Iraq as a testing ground.

But Tridents do have two full crews -- however -- rumor has it that Tridents will be either retired or modified. My question is -- will the Tridents be out fitted with the new mini nukes that bushie wants so that he can nuke any nation that doesn't bow down to him? I asked some Trident sailors this question -- they started stuttering.

It's hard to imagine what life must be like, it takes a special kind of person to do that work.

In my case, we went under for 70-75 days, nuc missiles primed and pointed (back before the wall was down) and went around in circles at around 5mph. I did 8 of those patrols.

I used to blame the navy for me becoming a lunatic until I remembered that I volunteered for sub duty, so I had to be a little whacked out before even stepping a foot on one :freak:

That could be like living in hell.

an officer who just couldn't cut it, heard voices that weren't there and thought everybody was against him. Tried to kill himself by drinking some chemicals in the ELT lab (lab where they test the reactor core for decay and other such stuff).

Was such a dumb shit he picked the wrong stuff and only got sick. Needless to the Doc kept him in LaLa land until we could medevac him. Probably still in the funny farm....

I would never cut it

...one several years before had suicided.

My roommate from prototype (navy school) was on a fast attack that was always at sea. I think he told me that in twelve months, they spent nine months away from home port.

I was a sub volunteer all the way through my training, but ended up on a carrier. Not as prestigious as a sub, but we got mail almost everyday and saw a lot more ports!

"The USS San Francisco ran aground some 350 miles south of Guam -- the nearest land mass -- while it was conducting submerged operations. It has since resurfaced and is heading back to Guam, according to the USPF's news release."

Sounds like they went too deep in relatively shallow waters...
OK, who was supposed to watch the Fathometer?

Hope the injured recover.

the depth scope must be broken.:wtf:

US nuclear submarine runs aground

"The extent of the injuries and damage aboard San Francisco is still being assessed, but includes one critical injury and several other lesser injuries," the Navy said. .............

Guam, a territory of the US, is one of the American military's most important bases in the Pacific.

The Los Angeles-class submarines are 109.73 meters (360 ft) long and are classed as attack vessels, designed to counter enemy submarines or surface vessels. They are equipped with a single nuclear reactor.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4157517.stm

...that are no longer valid due to the tsunami?

caused some pretty drastic changes in the ocean floor in the Straight of Sundai. Some areas that used to be 4,000 feet deep are now barely 100 feet deep, and the USGS is hurrying to re-survey the area. Something similar might have happened off of Guam. They have some pretty big subduction zones over there.

I don't know anything about submarine navigation, but I suspect the Navy has pretty detailed sea-floor information, and I would be surprised if our subs didn't have that info on-board in some kind of navigational computer system. What happens if the ocean floor changes suddenly and the info stored in the computer no longer agrees with reality? Did the software guys who wrote the navigational system take that possibility into account? Things could get pretty hairy.

No idea what really happened, but interesting to speculate.

. . rising by 3900 ft in an earthquake would generate a much bigger wave than the 30 ft or so we saw on shore.

Do you have a link to this data so I can understand it better?

Thanks

that the ~4000 foot vertical displacement seems outrageous. But if a 4000 foot deep channel leads through a 100 foot shallow area and the entire region shifts horizontally, then "the same area" as defined by a GPS system could have been in the channel before the earthquake and out of the channel afterwards.

Sorry about the "missing link". I tried to find it before, and couldn't. Here's a link to another article that has the same info:

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2002142582_strait06.html

-------------------------------------------------------------------
<...snip...>
The agency has received an unconfirmed report that one area of the Strait of Malacca, which separates Malaysia and the devastated Indonesian island of Sumatra, had its depth cut from 4,060 feet to just 105 feet.

In another area of tsunami-affected waters, a merchant marine ship has logged that the depth was cut from 3,855 feet to just 92 feet.

The agency's chief hydrographer, Chris Andreasen, said experts may find that whole channels were moved by the earthquake that preceded the tsunami, shifting the ocean floor many feet.

"When the plate moves, everything on it moves," Andreasen said. "There could be some pretty serious shifts."
<...snip...>
Among other international operations, the Navy is sending two ships to begin efforts to rechart the waters.
----------------------------------------------------------------

I spent 2 years on a survey ship (USNS Hess) when I was in the Canoe Club.

Then spent some time on The John Adams SSBN 620

-Hoot

by debris pulled out to sea from inland after the tsunami? Like when you dig a hole in the sand at the beach and a wave comes in over it and retreats, leaving no hole behind. I'm not sure if that applies in this case, but that probably another factor in the changing seascape too.

The article indicates that they were in the middle of a series of operational tests; some of those tests probably require the crew to react to equipment failure.

If the sub was in the midst of a test where, say, the fathometer or half the navigational system, is "CASREP'd", and everyone thought they were in waters of a depth of 1K ft or so - and now, suddenly, the ocean floor is is at 500 ft?

It won't "excuse" the CO or navigator, or any other member of the crew that was on duty at the time, but it would explain why they went aground.

I feel sorry for the guys that are forced to bunk up forward in the torpedo room. They must have gotten tossed around pretty badly when she ran aground - and with all that heavy equipment around, it's almost worse than getting tossed out of a rack in a normal berthing compartment.

Haele

that came from DOD

Wounding means something different in military speak than injuring.

I suspect a weapons malfunction or reactor problem.

When a sub strikes something, from what I understand having done equipment installations on one, it's rather like being inside a washing machine and everything must be secured accordingly. As the sub is built to move in three dimensions - unlike a surface ship - the "rollover" plane is not as strict, and people can be thrown "up" or sideways in a way one does not normally see. If you are thrown "up" out of your rack and hit the sharp cableway and piping above you, that would cause a different injury that you would get on a surface ship being tossed "down" or down and sideways from your rack. You might break an arm or leg when you hit the deck on a surface ship. You have a chance to "catch yourself" and won't fall so far. I've fallen out of my rack - a "top rack" before when my ship did "backing down" exercises or in high seas and received nothing more than bruises and a slightly wrenched shoulder. The injuries tend be more of a stress or soft tissue damage.
On a submarine, you can easily crack open your skull as if you were hit with an axe if you were thrown "up" out of your rack and hit the cableway or pipe hangers. If you're sleeping in the torpedo room racks (one division sleeps right under the torpedo stowage cradles - that shocked the hell out of me when we did a LAN install on a LA class a few years back) and the maintenance tools aren't secured properly above you, you can get hit by all sorts of flying items.
Submarines are also very tight spaces; again, there's enough sharp corners and edges on otherwise "common" items that normally wouldn't be a major problem - if you have room to catch yourself before you fall on them or if they're secured properly.

Wounding would probably be the type of injury one would get when a submarine runs aground - as opposed to the standard military definition of simple "injury".

Haele

in military speak.

Injured means anything else.

It is a very strange choice of words for such a press release.

Was Kenny boy at the helm?

My brother is deployed on a sub right now. We of course, don't know where he is, just where he was the last time we heard from him. I was so relieved to see that it wasn't his sub.

They were taking a real different angle on this story and one that I suppose could be plausible…the idea that this sub and maybe a new Chinese sub may have exchanged paint and the grounding is just a coverup….it’s not like the US and Russia never exchanged paint….the US may have decided to test the Chinese in the art of cat and mouse….but I guess we’ll never know unless something leaks out of China….

When a nuclear sub surfaces and heads back to port under abnormal conditions, something has to be put out on why….otherwise the rumor mill goes ballistic and you leave the speculators with a tad more room to hang a hat on than you might wish….
I’m not saying that grounding wasn’t the cause in this case, it’s just that as an OT in the Navy back in the early 70’s I did witness some gaming in the waters…

since it sounds to me like you object for some (IMO stupid) reason.

Such a report, even tho completely speculative and even discounted by the poster himself in this instance, nevertheless helps the rest of us who are not very familiar with such things understand the bigger picture and the broader scope that may on occasion be involved in such incidents. That way, the next time *I* hear of something unusual happening with a sub, I might understand that there's a possibility that there's more to the situation than is being officially reported (as is so often the case anyway) and something about what else could be going on.

Doesn't mean it happened that way, doesn't mean it WILL happen that way. But it DOES expand our ability to think critically and even creatively about world events and especially about our ultra-secretive, lying government.

ALL of the posts on this thread are speculative, if not downright silly. peterh's post has more substance than most.

We KNOW that subs play cat and mouse. And we know that governments never fess up about it. I'm not sure why this is, exactly, since each side knows the other is doing it. The activity might technically be construed as an act of war, especially if something goes wrong and one sub gets seriously damaged or sunk. Maybe the governments fear things could get out of hand politically if they told the truth. Pressure to retaliate, loss of face otherwise, embarrassing comments... the whole thing has an adolescent male hot rodder feel to it.

Again, we don't know if that's what happened here, but it's fun to speculate, and sometimes informative, too; and if speculative posts disappeared from DU, there wouldn't be a whole lot left...

R

,...and make conclusions on an aggressive campaign to collect facts.

THAT reality makes our government the "bad guys" and the rest of us the "good guys", particularly those of us who DO embrace freedom and democracy.

Doncha' think? :bounce:

This news story sounds so much like a cover story its silly--

I guess it's possible for a skipper to have found the ground in some of the deepest water on Earth---but I'd be more willing to bet on another cause for the incident.

The US has a long history of not talking facts when it comes to the silent service. Even incidents that happened 50 years ago are just now seeing the light of day as old-timers, no longer concerned about clearances, share their experiences.

Check out Blind Man's Bluff or Rising Tide: The Untold Story of the Russian Submarines That Fought the Cold War for some fascinating stories about this...

Here's the link, but it's in Portuguese...
http://br.news.yahoo.com/050108/6/qnca.html
It's a few more than "several" unfortunately, or at least in my opinion.

Sorry, couldnt resist the chance to quote Homer Simpson...

There's an unexpected job opening for someone on the prospective commanding officer list....XO too. And anyone on the bridge at the time of the incident is pretty close to toast.

Surface ops to Guam...NOT FUN. I'd not want to be aboard that vessel in these circumstances...!

This so fookin sad. I had some close calls and they were all human errors of judgement.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=7273318

Sure would like to hear from any westpac'rs out there concerning op areas south of Guam.

http://www.indiadaily.com/breaking_news/20241.asp

A U.S. sailor died Sunday, after sustaining injuries in a submarine accident a day earlier in the western Pacific, according to a statement from the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The sailor -- whose identity has not been released -- was one of 24 wounded when the nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine USS San Francisco ran aground about 350 miles (560 km) south of Guam -- the nearest island -- while it was submerged, the Navy said. Navy sources said the submarine was en route to Brisbane, Australia, for a port visit.

Subs don't "run aground". They drop to the bottom.

350 miles from Guam there is little chance (imho) that they got into shallow waters. Chances are they had some serious problems and bottomed. Bottoming a sub is like really a bad thing. Subs the bottom are more likely to stay there.

I hope they did not bottom out, but my intuition tells me this story will get worse before it's over.

I have no particular information or insight btw.

If you want better info on how deep a sub can go, go to Janes Fighting Ships. I can say subs can go in excess of 400' (if I said more I'd have to kill ya :) ) . But no way do they go deep enough to hit the lip of the MT.

I don't have op exp in the westpac but I think they either hit another sub or they hit the bottom. If they had hit a surface ship we would also have a story of a sunk ship I think.

they could have hit the Kyushu-Palau Ridge, which is in that area.

Of course, they could have hit Megaladon. ;-)