US Navy Cruiser and Submarine Collide

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."

Comments

Re:Uh...

[techno-vampire]

Depth charges are so...so...so...WW II. Even back in the early '70s when I was in we were using ASROC: a rocket-thrown torpedo that homed in on its target. Much more effective, especially if we used one with a nuke.

Hot Dogging Sub Commander

[tengu1sd]

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 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

[humanerror]

"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

[FlyingGuy]

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 ).