More on San Francisco Grounding

Originally posted 1003 08 Jan:

Here's the official press release from PacFleet.

I found a good web site that has short synopses (synopsii? Whatever the plural of synopsis is...). A Navy Reserve Lieutenant has a website on Peacetime Submarine Accidents, which includes descriptions of the recent groundings off USS Hartford (a surfaced grounding) and HMS Trafalgar (a submerged grounding, like the San Francisco). Also included are less recent submerged groundings of USS Nathanael Greene and USS Ray.

The San Francisco had spent a few months last year in drydock in San Diego, so I got to know the crew pretty well. I'm kind of surprised they were so far south of their home base in Guam less than a month after returning from a short deployment, but I think they do things differently, as far as stand-down time after deployment, with the Guam-based boats.

Update: Here's a good update from Guam's Pacific Daily News. Apparently, the boat was on its way to a liberty visit in Brisbane, Australia. This would explain why they were so far south of their home port so soon after a deployment; Squadron 15 probably wanted them home for Christmas, but the crew also wanted a nice liberty call. I'm guessing that there were probably a few crew member's family members planning to meet them in Brisbane; this is a really bad way to miss out on a good liberty call.

Update 2: Every year all the officers and the enlisted navigation team on every submarine has to go through the collection of "lessons learned" from all the previous submarine collisions and groundings. I've been looking for any information on any of them, other than the ones listed above, that have made it onto the Internet, and so far I've only found one other. It's a listing of the USS Jefferson City (SSN 759) submerged grounding off San Diego in May 1994, on the NAVSEA Damage Control site.

Staying at PD...

posted by Bubblehead @ 10:02 AM