NEWS: US Nuclear Sub Runs Aground, One Sailor Dead.

You can be assured of this: the captain of that 'boat' is making a one-way trip to the Pentagon for an inquiry and investigation into this event, and that there is going to be a new captain assigned to replace him.

Be it a sub, frigate, or carrier, anytime a captain 'grounds' a 'boat', he is off to "la-la land".....like a beach front office in the Artic tundra somewhere. His military career and his military record will forever more be "black-booked". Not good.



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(CNN) -- A U.S. sailor died Sunday, after sustaining injuries in a nuclear 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 USS San Francisco ran aground about 350 miles (560 km) south of Guam -- the nearest land mass -- while it was conducting submerged operations, USPF said.

Navy sources said the submarine was en route to Brisbane, Australia for a port visit.

Lt. Adam Clampitt of USPF, speaking to CNN from his base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, said there was no damage to the nuclear reactor.

Sailor dies

This is sad news. My thoughts are with the sailors family and friends. The fact that there has been one death, one extremely serious injury and over 20 other injuries would imply to me that the sub' hit an object at a sharp angle, even if its speed was only a few knots.

And the number of injuries would indicate to me that there was little or no warning prior to the collision.

I don't really believe there was a collision. It's not impossible, but the recent tsunami sure is a big coincidence. Also, though I'm no sub captain, it doesn't seem to me that a collision would be consistent with the mission of a US sub chasing the Chinese away from Guam.
If I understand correctly, you get close to the sub you're trailing when you want to follow it for a long time or record its signiture, right? For the purpose of saying, Hi, I see you and I can kill you, wouldn't you want to be a little further away- far enough away to fire a torpedo at them for example? Am I mixed up on this?

Anyway, if anyone here is familiar with military news sources, could we compile a list of strategy/military news sources, foreign news sources, and foreign military news sources so that those who wish to can screen for suspicious coincidences, like Chinese or Russian subs getting "repairs" "maintance" "upgrades" "lost" etc?

Of course there's one other thing about Communist nations when something goes wrong... officers always die in car accidents. An old friend of mine, a retired Navy O-4, told me that whenever we saw evidence of a military mishap in the USSR, anyone important who died as a result would be reported as the victim of a car accident later that month.
So if nobody talks about a sub problem, but we find out that China has suddenly shaken up its submarine command- there was a collision.

The Vagabond, great post
But, your first sentence contradicts your last sentence. Which is what makes your post a great question.

Sanc'.

Originally posted by sanctum
This is sad news. My thoughts are with the sailors family and friends. The fact that there has been one death, one extremely serious injury and over 20 other injuries would imply to me that the sub' hit an object at a sharp angle, even if its speed was only a few knots.

And the number of injuries would indicate to me that there was little or no warning prior to the collision.

If a sub hit an object at a sharp angle, then we would be hearing about how the hull was compromised.


It probably hit a glancing blow off of something at a medium rate of speed and everyone got tossed forward by it.

That is only a speculation on my part.

Originally posted by sanctum
The Vagabond, great post

But, your first sentence contradicts your last sentence. Which is what makes your post a great question.

Sanc'.

Well, I didn't really mean for that to come across as contradictory. I started by saying that
"I don't believe there was a collision"
This means that at present I see no concrete reason to believe so. It doesn't make that impossible.

I ended by saying "If we see China shake up their submarine command, then there was a collision".
This means that I acknowledge that I could perhaps be wrong, and that I have identified one way in which we might find out if I was wrong.

CNN) -- A damaged U.S. nuclear submarine that ran aground three days ago in a deadly accident has docked at a U.S. naval base in Guam, a spokesman with the U.S. Pacific Fleet (USPF) said.

According to Lt. j.g. Adam Clampitt, the USS San Francisco was escorted to port by a variety of U.S. Navy and Coast Guard vessels.

The submarine did "suffer some external damage," he said.

"The injured sailors are being treated at a U.S. military medical facility on Guam and will be transferred to other facilities -- possibly Pearl Harbor in Hawaii or Okinawa in Japan -- as necessary," Clampitt said.

Docked

Originally posted by Esoterica
but if areas of the seafloor went up, then other areas probably went down, meaning total dispalcement could be about the same.

Wouldn't work like that. It'd've generated a tsunami if the ocean floor was lifted drastically. Not to mention earthquakes and the like would be seismically recorded if it had happened.

I don't really believe there was a collision. It's not impossible, but the recent tsunami sure is a big coincidence

I don't follow, what does the tsunami have to do with it?

In some places there theoretically could be new masses raised by the earthquake, not the tsunami. As for the tsunamis part, it would have relocated a lot of sand on the ocean floor and built up smaller existing mounds, just the way that wind builds sand dunes in the desert.

In the middle of deep water I wouldn't really expect them to have any problems unless they were getting really chose to the bottom for some reason, but suppose that the San Francisco wasn't in the open ocean. If it was near te coast of some nation that wasn't supposed to know about it and ran aground we would have to lie about where the incident happened, and that would require us to be very vague about what caused the incident, because blaming a new shoal would tip our hand as to where we had been.

HAGATNA, Guam - A U.S. nuclear submarine that ran aground over the weekend appears to have struck a natural feature on the floor of the Pacific Ocean, a Navy spokesman said Monday.

Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis said an initial investigation turned up nothing to indicate the USS San Francisco struck anything but a large rock, land or other natural feature as it conducted underwater operations about 350 miles south of Guam.

The ship "struck something very hard and did an emergency surface," Davis said at a media briefing in Guam.

Davis added there were no reports of damage to the submarine's nuclear reactor, and the vessel made its way back to its home port in Guam Monday under its own power. The submarine's outer hull was damaged, but its inner hull remained intact.

The submarine had been headed to Australia for a port visit.

One sailor was killed and at least 23 others suffered injuries including broken bones, cuts and bruises, the Navy said. The submarine has a crew of 137.
Submarine
Machinist Mate 2nd Class Joseph Allen Ashley, 24, of Akron, Ohio, died Sunday after suffering major head injuries, Davis said. He had been working in the sub's engineering compartments.

In the meantime, the New York Times and MSNBC have reported unnamed Navy officials have told them the San Francisco was submerged more than 400 feet below the surface and traveling at around 30 knots when the accident occurred.

Link

If this information is correct, 30'ish knots is quite a speed. No wonder about the number of casualties.

WASHINGTON - Outdated charts may have been partially at fault for the undersea grounding of a U.S. nuclear submarine last weekend, according to a U.S. agency that analyzes spy satellite imagery and produces maps and charts for the Defense Department.

Charts