A former partner in a top-10 global management consulting firm, Joe Buff is a seasoned risk analyst and professional writer on national security and defense preparedness. He is also a novelist of tales of near-future warfare featuring nuclear submariners and Navy SEALs in action at their bravest and best. Two of Joe's non-fiction articles on future submarine technology and tactics, which appeared in The Submarine Review, received literary awards from the Naval Submarine League. His recent novel Crush Depth made the Military Book Club's Top 20 Bestseller List after being selected as a Featured Alternate of the Club in late 2002. Tidal Rip was released
from Wm. Morrow/HarperCollins in hardcover in November, 2003, and the paperback edition (October, 2004) quickly hit high on the Barnes & Noble bookstores weekly National Bestseller List. Joe's next book, Straits of Power, was published in hardcover in late November, 2004, and before Christmas broke into Amazon's Top 10 Men's Adventure Fiction.
Joe is a member of the Society for Risk Analysis, a non-partisan international scholarly body headquartered in McLean, VA. He is a Life Member of the following organizations: U.S. Naval Institute, the Navy League of the United States, the Fellows of the Naval War College, CEC/Seabees Historical Foundation, and the Naval Submarine League. Joe's father was an enlisted man in the Navy (Seabees in the Pacific Theater) from 1946 through 1951, and his uncle was a merchant mariner on the North Atlantic convoys late in World War II, before being drafted into the U.S. Army to serve in the Occupation of Nazi Germany. In August, 2004, Joe was made an Honorary Life Associate Member of the Navy Seabee Veterans of America, partly in recognition of his pro bono work for Operation Seabees Knowledge. In November, 2004, after having been a guest luncheon speaker at their Annual National Convention, Joe became a sponsored Life Associate Member of the U.S. Submarine Veterans, Inc.
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Depth
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in the Deep
Deep
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January 11, 2005
[Have an opinion on this column? Sound off in Military.com
at the Frontlines.]
On American nuclear submarines, the collision alarm and the flooding alarm are identical, because the main hazard from any collision is seawater gushing into the "people tank" (the pressure hull), from a ruptured pipe or -- much worse -- a gash in the hull. The crew hopes to never, ever hear that alarm except during drills -- it's deafening, nerve-jarring, and instantly arouses primal instincts to fight as a team to survive. Every submariner also hopes that if the alarm ever does go off in deadly earnest, someone at least sees the collision coming in time to give everybody a few moments to brace themselves for the shock of impact. Alas, that warning did not come soon enough for the 137 officers and enlisted men of USS San Francisco, SSN 711, on Saturday, 8 January 2005. (Full story) But because of her robust construction, thorough crew training and discipline and dedicated leadership, plus a bit of good luck, a dreadful disaster was avoided -- possibly by mere inches or seconds.
In what now appears to have been a tragic freak accident, the Los Angeles-class nuclear powered fast-attack submarine hit an uncharted undersea mountain. At the time, San Francisco was moving at high speed, while submerged, on her way from Guam (a U.S. Territory and her home port) to Australia. The accident occurred 350 miles south of Guam. This would put her near the Federated States of Micronesia, also known as the Caroline Islands, a chain of mid-Pacific Ocean atolls of volcanic origin just north of the equator. Sadly, one crewman later died from serious head trauma, and about two dozen other men were hurt too badly to be able to stand watch. These injuries occurred when people were suddenly thrown against unyielding metal equipment, or hurled from their sleeping racks or knocked off their feet, by the force of the crash. San Francisco surfaced immediately, and returned to Guam under her own power, her nuclear reactor and propulsion plant undamaged. U.S. Navy ships and aircraft rushed to assist, and emergency medical personnel (including at least one M.D.) transferred aboard while she was still at sea.
It's natural to ask how and why an accident of this nature could occur.
Before I go on, some disclaimers: Further information will be determined, and might (or might not) be declassified, in the days and weeks to come. This essay is based on unclassified news releases as of January 11, 2005, tempered by my knowledge of the open literature concerning American submarine operations and procedures, the unclassified portions of my four days at sea on another Los Angeles-class vessel, plus logical inference and informed speculation. The ideas and conclusions expressed here are solely my own, they may be superseded by additional news disclosures, and they are not meant in any way to reflect upon the current or future practices of the U.S. Navy.
Technically, since the vessel impacted terrain, she is considered to have "run aground." To laymen, that phrase might give the wrong impression of what seems to have happened. The terrain with which San Francisco collided may have been a seamount -- an extinct undersea volcano -- which did not show on any of her navigational charts. (The world's oceans are peppered with countless seamounts.) It is also possible that recent earthquake activity altered seafloor contours, and this fact was not realized in advance. (As the horrific earthquake and tsunami in the eastern Indian Ocean demonstrate, such events can indeed take place.) Another scenario is that a mountain arose where one had not existed before, as a result of ongoing volcanic activity.
So we need to understand a little about nautical charts, seafloor geology, and regular submarine "work habits."
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Nautical charts: The world's oceans have a total surface area of tens of millions of square miles. In the era since modern oceanography began, and nations started deploying civilian or military oceanographic research ships, it has simply been impossible to map much of the seafloor in very exacting detail. Certain areas, of particular interest to countries such as the U.S. or former USSR, have been charted very thoroughly to support submarine maneuvers -- and anti-submarine warfare, too. But those regions represent only a portion of the total planetwide seabed, and they tend to be concentrated in geographic locations that were most relevant during the Cold War. After the Soviet Union collapsed, military oceanographic research has been scaled back drastically, due to budget cuts. In some cases, in some areas, the only charts available for United States Navy warships are rather old, and were inaccurate or incomplete even when first prepared.
Furthermore, accuracy is relative, and time-sensitive. Charts more than adequate for some purposes, such as commercial continental-shelf oil and natural gas exploration, are not fine enough for other purposes, including military activity (both real or training exercises) in coastal or shallow ("littoral") waters. Accuracy is time-dependent because the precise arrangement of the seabed isn't forever fixed and unchanging, as was once believed.
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