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2005-02-14 Home Front: Tech

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Posted by Sherry 2005-02-14 1:00:49 PM|| || Front Page|| [6 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 You can follow good discussion from sub guys at this link
http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/

Posted by Sherry 2005-02-14 1:23:30 PM|| 2005-02-14 1:23:30 PM|| Front Page Top

#2 Mooney failed to follow âseveral critical navigational and voyage planningâ standards.

If you're not cheating, you're not trying. No boat would ever leave the pier if it followed all the standards required of it. Not only does no boat follow all the standards, but the vast majority of the procedures, instructions, notices are not even read. There simply is no time.

I remember walls in our off-crew offices in Charleston of binders of instructions. Every level of the chain of command puts out instructions - boat, squadron, group, on up to Navy. Chop to a new fleet, squadron, group - a new set of standards applies. All must be followed. Every commander that come's along, adds to the list.

I remember holding a 10 pound instruction in my hands at sea and thinking, if my ship sinks because we were 10 pounds heavy, I am going to be pissed. All of submarining has been reduced to trying to read the standards and follow them. Initiative and independent thinking are the kiss of death in the submarine force.

Every submariner with a conscience eventually comes to the conclusion that the purpose of written guidance is not to make operations better, but to provide ammo to nail submariners who tried to make decisions in good faith, under trying circumstances and with little sleep. At some point every submariner will screw up and leave his guts on the deck for any upper echelon punk to stomp on.

Nothing of use will be learned from this event. All the instructions will be revised and amplified with further steps and cautions all of which will never be read except at some mandatory training that submariners everywhere will be woken up to attend. They won't hear anything at such training because they either will have fallen back asleep or they will be zoning-out in a mental fog.

If they are serious about improving operations, then for goodness sake, abolish the 18 hour operational cycle. Human beings work on a 24 hour cycle in case the instruction-writing weenies have not noticed.

Posted by Zpaz 2005-02-14 3:07:15 PM|| 2005-02-14 3:07:15 PM|| Front Page Top

#3 I'd be relieved, too. Did you see what happened to that Russian sub?

Posted by BH 2005-02-14 3:31:14 PM|| 2005-02-14 3:31:14 PM|| Front Page Top

#4 that a sounding taken just minutes before the accident did not correlate with the charts that were in use at the time
That's cause. SOP requires checking your sounding against the chart. If the sounding doesn't match the fix, both are in question. They should have slowed down until they got another sounding. Even worse if the sounding they got was less than the yellow or red limit -> either you aren't where you think you are, or you Nav screwed up.

Other charts of the area, however, show muddy water in the area, which normally indicates shallowness, and other government agency charts show evidence of the seamount less than 150 feet below the surface.
That one's bogus, you can't use a detailed area chart for a transit. You'd be changing charts 5 times a watch. Though presumably the Nav team would look at the detailed chart when laying out the track.

Chop to a new fleet, squadron, group - a new set of standards applies.
Nav standards were promulgated by SubPac, unless it's changed recently. It's not even that thick. The operational manuals are (were) alot less verbose than the admin ones, after all, someone actually has to use them.

Posted by Anonymous4385 2005-02-14 7:19:54 PM|| 2005-02-14 7:19:54 PM|| Front Page Top

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