Immediate opening – Good pay and benefits, excellent work environment. Significant experience in field necessary:
A U.S. nuclear-powered submarine collided with a Japanese oil tanker in the Straits of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world’s oil supplies travel, officials said.
No one was hurt in the accident that happened Monday night in the 34-mile wide straits, which are bordered by Iran and Oman and serve as the entrance to the Persian Gulf.
Damage to the fast-attack USS Newport News submarine and the supertanker was light and there was no resulting spill of oil or leakage of nuclear fuel, officials from the U.S. Navy and the Japanese government said.
Both ships remained able to navigate, Navy officials said.
The successful candidate will have a technical undergraduate degree, a master’s level equivalent in nuclear engineering, two decades of management and leadership experience, excellent communication and interpersonnel skills, a highly-honed appreciation for advanced undersea weapons systems and tactics and a sound knowledge of the International and Inland Rules of the Road.
Exceptional good luck a plus.
You should have peered into your crystal ball a few months ago and let Chap know this opportunity was just around the corner….:)
I thought the CSS Hunley was the last submarine that was supposed to attack by ramming?
Heh.
I left a similar comment at The Castle, indicating that sub driver job just became available.
You crack me up!
John V.
..cuz those oil tankers are such small stealthy quiet little buggers, aren’t they.
Are our submarines attracted to Japanese ships???
Has to be tough being a captain, knowing that you can do almost everything perfect, and then bam your career can be over. Its a wonder any of them survives long enough to become an admiral.
It Sucks being him. Best
It’s always been said that a collision at sea can ruin your whole day. I feel sorry for the Skipper, but this sounds like underwater bufoonery.
A larger question is, Do we have a problem in our submarine force?
Within the last few months one sub skipper was relieved from command following the disclosure of hazing aboard his boat; then we had the ChiCom sub surfacing in the middle of Kitty Hawk’s strike group; last week 4 submariners were swept overboard as a sub left harbor in the UK, two were killed including the chief of the boat. Now this?
A guess; in a crowded and noisy area like the Strait of Hormuz, trying to quickly identify and classify a super tanker is like San Diego Chargers quaterback Phillip Rivers trying to pick out Antonio Gates while being buried by an angry and determined Denver blitz. A choke point like that is crowded by warships, all sizes of merchants, from small coastal freighters to supertankers, fishing boats and even sail boats, oils drilling platforms, and low flying helos. The sonarmen and tracking party have a job more difficult than an air traffic controller at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. Their displays are looking like writhing worms and snakes. Even so, the old man will be invited to leave the boat for another job.
*sigh*
Not exactly bufoonery. Over at Bubblehead’s we were discussing how those supertankers are actually hard to hear. Especially in someplace busy, like the Straits.
Add to that the fact that when a sub is shallow, she is still under *most* ship’s drafts. Most. Clearly 100′ draft supertankers being the exception.
And while I would love to say that we do *not* have a problem in our sub force, I can not. However, I think what Bomber Guy thinks the problem is, and what I think it is, would be rather different.
Either way, this was some bad luck, some poor seamanship, and a black mark for all. Sad.
Actually, a couple jobs will be opening up….
For sure:
CO
OOD
Possible:
Nav
Conning officer
Sonar Sup….. anyone else?
So sorry to hear this. I know the men of the silent service work long and hard under the water to keep us safe. So sorry a bad mistake was made…
The un-advertized downside of command…that razor thin line between professional excellence/hero and all time chump… the prayer/nightmare of conscientious leaders of men in a combant environment…please dear God help me to not f..k this up. Again it truly Sucks being this guy…he has my sympathies. Best
Yeah, luck. Gotta have it…or make your own?
Here we are, convicting a boat when we have very little of the facts. We are at war, and I hope that fact will be taken into account when conducting the investigation, and I hope that they are not automatically convicted. Likewise, if the ship is having issues, then by all means make the necessary changes. Fortunately, no one was killed (on either vessel) and damage appears to have been limited. When JACKSONVILLE collided with the SAUDI MAKKAH 10 years ago, the starboard fairwater plane was hanging like a broken wing. I think someone already mentioned GREENVILLE. There have been others.
I don’t think we are having any more accidents/incidents than we historically have had in the submarine force, but you do have an ever shorter news cycle that somehow seems to get this info out into the public eye. Not necessarily a bad thing. Could it be increased OPTEMPO/mission time is leading to more risk taking? Are the boats spending more time at sea? Are they cutting corners? Hard to say. This all needs to be examined and I am sure we will hear more about it.
(I was on the road and my wife called me with this story when she read it. Her comment was, “Upward mobility!” Not for me: they don’t let reservists command subs, not that anyone wants to step into something like this.)
Any newly redundant RN types from the “trade” available?
If they passed the Perisher course for submarine command, their nerve and seamanship has been tested and proven.
Pig Boat Sailor,
I don’t know if there is a problem within the submarine community, that’s why I posed the question. My submarine experience is limited to one training cruise on a WW-II era fleet boat (It caught fire while submerged).
My observation is that we seem to be hearing/reading way too much about the “silent service” in recent months, which begs the questions: Do we have a problem; if we do what is it; and how do we fix it?
The Navy, more than any other service has demonstrated little tolerance for commanders who simply had bad luck. Harsh, but a fact.
This was front page news in the Asahi Shinbun this morning with almost a full page devoted to it (very unusual for a Japanese paper). Seems the Japanese are still sensitive about submarines hitting their ships for some reason.
it’s a incident that invokes memories of the Ehime Maru incident.
it goes back to the old trope ‘if it bleeds, it leads’.
From today’s Virginian Pilot (Virginia Beach):
By JACK DORSEY, The Virginian-Pilot
?Ǭ
From today’s Virginian Pilot (Virginia Beach):
By JACK DORSEY, The Virginian-Pilot
© January 10, 2007
NORFOLK – The submarine Newport News was submerged and leaving the Persian Gulf when a mammoth Japanese oil tanker passed overhead at a high speed, creating a sucking effect that made the sub rise and hit the ship, the Navy said Tuesday.
That is the preliminary finding of Monday’s collision between the Norfolk-based submarine and the Mogamigawa, a 1,100-foot-long merchant ship displacing 300,000 tons.
Both were southbound, crossing the busy and narrow Strait of Hormuz while heading into the Arabian Sea.
“As the ship passed over the sub, it ended up sucking the submarine into it,” said Lt. Cmdr. Chris Loundermon, a spokesman for Submarine Force in Norfolk.
“It is a principle called the venturi effect,” he said.
The Mogamigawa, built in 2001, is a super tanker that displaces 300,000 tons of water – three times the amount of water of a modern aircraft carrier.
The Newport News, a Los Angeles-class submarine, displaces 6,900 tons of water.
“This was a very, very large ship moving at higher speed,” Loundermon said.
my comment was intended to be snarky sarcasm in sympathy with the skipper and crew.
on re-reading it, i realize that it appears otherwise.
my apologies to the crew and command.