Safety standowns have a rich tradition in naval aviation – crash three or so jets in succesion, even if they come from apparently unrelated reasons, and expect guidance to shut things down for 24 hours and talk it out. It tends to work, although no one quite knows why.
Since we’ve got a much longer track record in crashing things than the sub forces do, it makes sense that they take a page out of our notebook:
The Navy on Thursday ordered a safety review of its entire submarine force worldwide because of recent accidents at sea involving Norfolk-based subs.
On Dec. 29, two crew members were killed when they were knocked overboard in turbulent weather off the English coast, and on Monday a submarine and a super tanker ship collided near the Arabian Sea.
Vice Adm. Charles L. Munns, commander of Naval Submarine Forces based in Norfolk, ordered a week-long “safety stand-down.”
It will involve all 52 operational fast-attack subs, the full fleet of 14 ballistic missile submarines and the four guided missile submarines. Eleven submarines are based here…
The two latest incidents, coupled with four other significant submarine collisions in the past six years, led to the stand-down announcement, officials said.
Monday’s collision between the Norfolk-based attack submarine Newport News and a Japanese super tanker happened in the Strait of Hormuz. No one was injured and damage was relatively light to both ships, the Navy said.
Preliminary findings indicate the submarine was traveling from the Persian Gulf in an area that averages 320 feet of water. The tanker Mogamigawa, 1,100 feet long and displacing 300,000 tons of water, was passing overhead in the same direction, the Navy said.
The Mogamigawa was fully loaded with oil, meaning its keel could have been drawing up to 70 feet of water. It was moving faster than the submarine and created a “venturi effect,” sucking the submarine up to its hull, the Navy said.
An investigation is under way, and both captains remain in command of their vessels.
In the earlier mishap, four sailors were swept from the deck of the attack submarine Minneapolis-St. Paul in rough weather as it was leaving port on the southwest coast of England.
The sailors were tethered to safety lines and were picked up by accompanying police boats, but two of the sailors died of injuries.
If the stand-down is a sub fleet wide event, then I think we are actually not helping ourselves, actually. The most likely root cause was an ORM failure in the upper chain of command. This is not something that a deckplate sailor affects, and a stand-down that takes them away from their work will only end up hurting them.
However, if the stand-down is more a procedural and ORM review, as Bubblehead opines, then perhaps it will have some value.
I am not disparaging the idea of a stand-down, having gone through a few, one of which definitely did make a noticable, immediate impact. I am, however, skeptical of actions that appear to be not much more than knee-jerk CYA.
When I was a WSO/EWO in F-111s in the late 80s and early 90s it seemed like we had stand downs on an almost weekly basis.
The thing that irked me was that we lost very few F-111s in that period, the bugs in that airplane having long since been either worked out or fully understood by our forefathers.
What was happening was that F-16s were falling from the sky like raindrops in spring, and everytime one of the single seat sky-gods trashed a jet we had to stop flying for a day and figure out why those guys crashed so much.
“Venturi effect sucking the sub up into the tanker…”
YGBSM!
Hope we don’t tell the ChiComs when we are standing down, they might sneak up on us!
N
What amazes me is that their is a venturi effect with two objects that big. Gives me a whole new appreciation for the forces of nature………
I like to think of the venturi effect quoted, is like NASCAR. “I ain’t Tailgatin’, I’m Draftin’!”
Safety Standown’s always seemed to me to be a good tool to make us take a breath, review our thought processes. That, and the endless loop play of Men Without Hats, “Safety Dance”, in the background.