2/28/2005: The injured USS San Francisco
 

http://cellar.org/2004/usssanfran01.jpg

It's xoB again. Last month the USS San Francisco, nuclear sub, ran aground when it hit an underwater mountain. There's the result. 1 sailor was killed in the incident, and 60 injured. This story says the commander was fired although there were no underwater mountains on the charts he was given.

http://cellar.org/2004/usssanfran02.jpg

You won't see this very often. And if you happen to meet any of the sailors that were aboard, they won't tell you the story. Submariners have a tradition of secrecy sometimes referred to as "silent service" - silent like the ships they run, they will not tell you a single tale about their time at sea.

I'm a little amazed that the U.S. Navy is the source of these photos. All they did for secrecy was cover secret electronics in the nose with the tarp before the pictures were taken. It's obviously a good thing the inner hull wasn't breached. This picture shows how much room there actually is between the outer hull and the inner hull.

but then those aren't the ones you have to drive around, then, are they? Only the ones on the seafloor matter...

I reckon the inner hull *was* breached. No way the distance between the two hulls is 80% of the radius of the ship. The green areas in the pics seem to be the interior -- people holding volume of the vessel.

I don't see the sonar sphere. If the sphere isn't visible then enough of the hull wasn't compressed to reach the people tank. I'll try to find a graphic.

Edit: A really hi-res of the second pic is here .

Ok, it looks like the (crushed) pinkish cluster in the middle may be the sphere, but there is a watertight hatch between the sphere and the people tank.

Yes I'd agree that the pink bit was the sonar dome. In the hi-res pic, the green stuff looks like blocks attached to the surface behind them... maybe they're some kind of sound-deadening blocks. On Troubleshooter's diagram the big grey disk behind the sphere is probably the green block stuff in the photos.

If all that is correct then the people part is behind the launch tubes, which are behind the green blocks, and is therefore a long way back from the damaged area. Probably no water entered the people part.

Thanks for the effort to find that picture. Really impressive. Further research came to an abrupt halt when I found this.

Strange, I use Firefox 1.1. Of course it could be a problem because of where you're browsing from.

Seattle? The Democrats aren't THAT far out of favor!

Excuse me, but you mean
 

1.0.1, right?

Yes, thank you.

Whew.
 

I'm relieved to learn that the wave of version envy was just a false alarm... :worried:

might still be the where...:worried::worried::worried:

When that kind of tonnage meets an immovable object at -cough- 35 knots -cough-, there must be a lot of newly deaf fish in that area. :yelsick:

Ooh, boy
 

Wait until somebody does the math and tags this collision as the cause of the Tsunami.

Reading the original news reports, it looks like everyone aboard was injured to some extent or another. Good job saving it, and it's the rule of Navy command: you're responsible, even if it was unforseeable. That CO will get to retire, but he's probably done as for major command.