Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Sub captain As the Navy plans its formal inquiry next week into the sinking of a Japanese fishing training ship by a U.S. nuclear submarine, questions remain about whether other crewmen will be implicated and whether the ship will ever be raised from its ocean grave.
sends Japan ‘most
sincere regret’
But his 'regret' is not
deemed an apologyBush envoy will deliver
formal apology tomorrowBy Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-BulletinOnly three of the USS Greeneville's top officers -- Cmdr. Scott Waddle, its skipper; Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer; and Lt. j.g. Michael Coen -- have been named as parties to an official Navy Court of Inquiry that will convene at Pearl Harbor next Monday.
Yesterday, Waddle, through his civilian attorney Charles Gittins, issued a statement of "most sincere regret to the Japanese people, and most importantly, to the families of those lost and injured in the collision" of the Ehime Maru and the Greeneville 10 miles south of Diamond Head
But Waddle did not issue an apology, which has been one of the major demands of the families and relatives of the lost crewmen, instructors and four 17-year-old high school students.Waddle said he knows that the accident has caused "unimaginable grief" to the families of the ship's missing students, teachers and crew, and members of the Uwajima Fisheries High School and the people of Japan.
"No words can adequately express my condolences and concern for those people who have lost their loved ones," Waddle said in a written statement. "I too grieve for the families and the catastrophic losses that the families have endured."
Waddle said he hopes that next week's inquiry will resolve questions and uncertainties surrounding this tragedy. "It is my most sincere desire to determine the truth about what happened so that such a disastrous accident never again occurs."
'Regret' not deemed apology
In Japan, Shunsuke Terata, whose 17-year-old brother Yusuke is one of the four missing students, said his family is not satisfied."We refuse to accept it as an apology," he said. "It's not an apology until he says it to each one of us in person."
Although Waddle did not issue an apology, President George W. Bush will have one delivered tomorrow to Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori by Adm. William J. Fallon, the vice chief of naval operations.
The 190-foot Ehime Maru was struck and sunk by the Greeneville Feb. 9 while demonstrating an emergency surfacing maneuver for 16 civilians.
The Japanese ship was carrying a crew of 35, including students and teachers, on a training voyage. Nine people, including four 17-year-old students, two teachers and three Ehime Maru crew members, are still missing.
The Ehime Maru sits intact and upright in 2,003 feet of water. The Navy continues to map the Pacific bottom as part of its analysis to determine whether it is feasible to raise the ship. Joining in that effort are Japanese salvage experts.Several mainland newspapers, including the Washington Post and the Washington Times, have reported that a preliminary report, drafted by Vice Adm. Charles Griffiths Jr., indicates that besides those already named by the Navy as subjects of next week's investigation, other Navy personnel were to blame.
Those include Capt. Robert Brandhuber, chief of staff for the Pacific Fleet Submarine Forces, who was escorting 16 civilians visiting the Greeneville that day; and a fire-control technician who was responsible for plotting surface ships in the area and did not inform Waddle that the Ehime Maru was closing to 2,000 yards.
Adm. Thomas Fargo, Pacific Fleet commander, used that report to convene a panel of three senior admirals. It could recommend that Fargo hold a court-martial to determine whether Waddle and others were derelict in their duties.
Yesterday, the Navy took the media for a background tour of the USS Columbia, one of three sister ships of the Greeneville, berthed at Pearl Harbor. The tour was to explain how a submarine operates, but no questions of the Columbia's crew were allowed concerning the Greeneville. National and international media were shown the control room, the mess deck and the torpedo room.In the middle of the Columbia's control room -- which is identical to the Greeneville's -- are two periscopes on a raised platform. One of the two periscopes has a video camera that sends pictures to monitors in the control room and the captain's quarters.
In front of the two periscopes is the duty station -- or the "con" -- which is the watch station of the officer of the deck. On Feb. 9, Coen stood that duty.
To the right of the "con" in this cramped 20-foot-by-20-foot space is the fire-control station. In front of the officer of the deck's station are the ship's controls. The control station has three bucket seats.
Normally, it is manned by two enlisted men who operate the diving planes and the rudder (planesman and helmsman) and the diving officer who sits in the middle. Both helmsman and the planesman use steering wheels to control the ship's movement.
One of the 16 civilians aboard the Greeneville Feb. 9 sat in the helmsman's seat during the emergency main ballast tank blow.By pushing or pulling the steering wheel, he could control the direction of the sub.
However, the Navy has said that when the ballast tanks are blown in an emergency surfacing maneuver, the helmsman has very little control since the ascent upward is automatic.
To the left of the planesman is the ballast-control center. Located there are valves and switches that operate equipment needed to make the sub surface or dive.
In the upper left of the ballast-control panel are two emergency blow handles.
These two valves, when pushed in simultaneously and then pulled up, send high-pressure air from air banks into the ballast tanks, forcing the 6,900-ton vessel to the surface in minutes.
The other civilian was at this station and, on orders, pushed in the two emergency blow handles that triggered the emergency procedure.
The fact that civilians were in these seats at the time of the accident has angered the Japanese.
Four manned sonar consoles provide the submarine with its ears into the underwater world in the communications shack just a few feet aft of the control room along the starboard or right-side passageway.
Sensing devices in the bow and those being towed provide information for the signal processors and other equipment on the submarine, which translate the sounds into data displayed on the consoles.
Sonar repeater not operating
One display of the passive sonar system looks like a series of waterfalls on a green television monitor. The top of the display shows the bearing of a noise contact. The vertical scale on the side shows the noise over time. The screen is split into three parts showing the contacts in different time degrees, ranging from seconds to hours.This information can be sent to a sonar repeater monitor located above the con or the watch station for the officer of the deck.
A National Transportation Safety Board investigator was told that the Greeneville's sonar repeater wasn't operating at the time of the accident.
Once a contact is made, the technician reports it to the sonar watch supervisor. The officer of the deck is notified and the contact is given a designation and numbered.
For instance, "Sierra" stands for a sonar contact; "Victor" a visual contact; "Romeo" a radar contact; and "Mike," a combination of one or more different signals from different sensors. The contacts are numbered.
In the case of the Ehime Maru, it was designated as "Sierra 13," noting that it was the thirteenth sonar contact that day.That information is automatically passed on to the fire-control station, which has a bank of monitors to the right of the officer of the deck.
Information from the fire-control center also is drawn on a paper chart, or contact evaluation plot, which is situated in front of the officer of the deck a few feet away. This gives the captain of the submarine and the officer of the deck another system to track and evaluate sonar contacts.
The Greeneville's fire-control technician told NTSB investigators that the number of civilians on the sub that day was a distraction and kept him from keeping the paper chart updated.
It is the job of the fire-control station technicians to use that data to identify the contact and come up with a solution.
Both Waddle and Coen had made periscope sweeps of the surface and may have left the sailor believing his calculations were in error. Waddle was told of the contact with the Ehime Maru 71 minutes before the collision.
But it is unclear what happened afterward and why, as it has been reported, the technician moved the position of the Ehime Maru from 2,000 yards to 9,000 yards.
Instead of heading away from the doomed ship, Waddle apparently turned the Greeneville around, placing it on a head-on collision course.
The sub then went to a depth of 400 feet and executed the emergency surfacing maneuver, colliding with the hull of the Ehime Maru like a 6,000-ton torpedo.