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Associated Press
Members of the Japan-American Society of Hawaii and relatives
of the Ehime Maru crew listen yesterday to ukulele player Jake
Shimabukuro at a private ceremony at the Ala Moana Hotel.
Nine Japanese crew members and students aboard the ship
remain lost at sea after the training ship was hit by the
USS Greeneville submarine and sank off Honolulu.
See story here.

Further scrutiny
urged into sub
skipper’s style

A Navy investigator says
Cmdr. Scott Waddle may have
inhibited 'timely backup'
from his crew

---

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

Skipper's command style Greeneville condolences Skipper's defense fund

The relationship between the commander of the USS Greeneville and his crew and the location and number of civilians allowed on the cruise needs to be further examined, a Navy admiral said today during a hearing into the sinking of a Japanese fisheries training ship by the submarine.

Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths, who conducted a preliminary investigation into the collision between the Greeneville and the Ehime Maru, also recommended that the civilians who were on the submarine be called to testify before the Navy's court of inquiry.

The leadership style of Cmdr. Scott Waddle needs to be fully explored because this command environment might have been a "subtle factor" in the collision, Griffiths said today as he concluded his presentation to the court of inquiry.

"The CO (Waddle) was much in charge," Griffiths said. "This might have subtly broken down the inclination of the crew to give him timely backup."

Because of Waddle's success at sea, Griffiths said yesterday, the crew hesitated to second-guess him.

He also testified yesterday that he still could not determine why a fire control technician who was aware that sonar showed a ship within 2,500 yards did not report that information to Waddle. The sailor said that in part he felt he was inhibited from speaking because of the crowd that was crammed into the control room.

In summarizing his findings, which took nearly four days of investigation, Griffiths also said "there was a misdirection of priorities and artificial urgency to get to the surface."

By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths, who did the preliminary
investigation leading to the convening of a special panel of
three senior U.S. admirals, enters the courtroom yesterday.

The Greeneville was behind schedule when it performed an emergency surfacing drill that led to the collision.

Griffiths said the Greeneville did not spend enough time at pericope depth. Other factors he cited as leading to the collision included the lack of full crew, including qualified sonar operators, on the Greenville that day and a broken sonar monitor located in the conn near the officer of the deck's station that could have helped detect the Ehime Maru.

The court of inquiry could result in courts-martial for the three top officers of the Greeneville: Waddle; his second in command, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer; and Lt. j.g. Michael Coen, officer of the deck during the collision. Nine people, including four high school students, were lost at sea when the Ehime Maru sank.

Today, Waddle's attorney cross-examined Griffiths.

Griffiths told Charles Gittins that he did not interview Waddle, Coen or Pfeifer and had to rely on statements made to other officers immediately after the incident. Gittins also asked Griffiths several times if he thought it would be a good idea for Waddle to testify, in an apparent effort to build a case to offer Waddle testimonial immunity.

Gittins earlier told NBC News that Waddle wants to tell his story and that he has not ruled out allowing his client to testify even if he is not granted immunity.

Gittins requested the immunity to prevent his client's testimony from being used against him in a court-martial.

A Navy spokesman said Adm. Thomas Fargo, Pacific Fleet commander, deferred the decision on immunity until Gittins indicates what kind of testimony Waddle would provide.

Three U.S. admirals, assisted by a Japanese admiral observing the proceeding, are investigating why the Greeneville hit and sank the Ehime Maru on Feb. 9.

Yesterday, Griffiths told the court of inquiry that the primary reason the Greeneville went out to sea Feb. 9 was to take 16 civilians on a ride aboard a nuclear sub.

Griffiths said the civilians were supposed to be a part of another mission, which got canceled. Instead of disappointing them, "there was a conscious decision not to derail the efforts of the citizens who had come this far for a ship ride."

By Dennis Oda, Star-Bulletin
Relatives of the missing Ehime Maru seamen leave the
courthouse after an afternoon of testimony during the
court of inquiry into the actions of Cmdr. Scott Waddle.

"In general, we discourage the practice of getting underway only for that mission," Griffiths said. "This was the exception to the rule."

The agenda that day for the Los Angeles-class attack submarine, one of the Navy's newest, was to show off its speed and power in a series of twists, turns and dives known as "angles and dangles," culminating in the surfacing maneuver known as emergency main ballast blow.

Questions were also raised yesterday about the command climate on the 360-foot nuclear sub, particularly concerning the relationship between Waddle, the Greeneville's skipper since March 1999, and his second in command, Pfeifer.

Griffiths said Pfeifer told other Navy investigators that he did not believe the Greeneville was given enough time to analyze sonar data before it went to periscope depth to verify the location of surface vessels using that data.

When the Greeneville did a sweep of the surface with its periscope, Pfeifer also believed that it was not raised high enough to be effective because of the conditions of the seas that day.

However, Griffiths, commander of Submarine Group 9 in Washington, said he did not know why Pfeifer never vocalized his concerns. "He was thinking these things but did not articulate them to the commanding officer or the officer of the deck," he said.

Civilians 'had zero impact'

During the past two days, Griffiths testified that Waddle, 41, cut corners because he was rushing to get the civilian guests back to Pearl Harbor by 3 p.m. Normally, it takes a submarine about 10 to 15 minutes to go from 150 feet to periscope depth of about 60 feet -- time spent analyzing sonar contacts from different angles. The Greeneville did that maneuver in six minutes.

It is standard practice when a submarine is not in a tactical or wartime scenario to spend up to three minutes at periscope depth homing in on the sonar contacts to ensure they will not be near when it surfaces. The Greeneville only spent 80 seconds at periscope depth.

Besides having a mission only to entertain the group of civilians, which included a Hawaii Kai couple, Griffiths testified that:

The Greeneville left one-third of its crew at home that day, leaving Pearl Harbor with only 106 of its crew of 163 officers and enlisted sailors. Among those not aboard were the senior sonar operator and senior fire control technician.

He could not find records indicating what type of training was conducted during the voyage.

At one point Waddle almost decided to call off the emergency main ballast blow, but changed his mind.

Griffiths also told the court of inquiry panel of three senior admirals that:

The Greeneville was operating in its appropriate training area.

Three civilians at key watch stations did not interfere with the surfacing operations.

"My professional judgment is that they (the civilians) had zero impact," said Griffiths, trying to end weeks of speculation that the civilians may have somehow caused the collision.

As previously reported, one civilian was seated in the helmsman's seat with a trained seaman standing behind him with his hands locked over the civilian's hands on the yoke, or steering wheel.

The other civilian was at the ballast control panel, and on order pulled two valves that sent compressed air into two sets of ballast tanks in the submarine, forcing it to rise like a rocket.

The third civilian hit the diving klaxon, which sounded the familiar "aroogah" three times, signaling a surfacing maneuver.

Crew shy to second-guess

Griffiths said he got the impression that Waddle was "directly involved" in the running of the Greeneville and "explicit in what he wanted." With that style of leadership, Griffiths said, Waddle did not get much input from his junior officers because "he is always giving directions."

Besides determining the cause of the accident, the court of inquiry was asked by Fargo to determine if Capt. Robert Brandhuber's presence compounded the Greeneville's problems. Brandhuber is chief of staff for Rear Adm. Al Konetzni, commander of the Pacific Fleet Submarine Force, and senior to Waddle. Griffiths said he did not think Brandhuber's presence added any pressure to the ship or its crew.

Besides escorting the 16 civilians, Brandhuber was on the Greeneville to evaluate the ship's performance; visit his son-in-law, who was due to leave the Greeneville where he was its engineering officer; and to build points to continue to draw sea pay.

Griffiths said Brandhuber had authority to intervene in the sub's operations but did not. "He probably should have had some signals going off in his mind that things were being hurried," Griffiths said, adding that Brandhuber "brooded" about that point when investigators questioned him.

Earlier in the day, the court, accompanied by Waddle, Coen, Pfeifer and two other officers, visited the control room of the Greeneville as it sat in a Pearl Harbor dry dock awaiting repairs. Then the group visited a Navy training facility and rode a submarine simulator to re-create some of the Greeneville's maneuvers.