Court weighs FROM THE BEGINNING it has been drummed into them: Navy law and tradition holds that the captain is in command with total authority and responsibility for his ship.
Waddle’s burden
The Ehime Maru tragedy
Civilian did not see trawler through periscope
By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-BulletinFor Cmdr. Scott Waddle, a 1981 U.S. Naval Academy graduate, the tenet is something he has never forgotten.
Like many Navy captains, Waddle, 41, hung a passage from novelist Joseph Conrad about command in the state room of his nuclear attack submarine USS Greeneville. It was this passage he paraphrased just moments before he entered a tiny Pearl Harbor courtroom where his future would be decided: "There is one who alone is ultimately responsible for the safe navigation, engineering performance, accurate gun firing and morale of the ship. He is the commanding officer. He is the ship."
Now three senior admirals must determine accountability for the accident six weeks ago that claimed the lives of nine Japanese high school students, teachers and crewmen of the fishing trawler Ehime Maru.Their recommendation -- expected within a month -- will be sent to Adm. Thomas Fargo, Pacific Fleet commander. His options range from exoneration to convening a court-martial.
In defending his actions Tuesday -- in the most dramatic moment of a rare Navy court of inquiry -- Waddle said: "As commanding officer, I am solely responsible for this truly tragic accident. I will have to live with the consequences for the rest of my life."
Waddle's civilian attorney, Charles Gittins, who has successfully defended several high-profile military defendants including Sgt. Major of the Army Gene McKinney in a sexual harassment misconduct case, asked the three admirals to be "reasonable."GITTINS EMPHASIZED Waddle's experience and defended the 41-year-old submariner by saying he used his "best judgment" on Feb. 9, the day the rudder of the 6,000-ton sub sliced through the hull of the 190-foot Ehime Maru, sinking it in 10 minutes.
Twice Gittins introduced two other tragic naval events to underscore his point. He made Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths, who heads the Navy's preliminary investigation, recall the 1988 USS Vincennes incident in which the crew of a cruiser knocked an Iranian airliner out of the sky, killing 290 civilians. Then there was the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in a Yemen harbor which led to the death of 17 sailors.
The two commanding officers were never charged with criminal acts, Gittins said.
He was able to get Griffiths and Rear Adm. Albert Konetzni, Pacific Fleet Submarine Force commander, to say they didn't think Waddle was guilty of criminal negligence -- the most serious of the three charges.
Griffiths also testified that he didn't think Waddle intended to operate the sub unsafely that day -- another charge Waddle could face.
The inquiry ended Tuesday after 12 days and 33 witnesses. Testimony seemed to run counter to what were supposed to be the themes of Waddle's leadership -- safety, efficiency and backup.
These included leaving a sonar trainee on duty without supervision; running behind schedule and attempting to catch up by cutting corners and the time needed to analyze sonar data and scan the ocean's surface for obstruction; not "broaching" or taking his sub high enough to ensure that there were no surface vessels nearby before performing the emergency main ballast tank blow for 16 civilians; and finally, a technician who failed to follow orders by reporting a close sonar contact.
Waddle's time on the stand Tuesday came as Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori visited the collision site nine miles south of Diamond Head with several grieving family members. Waddle made note of the furor the collision caused in Japan, saying he was worried that he would be "sacrificed for an unwarranted court-martial" because of dictates of the international and political environment.
THAT SEEMED TO ANGER Vice Adm. John Nathman, president of the three-member board, who asked if Waddle knew whether any of the admirals had any political aspirations. The sub captain said no.
Besides Waddle, two other Greeneville officers -- Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer, the sub's executive officer, and Lt. j.g. Michael Coen, officer of the deck -- were named as targets of the court inquiry. But the three-admiral panel could include others when it forwards its report to Fargo. Waddle was the only one of the three to testify.
The admirals repeatedly appeared to have a hard time believing Waddle when he told them the Feb. 9 incident was "the exception and not the rule," especially when Waddle said he was surprised to learn that during the two years he commanded the Greeneville, it was common practice to allow a sonar trainee to work without supervision, contrary to Navy regulations.
Waddle had been considered one of the Pacific Fleet's outstanding officers -- destined, according to his mentor Konetzni, for stars himself. But on Feb. 9, Waddle seemed to forget another tenet of command -- "the danger of the one-man show." It is something submariners also are warned about in command school.
As Konetzni testified: "If you take things into your own hands, you better be right."
ONE OF THE 16 civilians who rode on the USS Greeneville when it collided with a Japanese fishing trawler six weeks ago says she saw nothing "but waves" through the sub's periscope minutes before the collision. Civilian did not see
trawler through periscopeBy Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-BulletinCatherine Graham Wyatt told National Transportation Safety Board investigators on Feb. 19 -- 10 days after Greeneville collided with the Ehime Maru sinking it and killing nine people -- that she watched as Lt. j.g. Michael Coen, the officer of the deck, and Cmdr. Scott Waddle, the submarine's skipper, scanned the surface minutes before the collision.
She said that Coen made at least one rotation and Waddle did two at periscope depth of 60 and 58 feet.
WADDLE has testified that he didn't see the Ehime Maru although there was sonar data placing it 4,000 yards north of the Greeneville at least six minutes before the collision.
She was able to see what the two saw through their sweeps because a television camera is mounted on the periscope and several monitors are located in Greeneville's control room.
"I never saw anything but waves, but wow, it was pretty rough in there," Graham said. "I didn't see anything but waves."
Graham's testimony and the interviews of several of the 16 civilians who rode on the special Greeneville trip Feb. 9 were released by the NTSB yesterday.
Jack Clary, in his Feb. 20 interview, disclosed that he was the person sitting in the helmsman's seat at the time of the emergency main ballast tank blow.
However, a crewman had his hands on his at all times, Clary said.
When the Greeneville hit the Ehime Maru he recalled Waddle saying: "Christ, what the hell was that?"
