Key Points – On January 8, 2005, the US Navy fast attack submarine USS San Francisco struck an uncharted undersea mountain at high speed near Guam, resulting in one fatality and numerous injuries among the crew.
-While outdated navigational charts contributed, a Navy investigation concluded that the command team’s failure to develop a safe voyage plan and exercise prudent navigation were primary causes.
-The submarine’s survival, despite severe bow damage, was attributed to the crew following rigorous SUBSAFE protocols, established after the 1963 USS Thresher disaster. The San Francisco was eventually repaired using the bow of the decommissioned USS Honolulu and returned to service.
The Story of How the USS San Francisco Submarine Survived a Deadly Crash
After a disaster in 2005, the USS San Francisco fast attack submarine’s bow looked worse than I have ever seen.
It was crushed like an aluminum can. The boat suffered one of the most awful accidents in modern naval history. The crew was in a daze after the collision that threw most of the sailors as far as 20 feet in the air. Most were hurt, and one was fatally injured. The San Francisco had hit an undersea mountain, resulting in a terrible incident that the U.S. Navy had worked hard to avoid for decades.
It happened on January 8, 2005, around 360 miles southeast of Guam near the Caroline Islands. The sub was traveling at a high flank speed of 30 knots at a depth of 525 feet. Fortunately, the vessel did not sink and sent the crew down to Davy Jones’ locker to a watery grave. However, the navigational charts used by the San Francisco were tragically outdated. The charts did not reveal the dangerous sea mount that caused the wreck until the last minute. Thankfully, the nuclear reactor was not damaged.
Old Submarine Loss Provided the Protocol for the Submarine to Survive
The sub was able to make it back to port in Guam after a harrowing journey when the crew had recovered from the shock of the crash. The sailors followed a decades-old safety protocol that was still effective in the 21st century. This was based on the USS Thresher tragedy. The Thresher was lost while it attempted to resurface in 1963, and it was suspected that an emergency on board prevented the sub from blowing its ballast tanks.
Follow the Emergency Check List
As a result of the Thresher disaster, the Navy created the SUBSAFE quality assurance program that always called for a failsafe list of to-dos to make sure a sub could always make it to the surface no matter what the damages were during an accident. Some stipulations guided how the crew would protect the nuclear propulsion system. The sailors rehearsed emergency ballast procedures to ensure that the hull would be intact if the worst happened.
All of these protocols were followed under the SUBSAFE program, and this allowed San Francisco to survive despite the severe damage to the nose. Without the SUBSAFE checklist, there would have been no way San Francisco would have lived.
Safe Voyage Plan Was Not Created
The San Francisco sustained $88 million in damages. An investigatory report pulled no punches. “Specifically, an investigating officer and three admirals who reviewed the report concluded that then-San Francisco commanding officer Commander Kevin Mooney and his navigation team failed to develop and execute a safe voyage plan, then failed to exercise enough caution while transiting through a region dotted with steep undersea volcanoes,” according to the Navy Times.
Final Report Called for More Training
This was from a 124-page final report about the accident. The Navy admitted that the navigational charts could have been better designed in a statement that partially forgave the command team after the incident. The Navy called for more training to avoid such a tragedy in the future.
“Opportunities exist for systemic improvement in functional (formal and on-the-job training) and administrative (directives and inspections) areas.”
Prudent Navigation Practices Were Not Exercised
However, the report stated that the crew did not plan for any undersea mount and that the sub was able to spot it three miles away but did not react quickly enough to take evasive action and avoid it.
“I find it difficult to conclude absolutely that grounding could have been avoided,” the director of the investigation said. “It is absolutely clear to me, however, that if command leadership and the navigation team followed basic specified procedures and exercised prudent navigation practices, they would have been aware of imminent navigation hazards and therefore [been] compelled to operate the ship more prudently.”
This was a scathing determination from the final investigation. The leadership team should have acted more quickly and taken a more decisive procedural action to avoid the blow to the sub. Accidents do happen, but the San Francisco is a cautionary tale that assuredly became a case study taught to enlisted sailors and officers in submarine training schools.
What Happened to the San Francisco Submarine After the Crash?
It took three years for the workers to fix the San Francisco’s bow. Another sub donated its nose to help keep the San Franscisco from being retired. The USS Honolulu was set to be de-commissioned, and the Navy thought that this vessel could help the San Francisco by transferring its nose to the stricken sub. After that, the San Francisco served another eight years and was then transferred to Norfolk, Virginia, to serve as a training submarine.
About the Author: Dr. Brent M. Eastwood
Brent M. Eastwood, PhD is the author of Don’t Turn Your Back On the World: a Conservative Foreign Policy and Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare plus two other books. Brent was the founder and CEO of a tech firm that predicted world events using artificial intelligence. He served as a legislative fellow for U.S. Senator Tim Scott and advised the senator on defense and foreign policy issues. He has taught at American University, George Washington University, and George Mason University. Brent is a former U.S. Army Infantry officer. He can be followed on X @BMEastwood.
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