Wonder if anyone was on the scope? Guess we will never hear the whole story now that Paul Harvey has passed.

McHale's navy.

And we let these fools wage war in our name?

I suppose by the time Iran reads this there will have been a village of orphans on the trawler being brought to a hospital that were killed. Don't forget, the Navy is now hiring again. Those Captains, they seem so replaceable.

Great, another fat bill for the taxpayers thanks to our government's warmongering agenda in the Middle East.

was Gilligan on the fishing trawler?

what the hell is going on ? these sub mishaps are happening to frequently, did budget cuts take away there sonar ?

Sh..t happen s, that is life!

Another example of the US gov't harassing private business.

Nominated for the top 10 dumbest string of comments for 2013

BTW

did budget cuts take away there sonar ?

ownership is their, not 'there'......'nouf said....

justoneguy:

you only comment is to correct my grammar. sounds like your anal retentive tool ! hows my grammar sound now !

Blackbird

Wonder if anyone was on the scope?

My husband said the same thing lol

There is definately a Top Ten List building itself, between this and the Minesweeper aground off the Phillipines!

#10 - Thought it was only a whale

#9 - Heard the Straights of Hormuz was a drive-thru

#8 - The COMMO saw a Mermaid Signal

#7 - Pushed the gas instead of the brake

#6 - Doing the Battleship Game on OpSys

#5 - Had bad fish tacos the night before, and Crew Gas kinda made the sub more 'floaty'

#4 - CO was sleep subbing

#3 - A giant Magnet fish was in the hull of the trawler

#2 - What the Hell fun is it if you can't ram a vessile every now and again?

And #1, Ladies & Gentlemen!

- "We were Drunk as Sailors!!!"

Thank You, & Good Night!!

A minesweeper lodged on a reef and now a sub hits a trawler. What's next? Lately the USN has certainly got their s#$t together.

The right of way in Sub traffic court would go to the Trawler boat. You have to see it to be at fault. Just Dial 1-800-SCUM-LAW.......

According to the US McHale's NAVY, the wind scared a whale, the whale hit the sub, the sub scared the fishing boat, and the fishing boat jumped out of the water landing on top of the sub. In defense of American liberty the US ambassador of the Trait of Humoroz has filed human right violation, currency manipulation, and terrorism charges against the whale.

"We're gonna need a bigger boat."

These large subs lumber around just under the surface, creating invisible moving water hazards? Seems like a horrible idea. I'm amazed this kind of thing doesn't happen more often.

That only comes on the deluxe package option for an extra $250M

They sure do, but, if the dudes on watch sleep, well, you see what happens.

Being an EX Submarine Sonar Tech here is ONE POSSIBLE scenario to how this happened.

1. The Sub needs to come to Periscope Depth

2. Do a 360 sound search ( No windows on subs like at Disneyland )

3. Trawler dead in the water so no sound from trawler.

4. Periscope breaks surface...trawler there......boom....periscope busted off......trawler starts engine and drives off.

Again..this is ONE scenario. Just guessing from my end.....but you would be surprised how stressful coming to the surface can be for a sub crew due to thermal layers, heavy biologic's, trawlers dead in the water. Our sonar ( passive ) is only so good and can not detect vessels sitting on the surface with everything turned off.

There is also no mention of weather, sea state's, etc...so very little info is given to know how this happened.

Captains career just ended along with a couple of others..and the facts of who, what, where, when, and why will come out in about 3 months.

Captains career just ended along with a couple of others..and the facts of who, what, where, when, and why will come out in about 3 months.

The "captain" will soon be "flying" a desk at Great Mistakes. Sadly he will have much company from the team of "oops" who have a PILE of "atta boys" mired by one "Oh shyte"

Interesting Jeff that this USS Jacksonville (Los Angeles class attack sub) previously hit a Saudi container ship in Chesapeake Bay some time back. As a former submariner would you say these events happen frequently? Seems so and by now shouldn't the navy have developed a collision avoidance system for just these types of cases should a stationary trawler be overhead? What it if were a frigate, destroyer or larger? Catastrophic failure. BTW the Russian Oscar class subs had windows in front of the conning tower. Possible solution??

1. Near misses happen AL THE TIME. Most people would never know about the..unless you were on the sub. Do you think the captain would send off a message saying...OOOOPS..almost hit something? Not a chance.

2. Subs ( IMHO ) come to periscope depth faster than they need to. While we are coming up from depth we are going thru salinity layers and thermal layers. These layers mask sound from traveling thru them..deaden actually ( reflect ) ..think of sound being a rubber ball that bounces on a wall...the same thing happens to sound in different thermal and salinity layers. It just bounces off the layer. So if you are UNDER the layer the sound from what is on the surface goes down to the layer and bounces back up..but does not go thru to where the sub is at to hear it.

2. If a vessel is on the surface dead in the water..any kind of vessel....and you are under it..coming up..YOU DON"T KNOW IT IS THERE!..it's like walking blindfolded. You come up and the captain or officer of the deck is on the scope swing in a 360 circle at a good rate to see any close contacts. And sea swells can also mask/hide any close contacts.... Coming up to PD is a dangerous episode.

Too many variables to try and explain here. But the crew COULD do everything right and accidents still do happen. And trust me..even if the crew does everything right..some egghead sitting in a chair will find a fault. They can't just chalk anything up to @!$%# happens. Someone always has to be blamed and found guilty.

the windows that you see in the front of the Russian sails ( conning towers ) are for TOPSIDE WATCHES WHILE THE SUB IS SURFACED. We have small plexiglass windshields that we install for topside watches too...but they are not windows for underwater...lol

My gut feeling is that I think that the scope got snagged on the trawlers nets/gear if the trawler was moving. And even if that is so..and they had the trawler on sonar they should have been farther away when coming to pd.

Blackbird

There is a collision avoidance maneuver called a "jump 50", but it's not automatic.

Jeff N.- Thank you for the great info, you answered a LOT of my questions.

Thank you Jeff N. Yours is the most knowlegeable comment on this forum.

(from an old Fletcher class Radioman)

There has to be some type of technology available to allow a person on a submarine to "see" what is above them. In land vehicles, with poor visibility, they us cameras and sensors. I wonder if that would work in a submarine.

Jeff,

Not that this is true, but it is in the article and would disqualify any of the Trawler-Dead-In-Water-When-Hit scenarios:

As for the trawler, it may not have even realized it hit the submarine and did not appear to suffer any damage.

The vessel "continued on a consistent course and speed offering no indication of distress or acknowledgment of a collision," the Fifth Fleet said in a statement.

Ha Ha love it. Thanks Doug, Set my weekend of just right.

Part of the Iranian Ghost Trawler fleet.

Not really, the coast guard chases illegals trying to get to the US and then theres always the war on drugs. So when I first read it I thought a US sub had hit a shrimp boat off louisiana.

You might want to read the first sentence of the article again, Phil. It's pretty clear. As clear as Persian waters.

Nice new desk awaits.........

"The Persian Gulf has many good fishing grounds..." is only the start of the third paragraph of the Gulf's Wikipedia page. Lord knows you shouldn't be expected to do the slightest bit of research before you spout conspiracy theories.

maybe the USS Pueblo borrowed from north korea.

A good conspiracy theory will never be swayed by mere facts.

Why wouldn't there be fishing boats there? It's water. Fish live in water.

back,

This happened at 5am local which means pretty low visibility. The trawler's radar would not pick up a submerged submarine and a periscope is a pretty tiny object barely out of the water. Somebody goofed for sure but we won't know until after the Board of Inquiry what the watch status of the submarine was. I also doubt this was a Soviet style "fishing trawler" but who knows what vessels were sold off.

Kind of reminds me of the "games" the subs used to play in the "gulf" of California and off of Baja. They routinely ran drills cutting back and forth behind charter boats and tuna boats in the 80's and 90's. They would practice strafing techniques and running "under the sonar". Hadn't heard of a collision since a tuna boat went down off Baja in the early eighties. They never proved that the impact came from a sub, but the fisherman on the tuna boat attested to underwater shadows strafing as they trolled west of Mag Bay. I guess nowadays the media will report anything juicy regardless of the consequences of their mindless regurgitation of information.

Those nukes are pretty incredible, though. I remember running in from the Coronado Islands doing about 35 knots in 20 foot swells. We were passed by a 350+ foot nuke doing 55+ knots on the surface. If they were doing that in the open water (during the day!), I shudder to think of the "true" capability of one in a hurry is. Let alone what they do underwater.

For all we know, The CO may have been ordered to hit the trawler/spy ship and now awaits a promotion!

Reading Comp 101

A nuclear-powered American attack submarine hit a fishing trawler after it passed through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf on Thursday, a Navy official said.

First paragraph. Unless this article has been corrected/updated, wow, remedial classes are in order for some.

It's the headline. That's what you read first to decide if the article is worth your time to read. It mislead many readers who expected to read about a collision with a trawler somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.

Sure, that makes sense, but I did come across a bit dikish. Sorry.

Important enough to read no matter which Gulf if this kind of thing catches your eye. I overreacted because many bitch about the "NBC Editors Suck", etc., and never even look to see it is an AP article and photos!!! Not in this article, but several others.

Peace, and hope you still found this accident to be a bit disturbing, if not horrific, thank goodness.

It's the trawler's fault. The barnacles on the hull were arranged so sluttily - the sub couldn't help itself!

@Dee Ten,

Carter never "drove" subs. He qualified to command diesel-electric subs in the early 1950's, but transferred to Rickover's nuclear sub force. Perhaps you are confused by the "Chalk River Incident."

On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada's Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown. The resulting explosion caused millions of liters of radioactive water to flood the reactor building's basement, and the reactor's core was no longer usable. Carter was ordered to Chalk River, joining other American and Canadian service personnel. He was the officer in charge of the U.S. team assisting in the shutdown of the Chalk River Nuclear Reactor.

Once they arrived, Carter's team used a model of the reactor to practice the steps necessary to disassemble the reactor and seal it off. During execution of the disassembly, each team member, including Carter, donned protective gear, was lowered individually into the reactor, where he could stay for only a few seconds at a time to minimize exposure to radiation. They had to use hand tools to loosen bolts, remove nuts, and take the other steps necessary to complete the disassembly process. Carter and his team were honored by the Canadian government for their bravery in an extremely hazardous situation."

Cool history lesson!

Thanx Chris!!

@Anilof,

Kind of a Tea Party/GOP message: We will use one of your fishing boats to rip off the primary periscope from one of our subs. If you ignore us we will run an aircraft carrier into a rock. If you continue to ignore us, maybe we will have a nuclear test in downtown Denver. LOL

In the real world Iran and Oman (an Iranian client state) own the Straits of Hormuz. It is NOT international waters. In order to transit the straits, an American ship must give prior notice and must proceed forthwith at standard speed. During the transit military ships may not conduct military activities (such as an aircraft carrier launching aircraft.) There is actually no legal requirement concerning US naval ships. The prevailing law of the sea on such transits is the 1982 UN Convention for Law of the Seas (UNCLOS). Iran dows not have to allow the US to transit for the simple reason that the US never signed or ratified UNCLOS (even though the US literally forced it down Egypt's throat.) Iran has signed the Convention but its parliament never ratified it. Oman both signed and ratified it. So, the US, exercising its famous do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do homemade legal form contends that it has no obligations to Iran, but Iran is bound to follow UNLCLOS regarding US ships. You don't need an Ayatollah to know that that is bullcrap.

Anilof

I actually had the same first thought. Why would we say anything about this unless we wanted them to know we had subs in the area? I would think that it would be in the better interests of our military not to mention the incident, if in fact the other ship didn't appear to even notice the collision.

Common thoughts, guys. It is unlikely for us to know/trust the offical MSM account, obviously.

Good point Monad, the article did not identify the country of origin of the trawler.

It doesn't matter, monad. Give posters an inch and they will fill in the blanks with anything that comes to mind. No matter how cockamaimy

It WAS carrying Aluminum Tubes, right? You know, like the ones in Iraq?

Cockamaimy, indeed, Sir!

((-;