Last week a navy commander and two fellow officers pleaded guilty to crashing the HMS Superb, a British nuclear submarine, in 2008, into a massive stone pinnacle under the Red Sea which was marked on maritime charts.
Navy commander crashed £32m British submarine after failing to ensure craft’s ’safe direction’
This brought to mind what a really lousy couple of years it has been for submarines running into other ships, other submarines or the bottom. Earlier this year two ballistic missile submarines, the French Le Triomphant and the British HMS Vanguard, managed to collide while submerged in the mid-Atlantic. Each submarine was laden with missiles powerful enough for 1,248 Hiroshima bombings. Both subs successfully limped home. So, Admiral, what have you got to say about the nuclear submarine crash?
In March of this year, the fast attack sub USS Hartford collided with the USS New Orleans, an amphibious transport dock ship, off the coast of Iran. TheUSS Hartford was submerged at the time of the collision and did major damage to her sail, periscope and one dive plane. Fifteen sailors suffered non-life threatening injuries. The collision also resulted in a 25,000 gallon fuel spill in the Strait of Hormuz.
Nuclear Submarine Damaged in Collision Near Iran
Fortunately none of these incidents were are serious as when in 2005 the USS San Francisco collided with a seamount at a depth of 500 feet while traveling at top speed. One crew member was killed and twenty-three in the collision.
In general submarines are running blind while underwater and rely on passive sonar sonar. In March of this year the British Navy announced that it would be installing Windows on submarines. Turns out, it was not a better means of seeing where they were going, but rather it was a reference to Microsoft’s computer operating system.