With their ability to stay hidden within the depths of the oceans and charge with fury when a threat is detected, nuclear submarines are considered one of the most strategic assets in a country’s inventory. However, the depths in which these submarines operate have witnessed some of the most catastrophic collisions and accidents known to mankind.
One such accident occurred twenty years ago, on January 8, 2005, when the USS San Francisco collided with a seamount while traveling at maximum speed.
USS San Francisco (SSN-711) was a nuclear submarine commissioned into service in 1981. The submarine was inducted into the US Pacific Fleet and served it throughout its service life to the day of its decommissioning in May 2022. It was home-ported in Guam in 2002, three years before it was to suffer a catastrophic crash.
On the fateful day of January 8, 2005, the USS San Francisco was en route to Brisbane in Australia for a liberty stop. The navigation crew charted the submarine’s path using undersea maps, which were thought to provide the most comprehensive view of the seabed.
At one point during its voyage, the navigation officer of the submarine decided it was safe to descend the submarine from 400 to 525 feet and accelerate to flank speed. The submarine was cruising at about 38 miles per hour.
Though the path had been carefully charted, the crew failed to see an undersea mountain or a seamount rising from the ocean floor on their navigational maps. The submarine was 360 miles or about 579 kilometers away from Guam and transiting the Caroline Mountain chain when it rammed straight into the seamount.
There was a shudder, followed by a loud sound. What followed was complete mayhem. Men were flung from their stations across the ship, some over distances of up to 20 feet. Several crew members sustained fractures, shattered bones, cuts, and bruises in a split second. Blood was flowing everywhere, and the scene resembled a “slaughterhouse.” One crew member, MM2 Joseph A. Ashley, died of head injuries.
The collision was so severe that the ship’s bow was crushed like a soda can. The forward ballast tanks were ruptured, and the sub’s sonar dome at the bow was destroyed. However, its nuclear reactor was unharmed, and the inner hull remained intact. Despite being hit hard, the submarine did not sink.
Some might think it was a miracle that the submarine was not lost, but, in reality, it was the US Navy’s SUBSAFE program formulated several decades before the incident that saved the ship.
After losing the nuclear submarine USS Thresher in the Atlantic Ocean in 1963, the US Navy created the SUBSAFE program, whose objective was to guarantee that the hull of a US Navy submarine would remain structurally sound under stress and that the sub could at least surface in an emergency. Safe nuclear reactors and reactor handling were the top priorities of the Navy’s Nuclear Propulsion Program. There was a chance of survival for a crew if the reactor, ballast systems, and hull all functioned as intended.
Because of this program, the USS San Francisco survived the crash. Despite their injuries, the captain and his crew hurried to bring the boat to the surface.
The crew hurled the “chicken switch,” an emergency blow activator that instantly blasted pressurized air into the ballast tanks of the USS San Francisco. The ship managed to reach Guam on its own power.
However, the incident exposed the threat posed to submarines by underwater mountains. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimates that there are about 100,000 seamounts in the world, and not all of them have been fully investigated. This has led to some of the most horrid submarine crashes in the world.
For instance, the US Navy’s USS Connecticut, a Seawolf-class submarine, hit a seamount while cruising at high speed in the northern part of the South China Sea in October 2021—one of the most significant US submarine accidents to take place in recent memory.
The collision of the USS San Francisco was mainly attributed to human error.
Aftermath Of The Crash
An investigation into the accident conducted later suggested that the accident was partly caused by human error.
Although the San Francisco crew did not see the seamount on the charts they used during their voyage, other charts showed it as a “potential hazard.” The investigation stated that the navigation crew should have consulted previous charts and known about the seamount.
“If San Francisco’s leaders and watch teams had complied with requisite procedures and exercised prudent navigation practices, the grounding would most likely have been avoided,” the Navy report said. “Even if not wholly avoided, however, the grounding would not have been as severe, and loss of life may be been prevented.”
The USS San Francisco’s crew used a chart created by the Defense Mapping Agency in 1989. A later analysis of the accident conducted by the University of Massachusetts in 2008 suggested that the Navy did not update its charts with the new data because it felt that the crash site area was not a high priority for mapping after the Cold War ended and that the Middle East region was given priority to support the Global War on Terror.
The submarine’s captain, Commander Kevin Mooney, was dismissed from submarine duty and reassigned to onshore duty.
Writing for EurAsian Times earlier, Rear Admiral Sanjay Roye (Retd.) said, “This incident demonstrates how operational demands and the emphasis on maintaining schedules or stealth can lead to the neglect of essential safety measures. The reliance on insufficient navigational data, coupled with the absence of active sonar use to avoid detection, contributed to the accident.”
“Ensuring access to updated hydrographic data and incorporating comprehensive risk assessments into mission planning are crucial steps to prevent such occurrences. Balancing operational secrecy with the necessity of accurate navigation is essential for safe submarine operations,” he added.
Following modifications to guarantee the hull’s integrity, the USS San Francisco reached Puget Sound, Washington. The damaged bow section was removed. The sister submarine USS Honolulu, scheduled to retire soon, had its bow removed and welded onto San Francisco. The submarine served for years until it was finally decommissioned in 2022.
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