Astute Sub grounding 'catalogue of errors'

[john_morris_uk]

John, your loyalty does you credit. However, having read the report I have to say that the internal organisation of the boat seems to have left a lot to be desired, and familiarity with frequent rider changes clearly bred a dangerous contempt for the risks they might be running and a lack of awareness of the cumulative relatively minor changes and shortcomings in personnel and experience that had occurred.

The sinking of ARTEMIS in Gosport many years ago happened when I was making the decision to volunteer for submarines, and the concatenation of minor problems that led to it was deeply engraved in the minds of everyone in the submarine service then and for many years afterwards. Let us hope that this unnecessary but salutary event has the same effect in the future.

Finally, I find it surprising and disappointing that the evident problems with internal communications and the hidden ones with recording systems were not sorted out before they mattered, for which the blame must be shared between ship's staff, the supervising authorities and the shipbuilder.

I don't mean to be over loyal - but I do criticise some of the less informed comments on here. Some of them are plain silly. I don't earn my living navigating submarines - but I have ridden on them and lived with the people who navigate for a living. They have my greatest respect for the standards they usually maintain.

 

[Grumpybear]

I don't mean to be over loyal - but I do criticise some of the less informed comments on here. Some of them are plain silly. I don't earn my living navigating submarines - but I have ridden on them and lived with the people who navigate for a living. They have my greatest respect for the standards they usually maintain.

I agree with you about some of the uninformed and possibly chip on shoulder comments. I can also empathise with the boat's officers, having been a junior engineer in an S boat during build, trials and workup. It is very sad that in this case things were allowed to go so badly wrong, and given the cost of the boat and the current economic situation, some public criticism, however ill informed, is inevitable and even healthy. I have no doubt that FOSM's (or whatever his title is these days) statement about the limited extent of the problem is his genuine opinion, but having released the SI report the MOD will struggle to allay concerns without a bit more supporting evidence.

 

[st599]

If the navigational capabilities of a modern sub exclude a device that would let them see they were about to park on the bricks, then something is seriously wrong.

Read the report. It states clearly there were no ECDIS "chartplotters" on board.

 

[st599]

My second point was about the navigational capabilities and not the maneuvering qualities. However most would suggest the maneuvering ability affects how you manage the pilotage. My real gripe is that I was countering the flippant comment that a cheap chart plotter would have helped. The sub has rather better kit than a cheap chart plotter - the trouble is that the whole people-system-kit failed at various levels and there's no disputing that.

Astute does not have WECDIS installed and is relying on paper charts.

Think that means no chartplotter. Not that I think an OOW should need one.

 

[toad_oftoadhall]

Astute does not have WECDIS installed and is relying on paper charts.

No, but I'd bet they've got a cockney sailor [1] marking a position on the chart every 2 minutes or some such from some reliable source in much the same way as a chart plotter does for yotties, albeit not on paper. [2]

Or at least I hope they do. I do hope they're not driving gazzilion Euro ships around near land on EPs every hour no matter how skilled they are at calculating them.


[1] The bloke in war films who approaches Noel Coward on the bridge and says "Cup of cocoa, Sir?".

[2] Bearings on landmarks taken from the conning tower, GPS, whatever the Decca equivalent might be in the today's Forces if there is one.

 

[alant]

I think you need to visit a sub - and see (some - ie what you are allowed to see) of the kit and talk to them about navigation. People might stop making cheap wise crack remarks if they knew a few % of what they do and how they do it.

I know you put a smiley face on the end of your post, but I am not sure that some things are that funny.

If I am being over sensitive my apologies. As I said before, I know the CO and I don't think he deserved what's happened.

Bish,
With all due respect, how nice a guy the CO is, has no bearing on the fact that he was in command & his command ended up on the putty.

You are YM examiner.
If a YM candidate made this error, would you be happy to give him the OK?

You keep going on about the 'kit' onboard & navigation, as if it was extra terrestrial, which it patently wasn't. Whilst a sub is on the surface, navigation cannot fundamentaly be any different to any other surface vessels.

Yes different to a small yacht, but they have highly trained specialists supposedly monitoring progress & they still made basic errors. If a sub surfaced, has some peculiar aspect regarding its manouvering, then this should have been planned for & taken into consideration.

As well as endangering the sub, they made a public spectacle of themselves & reduced the reputation of our Navy to international ridicule. If whilst skippering any of the 'commercial' workboats, I also work on, I made such an error, its likely that I'd never work in that position again & would have to accept it.

 

[jonjo]

Having read the report it was quite right that the CO was dismissed his ship, and I suspect several other officers will not have glittering careers even if they escape court martial

You forget this is the Royal Navy, poor performance is not an impediment to career advancement. As the released investigations into the loss of Sheffield illustrate, the ship was poorly operated and was hit while on a fag break.

Rear Admiral Sam Salt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Salt

 

[Beadle]

So what can WE learn from this?

I've read the report, and I'm quite interested in Little Sister.....

What we can learn is what we all know - or should.

Know where you are.

Have a plan for where you want to go and how you're going to get there.

From what I can remember of that part of the world there are enough fixed objects to take a bearing from. Never mind the megabuck electrickery - a £10 hand compass and a chart could have prevented this farce in less than 30 seconds.

 

[jonjo]

driving a ferkin great submarine when you are exhausted,stressed,over worked and under great pressure, in the dark and being ordered to do something.

There speaks the ethos that cripples the 21st century Royal Navy. They screwed up while enduring a tiny fraction of the stresses of combat, it was the nautical equivalent of falling into the rose bed en-route to water the cabbages in the vegetable garden.

 

[maxi77]

I know that is how it works. Its an automatic courts martial but it doesn't mean he deserved what happened. It just happens that he was in charge when a lot of mistakes were made.

He was in charge of the system that failed, he screwed up big time because if he waqs on top of his job that would never have happened. He has already been summarily punished, dismissed his ship, almost certainly returned to general service, so no more submarine pay, chances of any further promotion almost zero.

 

[maxi77]

You forget this is the Royal Navy, poor performance is not an impediment to career advancement. As the released investigations into the loss of Sheffield illustrate, the ship was poorly operated and was hit while on a fag break.

Rear Admiral Sam Salt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Salt

Sam was exonerated at the time after some very serious technical investigation not trial by press or wikipedia. Sam was an excellent officer well respected by those who knew him, and that includes the Sheffield survivors.

I am slighly biased I did my nuclear training with Sam and helped him with his physics homework, he was also in my watch for training before he took command of his first SSN.

 

[LittleSister]

I'm quite interested in Little Sister.....

Yer wot?

 

[jonjo]

Will any of your electronics survive being at depths of several hundred feet, because anything that lives on a submarine bridge has to be able to survive such pressures, which is one of the reasons there is not that much kit up there.

Lots of smoke to obscure the inexcusable. I assume an iPod survives a submarine tour?

So I have a proposal, as my personal contribution to the defense of the realm I will sell my handheld plotter to HMS Astute for 0.000005% of her build cost.

p.s. This is not life and death equipment just a tiny investment to help prevent HMS Astute wandering off the driveway while aiming for the garage.

 

[maxi77]

Lots of smoke to obscure the inexcusable. I assume an iPod survives a submarine tour?

So I have a proposal, as my personal contribution to the defense of the realm I will sell my handheld plotter to HMS Astute for 0.000005% of her build cost.

p.s. This is not life and death equipment just a tiny investment to help prevent HMS Astute wandering off the driveway while aiming for the garage.

But you still fail to understand the cause of the accident. Your little handheld as I understand things would have made sod all difference. They knew where they were but the OOW either failed to get the message or failed to act on it in time. This was not a failure of navigation, it was a failure of command, control and communication.

 

[jonjo]

Its an automatic courts martial but it doesn't mean he deserved what happened.

Why did you bother to utter the word "deserved". Next you will bleating about fairness like the deputy prime minister talking about taxes.

The only word that matters is "competence" because incompetence kills people in combat.

 

[john_morris_uk]

Bish,
With all due respect, how nice a guy the CO is, has no bearing on the fact that he was in command & his command ended up on the putty.

You are YM examiner.
If a YM candidate made this error, would you be happy to give him the OK?

You keep going on about the 'kit' onboard & navigation, as if it was extra terrestrial, which it patently wasn't. Whilst a sub is on the surface, navigation cannot fundamentaly be any different to any other surface vessels.

Yes different to a small yacht, but they have highly trained specialists supposedly monitoring progress & they still made basic errors. If a sub surfaced, has some peculiar aspect regarding its manouvering, then this should have been planned for & taken into consideration.

As well as endangering the sub, they made a public spectacle of themselves & reduced the reputation of our Navy to international ridicule. If whilst skippering any of the 'commercial' workboats, I also work on, I made such an error, its likely that I'd never work in that position again & would have to accept it.

You know I wouldn't give the guy his ticket, but people are misunderstanding my two main points.

Firstly, I am not suggesting that the kit is extra terrestrial, but people keep suggesting that the boat was deficient in her navigational equipment. It wasn't. Any suggestions about how the RN ought to be buying hand held chart plotters or anything similar is complete twaddle. The boat has the kit - but it wasn't used/applied correctly. Various people have therefore lost their jobs/careers.

Secondly, I am not bleating about the CO losing his job. Its part of the deal, and its an unfortunate truism that despite your best intentions and endeavors, sometimes your staff muck up and its YOU that carry the can. My wife is head of a school. If one of her staff was caught doing something wrong - despite her having all the correct safeguarding procedures in place - then she would be being interviewed by the media and the police to find out what happens. How her career progressed would be open to much debate and would be according to the findings of the investigation.

The CO is not a bad person - but he was in charge when things went wrong. It appears that (like many CO's) he allowed things to happen that weren't always EXACTLY by the book. It all went wrong and he lost his career at that point. The responsibility is what he got paid a lot of money to accept, and he now pays the price. I was just asking for a sense of proportion about the punishment because he wasn't on the bridge or even directly involved in the events leading up the grounding. In fact he acted promptly when he realised that his team had got things wrong, but he still loses his career in command. Its the deal - but a sense of proportion might be a good thing for some of the hang him high armchair critics who (with respect) don't know what they are talking about some of the time.

 

[jonjo]

Sam was exonerated at the time after some very serious technical investigation not trial by press or wikipedia.

He was relaxing in his cabin when his ship was struck, where was the captain of his buddy vessel HMS Coventry at that moment? His no.1 was nattering with stewards in the canteen, the air defense section in the war room was almost deserted.

Many and wide failings indeed, the captain did not deserve a spell in prison but I believe most other credible military institutions around the world would have quietly pensioned him off within 18 months.

 

[Beadle]

But you still fail to understand the cause of the accident. Your little handheld as I understand things would have made sod all difference. They knew where they were but the OOW either failed to get the message or failed to act on it in time. This was not a failure of navigation, it was a failure of command, control and communication.

If they knew where they were how did they manage to run the thing aground?

Who knew where they were?

What did he do about it?

If it was a failure of command and control it must be down to the skipper.

I don't suppose failing to maintain the plot helped much.

Do they have the training to do chart and pencil pilotage?


I do feel a certain sympathy for the skipper, I get the feeling from all this that he was not well served by his crew, but whatever it was that went wrong its the skippers responsibility - whoever and whatever went wrong.

As someone once said - "its a hard service"

 

[Poignard]

I hope I am not giving away any more information than can be gleaned from the report. If I am, for God’s sake tell me so I can delete it before I get hauled off to the Tower of London!

It's more than 40 years since I served in a nuclear submarine but in those days, in coastal waters when on the surface, the boat was navigated in a similar manner to a yacht or any other vessel; using compass, charts, tide tables, depth sounder etc

In addition to my day job, I and two (or three) other Petty Officers kept watches at the chart table. I suppose we were what is called the POOW in the report. We had undergone a course in coastal navigation before joining the boat and our job was to plot positions, based on bearings given us by the OOW up in the fin. In turn we would work out and tell him a safe course to steer allowing for the tide, depth of water and obstructions, and alert him to anything relevant such as lights and landmarks. Looking back, I suppose this was quite a responsibility but it didn't seem so at the time; it was just an interesting job in addition to my normal technical duty. (It came in very handy when I did a blind pilotage on a Day Skipper course!)

Of course, there was a sophisticated electronic navigational system on board but its use was frowned on* in coastal waters unless visibility was poor. Perhaps navigators in those days had more sense than to rely on anything more complicated than was necessary in the circumstances.

Later in life I got to know this area as an Engineer in the Merchant Navy, on coasters. Navigation was again carried out at a very basic level (as I believe it should be) but the most significant difference between the RN and the MN was the numbers of people involved in doing anything. I think the saying ‘too many chiefs and not enough indians’ could describe the RN in those days. This is understandable because warships have weapons systems to be maintained and operated, and allowance has to be made for people being killed or wounded. After being in the RN it came as a great surprise to find how much got done in the MN by so few people. In coasters we had hardly got off the berth before everyone except the officer on the bridge and the engineer on watch had disappeared!

The RN has, or had, a very hierarchical management structure and advice from people lower down the food chain was not expected, or wanted. Look what happened to the rating who suggested that Sir Cloudesley Shovel’s fleet was not where the Admiral thought it was!

*Perhaps 'frowned on' is a bit strong. Maybe 'mildly disapproved' of would be better

 

[Plomong]

- and had the capability of knowing EXACTLY where it was - but they mucked up.

In fact, they did know exactly where they were, and the distance to the putty, but did nothing about it other than give a confused order about astern propulsion and half revs, or something like that, that was misunderstood, misexecuted, and the execution seems not to have been monitored by the one who gave the order.

Further, they were inshore of the inked grid covering the agreed transfer area, the best navigator was in charge of the casing party, the guy up top had no or little experience of that area or the evolution, comms with the guys below were difficult or impossible, with delays, misunderstood commands or misinterpreted, wrong charts, etc. The fix log was non-existent over a significant interval, Big Brother, Little Sister and another logging system were either U/S, switched off or gave no useable info to the inquiry, the CO was in his cabin and no one thought of calling him to put things straight, the guys below knew they were going onto the putty and did nothing except telling the guy above, and he did nothing sensible.

I've read the report and am absolutely astonished by the sequence of events leading up to the grounding. Shows a very poor level of readiness in the crew -- definitely more training and experience needed.

To me, the CO got the rap, but the ones responsible on the spot were the guy up above, the 3 guys below -- all should be career-limited if not worse. If that standard of play occurred on a casting platform in a steelworks (continuous casting of liquid steel through a set of moulds) the shift leader and four or five of the key operators would be out on their ears quicker that you could say OUT.

Very poor show, IMHO.

Plomong