U.S. Navy responds to questions

At a Department of Defense briefing in Washington yesterday, Rear Adms. Stephen R. Pietropaoli and Craig R. Quigley, along with Navy salvage director Tom Salmon, answered questions about the USS Greeneville’s sinking of the Japanese training ship Ehime Maru last Friday.

Here are excerpts from their briefing.

Q: What are the plans of the Defense Department to release the list of names of the VIP visitors on the submarine?

Quigley: "I don’t believe the names will be released at least until the investigative process in complete. ... The investigations that are ongoing now, and those that might yet come, very possibly will want to interview and get information from these individuals, as well as crew members."

Q: In hindsight, wouldn’t it be perhaps better to have an area to practice these exercises in which surface ships would be alerted that there’s a possibility of a submarine?

Pietropaoli: "Having it in specified areas of the ocean would limit the times we could practice. But most importantly, we do this on a regular basis. We do it safely. There are very, very comprehensive procedures. Are they foolproof? Clearly not."

Q: Since this incident, has the Navy changed any of the procedures for emergency (surfacing)? Have you stopped them?

Pietropaoli: "Obviously we can’t afford to stop practicing a maneuver that is critical to our safety."

Q: These civilians who were at the controls on the sub, were they actually controlling the submarine?

Pietropaoli: "In a real sense, they have a fully qualified, very interested watch-stander standing directly behind them over their shoulder, with their hands on your hands, ensuring that you don’t have a sudden spasm and do something you should not do."

Q: Do you have any sense of whether the Japanese trawler was within a five-mile area?

Pietropaoli: "That is 100 percent core to the investigation, and I won’t comment on that."

Q: Were the civilians on board major contributors to the Republican Party, and is this a "selling of the Lincoln Bedroom" by this new administration?

Pietropaoli: "That is not how our program works. No one can arrange visits to U.S. Navy ships except our operational commanders. People can refer them; we’d be fools not to take those references. We don’t ask questions about political affiliation; I don’t think it would be wise to start."

Q: Are guests allowed to do everything that the crew member do?

Pietropaoli: "Clearly not. There are many things, quite frankly, that the crewmen do that would neither be comprehensible or exciting to your average American. Watching a sonar display, for example."

Q: How much time should elapse between a periscope sweep and the surfacing of a submarine?

Pietropaoli: "The policy is to do it as expeditiously as possible to minimize the chance that the surface picture will change while you’re submerged. In practice, generally less than 10 minutes. In this instance they were within that standard."

Q: Is is technically possible to salvage this ship, to bring it up?

Salman: "It’s a very complex problem. This ship is hundreds of tons. It’s in nearly 2,000 feet of water. It would be a technically very challenging operation. ... There are a lot of details that we have to determine before we can make that assessment."

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