In the past two days, Rear Adm. Charles Griffiths, who investigated the USS Greeneville accident for the Navy, has laid out some of the procedural mistakes and problems that were made before the submarine collided with the Ehime Maru, as well as other findings.
Among them:
An analog video signal display unit that sits forward on the periscope and displays sonar readings was discovered broken just as the Greeneville got under way. It was decided the repairs would not be made until the submarine returned to port because it would have been too disruptive to do so while the Greeneville was at sea.
"When I was a submarine CO, and that piece of equipment was broken, I felt somewhat naked," Griffiths said during testimony. "It was a big deal."
The Greeneville was running 45 minutes behind schedule on its return to Pearl Harbor because the lunch service for 16 civilian guests ran too long.
Cmdr. Scott Waddle was quoted as telling his executive officer not to worry. "I have it under control," he said.
The control room was so crowded with civilians that the fire control technician of the watch could not see his captain and failed to report what turned out to be the Ehime Maru as close as 2,500 yards away. The fire control technician also failed to maintain a manual plotting of surface vessel bearings, as required.
"It was some mixture of physical barriers of people and the (fire control technician) of the watch almost feeling like he was benched at that part of the game," Griffiths said. "No matter how busy anybody was, his primary duty is to ensure the safety of the ship. He had information that told him the contact was potentially close."
A petty officer who should have been supervising a trainee tracking surface vessels instead was assigned to be a tour guide for the civilians.
Waddle ordered the Greeneville to be at periscope depth in five minutes, despite procedures that call for at least 10 minutes of sonar checks for surface vessels.
Waddle spent 80 seconds at the periscope making one last check for ships that should have taken at least three minutes for a thorough scan.
Waddle could have, but did not, order the crew to broach the submarine by ascending to a point where the top of the sail would emerge above the water. The move would have given those on the periscopes below eight more feet in height and a clearer view of the horizon.
The ship’s executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer, and a visiting officer, Capt. Robert Brandhuber, both felt the rise to periscope depth and the search for possible contacts was done much too quickly, but neither said anything.
Of Pfeifer, Griffiths testified, "The executive officer felt the amount of time was abbreviated. And if nothing else, the ship’s depth ordered for high look was not shallow enough. He was thinking these things mentally, but not articulating them to the commanding officer or the officer of the deck."
Of Brandhuber, Griffiths testified, "I honestly thought he probably should have had some signals going off in his mind that some things weren’t being heard. I know he is, in hindsight, going over this again and again because he brooded about this in his interviews."
