Sub probe may have mistakes, investigator says

The Navy’s chief investigator examining the USS Greeneville accident acknowledged yesterday there could be flaws in some of the information that led him to conclude there were problems inside the sub’s control room before the collision with a Japanese fishing vessel.

Aides to the investigation of the accident, which occurred Feb. 9 nine miles south of O‘ahu, also may have incorrectly summarized sailors’ statements and applied incorrect mathematical formulas to measure the periscope’s visibility on the day of the crash, according to yesterday’s testimony on the third day of the court of inquiry.

And at least one sailor’s corrected statement apparently was left out of the report by Rear Adm. Charles H. Griffiths, Jr., a submariner in charge of the Navy's preliminary investigation, testimony showed.

Griffiths returned to the witness stand yesterday and underscored the picture he had already drawn of a Greeneville control room hampered by a crowd of civilian visitors, poor communication, equipment malfunctions and a unsupervised sonar trainee.

But during cross-examination by Lt. Cmdr. Timothy Stone, the attorney for the executive officer of the Greeneville, Griffiths acknowledged there might have been problems with some of the information in the investigation, which lasted 72 hours.

Regarding characterizations of some crew members’ statements, Griffiths said: "If it’s not accurate, I would like to reassess my views. Obviously I want to make my judgments based on the most accurate information available, and I thought this was it."

Stone argued that notes made by Lt. Cmdr. Barry Harrison, an assistant counsel for the court of inquiry, and Capt. Fred Byus, who conducted the first interviews of the Greeneville crew, included inaccurate summaries of the sailors’ statements.

Griffiths maintained that even if some of the formulas and statements were flawed, other information suggests the crew had concerns about the pace of the high-speed maneuvers leading to the crash.

The assignment that day was to show 16 civilians the capabilities of the Greeneville, concluding with a dramatic "emergency blow" that sent it crashing into the Ehime Maru fishing boat. Nine of the 35 crew members are missing and presumed drowned.

The most dramatic courtroom moment yesterday came during a break in the testimony, when Lt. Cmdr. Gerald Pfeifer, the Greeneville's executive officer, apologized to Japanese family members, who were elated.

For the third day, neither Cmdr. Scott Waddle nor his attorney, Charles Gittins, acknowledged the families in the courtroom.

During Gittins’ cross-examination of Griffiths, the attorney sought to show that Waddle did not have the information from his staff to know the proximity of the Ehime Maru to his ship.

Gittins emphasized that Waddle followed usual procedures in his periscope sweep and tried to show that systems aboard the Greeneville would not have identified the Ehime Maru as a collision threat.

Gittins focused on the work of the fire control technician plotting the movement of the Ehime Maru.

The technician told investigators he was distracted by the civilians and did not tell Waddle about the Ehime Maru being only about 2,000 feet away.

Earlier in the day, Griffiths testified that the respect and confidence the USS Greeneville sailors had for their captain may have inadvertently created a climate in which they failed to speak out or question his actions just before the crash.

The relationship between Waddle and his crew created a phenomenon, Griffiths said, that "is subtle, is not clearly understood by me and is an indirect factor" in the collision.

"I think you need to look at that further," Griffiths told the three Navy admirals sitting as the court of inquiry. "... Was the ship inadvertently not backing the CO (commanding officer) up as they should have because they had grown accustomed to a style ... where the CO is very much in control?"

Members of the court are still struggling to reconcile how the crash occurred, said the president of the court, Vice Adm. John Nathman.

"This was a professional and competent crew, an engaged, aggressive and knowledgeable captain that the crew stands by. It creates a certain amount of conflict for us that we’re sitting here."

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