By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer

Capt. Robert Brandhuber looked through the No. 2 periscope aboard the USS Greeneville on Feb. 9 and saw wreckage and survivors in the ocean. “It was something I didn’t want to see and never want to see again,” Brandhuber testified today.

Brandhuber, chief of staff for the Pacific Fleet’s submarine force, then turned to the Greeneville’s captain, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, and told him to “breathe deep” and commence search-and-rescue operations, he told a Navy court of inquiry under way at Pearl Harbor, which convened for its seventh day.

“Now,” Brandhuber said he told Waddle. “Do it now.”

Brandhuber’s testimony provided the court of inquiry with the first eyewitness account of the Greeneville’s control room after the fast-attack submarine sliced through the hull of the Ehime Maru fishing vessel, killing nine people.

The three admirals sitting as the court of inquiry guided Brandhuber through the crew’s actions that day in methodical detail, but they never discussed the actual collision with the Ehime Maru.

Brandhuber referred to the crash only once, calling it “the event.”

“Once the event occurred,” Brandhuber said, he took over the periscope from Waddle.

Because he saw a boy in the water, Brandhuber thought the Greeneville had crashed into a whale-watching boat.

“I saw the ship and I honestly didn’t understand how it happened,” Brandhuber said.

In that moment, Brandhuber testified, he no longer was a passive observer. But his exact role remained unclear to the court of inquiry today.

Brandhuber, the highest-ranking officer aboard the Greeneville that day, was on the trip in part to escort 16 civilian visitors and to see his son-in-law, the Greeneville’s engineering officer.

But in two hours of testimony from yesterday through this morning, Brandhuber could not say whether the crew understood his official duties.

As well as determining what caused the Greeneville to crash into the Ehime Maru, the three admirals sitting as the court of inquiry have been directed to examine Brandhuber’s role.

At times they were clearly frustrated by his answers.

In one typical exchange, Rear Adm. David Stone referred to a memo Brandhuber wrote six months ago telling submarine captains that Navy regulations require them to provide detailed information about their trips whenever Brandhuber was aboard.

But Brandhuber testified that he did not seek any information from the Greeneville crew, nor did they provide it.

Brandhuber told Stone that he wrote the memo for long evaluation voyages, not the planned six-hour day trip of the Greeneville.

Stone said that did not absolve Brandhuber from his responsibilities as the most senior submariner on board.

“Navy regulations make no requirements on length of embark, don’t you agree?” Stone said. “You do know that you have responsibilities, or otherwise you wouldn’t have signed a document that says you have them while embarked.”

“Yes, sir,” Brandhuber replied.

He testified that he was worried about the speed in which Waddle and his crew executed the final maneuvers just before the Greeneville rocketed to the surface in an “emergency blow.” But he did nothing, he said, because the crew had performed well earlier in the day.

Part of his reason for going aboard the Greeneville, Brandhuber said, was to see firsthand whether Waddle’s reputation was deserved.

Rear Adm. Al Konetzni, Jr., the commander of the Pacific Fleet’s submarine force and Brandhuber’s boss, testified yesterday that he loved Waddle like a son.

“Sometimes I had trouble understanding Capt. Waddle and the admiral,” Brandhuber said. “Because of Capt. Waddle’s image and personality and gregarious, outgoing manner and capabilities, I sometimes wondered if it was more show than it was go.”

Yesterday, though, Konetzni placed the blame for the accident squarely on Waddle’s shoulders.

Reacting to Waddle’s spending only 80 seconds peering through the Greeneville’s periscope to scan for surface ships, Konetzni looked over at Waddle and said: “I’d like to go over there and punch him for not taking more time.”

During nearly a full day of testimony yesterday, Konetzni often referred to Waddle’s career in the past tense, at one point saying, “I wanted him to become like me.”