Account of actual collision yet to be heard

After seven days of testimony and four eyewitness accounts, no one has yet to offer details about what happened inside the control room of the USS Greeneville at the moment it sliced through the hull of the Ehime Maru fishing boat.

There have been hours of discussion about the proper procedures for rising to periscope depth, the ideal ways to conduct "target motion analysis" to track surface ships and whether it was critical that a sonar video monitor aboard the Greeneville did not work.

But no one so far has talked about the actual collision from the view of the crew.

The closest anyone has come occurred yesterday when Capt. Robert Brandhuber, the chief of staff for the Pacific Fleet’s submarine force, briefly referred to the crash as "the event" and after the collision, told Cmdr. Scott Waddle to start search-and-rescue efforts, ordering him to "do it now."

Later in the day, Lt. Cmdr. Barry Harrison, an assistant counsel for the court, questioned Petty Officer David Carter about sonar surface contacts, as well shipboard commands that he did or did not hear just before the collision.

Harrison brought Carter just up to the moment before the crash and then jumped to events after the collision, choosing to focus on search-and-rescue efforts.

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