00114
1 MARCH 20, 2001 --- SESSION 6 11:00 DAY 12
2 Q So, for an hour or plus, there is no expectations that
3 your team sonar Fire Control would have a better picture like
4 courses and speeds of the contacts and actual ranges, other
5 than bearing distant and a certain amount of drift rate. So
6 your expectations were you had drift rate and you had range
7 distance and that met your expectations on the situational
8 awareness that you got from your watch team?
9 A Admiral, it sufficed, or it was adequate for my
10 situational awareness. My expectations as the Captain, or Mr.
11 Coen and his watch team established their own situational
12 awareness as a team to determine the contact picture.
13 I am confident, and trust me, I know Mr. Coen, he's
14 methodical, he works to the standard, and if there had ever
15 been a question in his mind as to what our contact was, he
16 would have brought it to my attention. He's done it in the
17 past, and I would have expected him to do it that day, and act
18 no differently whether there were distinguished visitors there
19 or not, sir.
20 Q Well, I didn't ask about distinguished visitors. But
21 the point was, you didn't really have much information on
22 these contacts other than you had a drift rate and range
23 distant, and that's -- that was your expectation as the
24 Commanding Officer that day, and that also fit the expectation
25 of your watch team, whether it was the Officer of the Deck or
?00115
1 the Fire Control Tech of the watch or the sonar watch, that
2 they wouldn't do anything active, they wouldn't be aggressive
3 in building this contact picture, because there was obviously
4 nothing done by those watch teams to aggressively build a
5 contact picture, other than to track bearing drift and to make
6 a report that the range was distant.
7 A Admiral, when I entered the control room I didn't have
8 the benefit of these reconstructed plots, but I can tell you
9 that my situational awareness was established and my judgment
10 what I considered to be satisfactory and adequate, more than
11 adequate to afford for the safety of this ship which would
12 permit us to get into the final line events. I'm talking here
13 on Exhibit 4, increasing speed to 14 knots for angles and
14 dangles and the subsequent large rudder turns.
15 When I entered the control room I received, in my
16 previous briefing with Petty Officer McGiboney, what he had
17 for contacts and he communicated to me clearly that based on
18 his information and holding the contacts in the upper DEs that
19 these contacts were distant.
20 When I walked out to the control room and I saw Petty
21 Officer Seacrest was working with on a time bearing plot,
22 which again showed almost straight, if not slight bearing
23 drift of the two contacts that McGiboney had told me about,
24 and the one Fire Control solution that placed a contact to the
25 northeast at about 7 nautical miles, it made sense to me. It
?00116
1 made sense to me. Merchant going west, close to the coast of
2 Oahu, and a small craft is what McGiboney reported which was
3 the one to the northeast, was in the vicinity of the island as
4 well. I thought it was (indiscernible).
5 Q So your expectations of the SA of your team were
6 consistent, your expectations were that you wouldn't have good
7 range information after an hour and a half and you wouldn't
8 have -- you wouldn't know much -- you wouldn't have any
9 classification other than their range was distant, so that
10 you're consistent in saying that that's your standard?
11 A Admiral, I didn't say that. What I said, sir, is that
12 it helped me in my situational awareness. It was clear to me
13 that the Fire Controlman of the watch had a Fire Control
14 solution on that contact to the northeast.
15 I can't tell you that Mr. Coen was active and aggressive
16 in driving the ship. Plates didn't fall off the table, I
17 didn't notice significant maneuvers or pitch in the ship. I
18 can't tell you how Mr. Coen drove the submarine prior to my
19 entry into the control room.
20 My expectations of the watch team is that if they had a
21 contact that they would have an understanding of the contact
22 location for both bearing, range, course and speed, because I
23 always taught my men, I don't say always, I made it a point to
24 train my men that they needed to be ready to go to periscope
25 depth at a moment's notice.
?00117
1 There's video footage from the travel channel that
2 recorded me as clearly saying that. We had to have
3 situational awareness.
4 Kind of like driving on the highway, when you're in your
5 car you gotta know who's in front, gotta know who's behind
6 you, to the left and to the right. This is on the travel
7 channel which certainly precedes this tragic accident.
8 And I said we work in the submarine community in a third
9 dimension, and that's going up, because when we gotta go up we
10 have to know that the surface contact picture supports our
11 ability to get to periscope depth.
12 It was my expectation that Mr. Coen and his Fire Control
13 team supported by sonar know their contact situation and have
14 SA.
15 Q Did you have course and speed on Sierra 13?
16 A Sir, I didn't know Sierra 13. I know from the Fire
17 Control display that I saw a range, I saw the line of sight
18 diagram which showed the contact, what I recall looking at the
19 time going to the northeast, and I can't tell you that I
20 remember that the speed was -- what it was from what I've
21 heard here in the past few weeks in testimony. I just recall
22 that the range, it was distant, it supported what McGiboney
23 had said and in my mind I had an individual or a vessel that
24 was out there fishing, or driving along the coast. Small
25 craft is what McGiboney had told me.
?00118
1 RADM SULLIVAN:
2 Q Sir, commander, what I just heard you say, you operate
3 your submarine based on expectations of your watchstanders.
4 A Operated my submarine based on expectations? By
5 enforcing standards? I don't assume or expect anything. On
6 the Greeneville we establish standards and those men adhere to
7 them. It's obvious that some honest mistakes were made on
8 this tragic day that led to the loss of life.
9 Q But again, putting myself in your position I know when
10 you're doing evolutions that could result in getting to the
11 surface unplanned. I walk into the control room, I can see
12 that track, I can see it on the op. summary on the Fire
13 Control system, more importantly why didn't you ask your
14 Officer of the Deck or did you ask your Officer of the Deck
15 explain what he had done in preparations to do this type of
16 evolutions, followed very quickly by surfacing the ship. I
17 don't see the connection here.
18 A Sir, I had no conversation with the Officer of the Deck
19 which could evaluate or determine his situational awareness.
20 I knew that I didn't have it, and that's why I spent the
21 time in there, in the control room and in the sonar room
22 determining what that was to provide Mr. Coen with the backup
23 to ensure that the evolutions we were going to perform were
24 safe to perform.
25 Q But as a senior submariner, you as a Commanding Officer,
?00119
1 looking at the track where your contacts were, it's second
2 nature to know that the information you have which your Fire
3 Control operators is telling you is probably not that great.
4 You didn't -- your Officer of the Deck did not drive the ship
5 to provide the information to your party, to your team to
6 solve very competent solutions on these contacts. I'm not
7 saying it was wrong on a given day at sea, but I'm telling
8 you, I don't understand why that didn't happen prior to doing
9 evolutions that could end up unexpectedly on the surface, and
10 eventually within an hour planning on surfacing. I don't
11 understand.
12 A Admiral, I did not look at the navigation plot which
13 would have shown the fact that Lieutenant Coen as the Officer
14 of the Deck, and I'm pointing here to Exhibit 4 at the 1230
15 position, turned the ship in a northerly direction. I agree
16 with you, sir, that for the benefit of target motion analysis
17 with contacts that are to the north the prudent thing to do
18 would be to drive either northwesterly, northeasterly, east or
19 west courses to drive bearing rate, to get an accurate contact
20 picture. I don't disagree with you. I agree that that's
21 correct.
22 And having the luxury of looking at this reconstructive
23 plot, if I had entered the control room knowing that we had
24 done nothing more than continue to drive the ship in a
25 northerly direction, I could have provided Lieutenant Coen
?00120
1 with that backup, but I didn't. I didn't see the NAV plot, I
2 didn't see the historical information on the op. summary which
3 would have had this number of dots.
4 I can't even tell you, Admiral, what the Fire Control
5 technician had selected for time history on op. summary. You
6 and I both know that if it's a short time history it very well
7 may not have even shown this maneuver to the left which could
8 have been a baffle clear maneuver, I'm not sure what it was,
9 and the subsequent maneuver back to the north. And I'm
10 discussing again here this maneuver on Exhibit 4.
11 So, my point is, is that yes, I expected my
12 watchstanders and my control room men to have SA and
13 situational awareness. I didn't have it coming into control,
14 that's why I spent the time to ensure that I understood the
15 picture, so that I could confirm in my mind it was safe to
16 continue with the follow-on events for that afternoon.
17 BY VADM NATHMAN:
18 Q This creates a conflict for the members. You're about
19 to go into angles and dangles, and it's high speed
20 maneuvering, there's been some testimony and I don't think
21 anybody's going to refute it that when you're doing the angles
22 you're still able to maintain a good sonar track following, I
23 think it's recalled, but in angles and dangles particularly in
24 the high speed turns we've had testimony from Petty Officer
25 McGiboney and from other sonar watches that you get high drift
?00121
1 rates and you kind of lose the SA, the boat kind of losses the
2 SA in the high speed turns. It seems to me like there was a
3 lost opportunity here to have the SA on your contacts because
4 you're about to do high speed maneuvers and then go very
5 quickly to periscope depth, and you -- you're not giving --
6 there's no opportunity for the team to have established the
7 big contact picture before you do these maneuvers which will
8 lose your SA. So your choice then, Captain, is either to
9 build it on the front end before you do angles and dangles, or
10 take more time on the back end to build really true
11 situational awareness on your contact picture before you go to
12 other more complex maneuver, much more dangerous maneuvers as
13 been described to me like going to periscope depth and doing
14 an emergency blow.
15 And it seems to me that there wasn't any standard here
16 about either anticipation of how to build this, that you were
17 going to do something that would loss the SA or on the other
18 side of it, well, we -- we've just lost our SA so let's go
19 rebuild it because it seems like we've gotten into a real big
20 hurry to go to periscope depth and to do other things.
21 So, this is why we're -- there's a big conflict in our
22 minds about why there wasn't more preparation on this side,
23 since angles and dangles was a planned maneuver on the POD,
24 why there wasn't a better preparation by the team to backup
25 the ship and to backup its Captain about the contact picture.
?00122
1 That's more of a statement, but if you want to add
2 anything to make sure I understand, so I understand why we
3 weren't prepared before we went into angles and dangles.
4 Please help me.
5 A Again, sir, the one man that didn't have the SA was me.
6 I didn't understand the contact picture, and that's why I went
7 into sonar and into control to gain that.
8 You mention --
9 Q I don't think the team had the picture.
10 A Sir, I -- I can't comment on that, because I don't know
11 what was going through Lieutenant Coen's head, Fire Controlman
12 of the watch, the Quartermaster.
13 Q But we do know you didn't have any courses or speeds on
14 those contacts, you didn't have any ranges on those contacts,
15 other than bearing distance?
16 MR. GITTINS: Objection, sir.
17 VADM. NATHMAN: What?
18 MR. GITTINS: At 13:14:02 of bearing and range
19 Commander Waddle's testified that he observed the Fire Control
20 Technician of the Watch's display which had a range for the
21 Ehime-Maru.
22 VADM. NATHMAN: But the course and speed were
23 backwards, so how good is this information? So, it just -- it
24 guess to kind of our assessment of trying to understand this.
25 It goes to are you going to take the opportunity when
?00123
1 you're maneuvering this ship to build the SA that you need to
2 go into maneuvers where you're likely to lose it. And if
3 you're likely to lose it you have two opportunities, you can
4 do it before you go into the angles and dangles or you can do
5 it afterwards. And we're trying to understand how well you
6 did it before, and it seems to me there was no intent really
7 to do it thoroughly before.
8 THE WITNESS: Can I take this one, Counsel?
9 MR. GITTINS: Please, sir.
10 THE WITNESS: All right. Thanks.
11 Admiral, you mentioned you build the SA either on the
12 front or on the back. At the time I built it on the front.
13 That was my intent, to convince myself when I walked into
14 sonar that I understood without any doubt what we had for
15 contacts that were radiating noise, putting noise energy out
16 there on the ocean, that I knew that when we then moved into
17 the next step, which was angles and dangles, that my team had
18 a handle on the contact picture.
19 I didn't engage Lieutenant Coen in discussion, because I
20 expected him and his watch team to know what's out there.
21 I've seen him operate for the past 18 months, actually longer,
22 and I know what he does. And I've never had reason to believe
23 that he would not understand his contact picture, or that the
24 Fire Control of the watch, Petty Officer Seacrest, my best
25 FTOW on board that ship, better than the chief, better than
?00124
1 the chief, didn't have the situational awareness.
2 So, when I walked out in the control room I needed to
3 make sure that I got up to speed, that I understood what was
4 there. When I saw that I was convinced that we had done just
5 that, what you said, built up front that SA that was required
6 so that I could get into the angles and dangles, starting
7 1316, I'm pointing to Exhibit 4, and get into the high speed
8 maneuvers shortly thereafter.
9 I felt we did that, Admiral, at the time.
10 Q Did the Officers of the Deck' performance meet your
11 expectations?
12 A Admiral, if the Officer of the Deck had performed
13 something that didn't meet my expectation, I would have
14 corrected it.
15 Q So the contact picture you had, going into angles,
16 satisfied your standards?
17 A I was --
18 Q Not the expectations of the OOD, but satisfied your
19 standards of an appropriate contact picture?
20 A Admiral, I was satisfied that I understood the contact
21 picture. I can't tell you what Mr. Coen understood at that
22 time.
23 Q But you're evaluating his performance as a Commanding
24 Officer, you're on the CONN, so you approve of his performance
25 as Officer of the Deck in meeting your expectations.
?00125
1 A Sir, if Mr. Coen did not meet my expectations I would
2 have corrected it.
3 RDML STONE: I'll just add, I find it almost
4 incredulous that as a Commanding Officer you can determine
5 situational awareness without speaking to the one person who
6 is accountable in your absence for orchestrating that effort.
7 You stop in sonar, you maybe talk to the FTOW and then
8 you state four or five minutes ago, I had no conversations
9 with the OOD regarding situational awareness. He's the person
10 who's charged by Navy regs to be your representative and
11 orchestrate that effort, yet you put no value on a
12 conversation with him by not even asking him what's overall
13 situation, what have you done in my absence, how have you
14 maneuvered the ship.
15 These are common questions every Captain asks when walks
16 on his bridge and I assume the submarine community control to
17 find out what your designated representative is doing in your
18 absence. Perhaps you can enlighten me on why you would not
19 ask the basic fundamental question of your OOD on what is your
20 situational awareness, what has the boat been doing in my
21 absence.
22 A I had no reason to doubt that Mr. Coen didn't have his
23 situational awareness. From the time that I observed him as
24 an Officer of the Deck, any time that I've gone out into the
25 control room he has known exactly what's going on. If he
?00126
1 didn't, Admiral, and I suspected that something was wrong, I
2 would have asked him or challenged him.
3 BY RADM SULLIVAN:
4 Q During your -- building up to your SA as you walked
5 around the control room at this point, did you look at the
6 contact evaluation plot?
7 A No, sir, I did not.
8 Q You're well aware of the condition it was in based on
9 the testimony, correct?
10 A Based on testimony, yes, sir.
11 Q If you had looked at it, what would you have done?
12 A I would have directed the deficiency, the attention of
13 the Officer of the Deck and asked him why he allowed the Fire
14 Control Technician of the Watch to, you know, fail to keep
15 that plot updated. I've never hesitated in the past, nor has
16 the XO, or any of my other Officers of the Deck to prompt the
17 Fire Control Technician of the Watch to keep that plot
18 updated. I was almost anal about it.
19 Q Going back to the situational awareness. That plot is
20 predominently displayed as it shows here on Exhibit 6, right
21 in the center of where all the activity is for contact
22 evaluation, correct?
23 A I don't know, Admiral, that I'd call it in the center of
24 activity for contact evaluation. I would agree that it's
25 located here on Exhibit 6 on the forward starboard bulkhead
?00127
1 just aft of the sonar room to the left of the door, but at the
2 time when I entered the control room there were personnel
3 standing here. It may have blocked my view of it. I don't
4 recall seeing the CEP or looking at it.
5 Q You're saying it was your priority to maintain it,
6 correct?
7 A My standing orders, I don't have the specific words
8 here. If you want to pull those out I can read from 'em, sir.
9 Q No, that's -- just asking yes or no. Do you as
10 Commanding Officer require maintenance?
11 A Sir, I require the crew to comply with my standing
12 order. That's a written order.
13 CAPT. MACDONALD: I have a follow-up question.
14 Q Do you or do you not know if your own standing orders
15 require the CEP to be maintained?
16 A My standing orders require the CEP to be maintained,
17 Captain.
18 CAPT. MACDONALD: Thank you.
19 BY RADM SULLIVAN:
20 Q I'd like to progress the time line to the start of the
21 angles.
22 The testimony the way I understand it, you started off
23 not too atypical of a demonstration of this nature with 15
24 degree angles and worked your way up to the 30s. What I'd
25 like to have you testify to is the direction that you gave to
?00128
1 your Officer of the Deck during this evolution, how that was
2 conducted.
3 A Prior to the commencement of the angles and dangles,
4 after I had established SA and contact or situational
5 awareness, I told the Officer of the Deck to prepare the ship
6 for angles and dangles. Actually, I made that order or gave
7 that order or direction to him in parallel, because I knew it
8 would take some time. Dishes had to be stowed, I was
9 concerned about the ELT (phonetic) back aft not having his
10 lavatory equipment not put properly way.
11 Actually, I don't recall the specific words that he
12 used, but he told the engineer or told Lieutenant Pritchett to
13 go back aft and personally inspect that to make sure that the
14 engine room was ready to support the evolution.
15 At that point I told the Officer of the Deck, and I
16 don't recall if we went deep first or came shallow. I believe
17 that the ship was deep at 1316, I don't have the depth logs,
18 if we can pull that out and confirm that. If we were deep the
19 first ordered angle would have been a rise angle, and I would
20 have given Mr. Coen an order -- not order, but direction as
21 change of depth to 150, 175 feet, use a 2015 degree up angle,
22 and that was the manner with which I gave him direction.
23 BY VADM. NATHMAN:
24 Q Commander Waddle, do you know Admiral Stone?
25 A I've never met Admiral Stone, sir.
?00129
1 Q Have you ever served with Admiral Stone?
2 A If I did I'm not aware of it, sir.
3 Q You've never been in a command or relationship with
4 Admiral Stone?
5 A I have not, no, sir.
6 Q Do you know of Admiral Stone's operational background?
7 A Sir, I did not read his biography. I do not know his
8 operational background.
9 Q Do you know Admiral Stone's reputation?
10 A I don't know anything about Admiral Stone, sir.
11 Nothing.
12 Q Is he political, to you?
13 A Sir, again, I've had no connection, association
14 affilliation with Admiral Stone and the first time I saw him
15 was when this Court convened.
16 Q You don't --
17 A I don't recall ever meeting him, talking to him or
18 speaking with him.
19 Q Do you know Admiral Sullivan?
20 A Yes, sir.
21 Q Have you served with Admiral Sullivan?
22 A No, sir, I have not. I've not served under his command.
23 Q Do you know Admiral Sullivan's operational experience?
24 A I know that he was in command of the Birmingham and I
25 believe that was the second time or so that I had met him.
?00130
1 The other time was when I was a junior member on the new
2 propulsion examination board when he was commander.
3 Q Do you have any knowledge of Admiral Sullivan's
4 reputation?
5 A I don't know of his reputation. No, sir.
6 Q Is Admiral Sullivan political?
7 A I can't tell you if Admiral Sullivan is political.
8 Q Do you know me?
9 A Sir, I only know what I've read once and that was your
10 change of command speech. I've never met you. I don't know
11 your political aspirations. I've never served under your
12 command. I haven't served under any of the board members
13 command, sir.
14 Q Why would I have political aspirations?
15 A I don't know that you do or that you would.
16 Q Okay.
17 We'll recess until 1500.
18 (Recess taken at 11:30 a.m.)
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