OBTW, someone will ask why they couldn't see the mountain, or whatever it was, on sonar. The entire operation of a fast attack is based on stealth. No operation of active systems. Had the speed been less, sonar MIGHT have caught the hole in the ocean effect(mountain having a different sound emmission from normal oceanic background noise). Besides, if they were turning a full bell, flow noise would have been pretty high. Don't know if the tail was streamed running at that speed. Trawler activity has dropped a bunch in that area since the boomers left. You can bet that the investigation report will be very interesting to read.
Now for the conspiracy theory. It would appear that the port side took the brunt of the impact. To the extent of getting a couple of outer tube doors/fairings. Could there have been something other than a chunk of rock there?

toomuchmindwanderingtooearlyShortround out

 

Was talking to someone last night about this accident. He was adamant that there was no way that there could be a "unknown" mountain anywhere on earth.

Wonder how many other things we can "go bump in the night" on that are just waiting on us humans to blunder into.


Ed

Would be interesting to see topo on the site.

 

I would have to agree. We as the public will never know the real situation until 50 years from now when it is de-classified. There is no "need to know". In my Navy career I saw several subs that had bumped into something (Soviet subs). You didn't hear about it until decades afterwards in "tell all" books.

Everyonceinawhilethingsaregonnagetbent.

 

Theres no easy way to map all of the terrain features underwater. You have to have hyper accurate sonar to chart everything, and the deeper it is the harder it is to map. Plus on top of that you have under water volcanic activity, which can push up enough magma to make a lot of bumps (a lot of islands are formed by volcanic activity).

 

That was my arguement to him. Finally agreed to disagree on the subject.

I have enough trouble finding myself on a sectional when I get temporarily misplaced. I can only imagine what it would be like to just blindly trust someone elses nav information. Sub guy's have got ALL my respect.

Ed