!! FOCUS !!!
- Thread starter Carl Spackler
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If I remember correctly, one of the tug crew died, engineering crew trying to restore propulsion below deck, and the other one was a guy that was being offloaded from the sub.
strange though, that a tug boat, would be meeting up with a sub, under way, at sea.
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Agreed. In the grand scheme of things. UConn beat Notre Dame and South Carolina in the same year and that was suppose to be a spring board. Not so fast, apparently. Conference affiliation means everything and the decision as to whether or not UConn is invited to the ACC is a hugh one.
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I'm starting to drink now, In-laws coming for the holidays uggggh, Conference Realignment/Rutgirls getting the payday, and watching this o-coordinator play-calls/ UCONN and the G-men better win this weekend. Bottoms up! Get the 2 deep up!...
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Carl, There is nothing strange about the tug meeting the sub. Harbor pilots, test people, ill crew members, equipment are transferred all the time and they weren't far "at sea". I had never seen this video before and found it quite disturbing. Having been impacted by the video I talked to someone today who had participated in many of these evolutions as a crew member of a Navy tug and two others who were submariners. It was just a short distance off of Midway and was transferring personnel. Apparently the sub sent some mail off also - hence the comment heard on the video "There goes the mail". To get some comments from folks who know about this stuff I went to:
http://bubbleheads.blogspot.com/2010/05/there-goes-mail.html
The 11/11/2012 post (currently the last post) by "justbob" sums some of it up from someone who was there. In the thread there is a another Georgia crew member who posts good information and several others who have insights in to what was done and what could have been done. If you go through the entire conversation you will come away with a good appreciation for what happened, for the men involved and for how tragic this incident was. ETSA
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ETSA:
Tragic incident indeed. Interesting to read the claimed first hand witness posts. The officer on deck at the time, and the CO of the crew on patrol, were never found at fault for anything and they were investigated. My opinion, based ONLY on what is in that clip is that there was absolutely no reason for that sub to have holed that tug. The full rudder, ahead orders you can hear given, are the exact opposite of what should be done, and full rudder isn't going to swing the ass of an Ohio class very quick.
But that's based only on what you can see in this clip..and assuming IF - the safety of the tug and it's crew supercedes the mission. And that's the only conclusion, (other than complete miscarriage of justice) that the orders in hand, superceded the safety of that tugboat. Submarine command at the time worked in a pyramid type fashion. Maintaining the mission orders, and not-compromising the safety and silence of the boat superceded everything.
Here's the declassified command history of the event.
http://www.history.navy.mil/shiphist/g/ssbn-729/1986.pdf
News travels fast, among submarine people in CT, and the Georgia was one of the first Ohio's to come out of Electric Boat, and at that time, was actively drilling launch procedures of nuclear armed Tridents in the middle of the Cold War. U.S. and Soviet submarines were going head to head somewhere in the oceans on a nearly daily basis. Two people lost their lives in this collision at sea, and to my knowledge, the comment "there goes the mail", had more to do with intelligence information being transferred, than love letters. The initial public reports were that the boat was undamaged in the sinking, but in fact, she had to return to Hawaii, for repairs to the stern. The crew was interviewed and investigated while the next scheduled rotation took the repaired boat back out, and then the same crew went back out on patrol thereafter without missing rotation, and having been found not guilty of any wrongdoing in the sinking of that boat.
The tug itself, as you can clearly see in the clip now, was flying a U.S. flag, and was supposedly an official navy vessel, but there were some questions as to her actual management and command, as there is evidence that it was stricken from the official Navy record some time prior to her sinking. It was common for the CIA, to contract Asian and Pacific native crews to run spook ships, and this incident, and how it was handled, with complete disregard for the safety of that tug and it's crew, if you ask me, fits the profile, and something of intelligence importance was either coming off, or going on to that boat. The first thing I thought, the first time I saw this clip - was "why the hell is somebody videotaping this thing from that position?" (and it was videotape back then, and if you know what a video camera recorder looked like in 1986 - it's not a handheld device.
happens at sea, and people die.
and in football, you better be ready to go full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, all the time, or you get run over and sunk.
Tragic incident indeed. Interesting to read the claimed first hand witness posts. The officer on deck at the time, and the CO of the crew on patrol, were never found at fault for anything and they were investigated. My opinion, based ONLY on what is in that clip is that there was absolutely no reason for that sub to have holed that tug. The full rudder, ahead orders you can hear given, are the exact opposite of what should be done, and full rudder isn't going to swing the ass of an Ohio class very quick.
But that's based only on what you can see in this clip..and assuming IF - the safety of the tug and it's crew supercedes the mission. And that's the only conclusion, (other than complete miscarriage of justice) that the orders in hand, superceded the safety of that tugboat. Submarine command at the time worked in a pyramid type fashion. Maintaining the mission orders, and not-compromising the safety and silence of the boat superceded everything.
Here's the declassified command history of the event.
http://www.history.navy.mil/shiphist/g/ssbn-729/1986.pdf
News travels fast, among submarine people in CT, and the Georgia was one of the first Ohio's to come out of Electric Boat, and at that time, was actively drilling launch procedures of nuclear armed Tridents in the middle of the Cold War. U.S. and Soviet submarines were going head to head somewhere in the oceans on a nearly daily basis. Two people lost their lives in this collision at sea, and to my knowledge, the comment "there goes the mail", had more to do with intelligence information being transferred, than love letters. The initial public reports were that the boat was undamaged in the sinking, but in fact, she had to return to Hawaii, for repairs to the stern. The crew was interviewed and investigated while the next scheduled rotation took the repaired boat back out, and then the same crew went back out on patrol thereafter without missing rotation, and having been found not guilty of any wrongdoing in the sinking of that boat.
The tug itself, as you can clearly see in the clip now, was flying a U.S. flag, and was supposedly an official navy vessel, but there were some questions as to her actual management and command, as there is evidence that it was stricken from the official Navy record some time prior to her sinking. It was common for the CIA, to contract Asian and Pacific native crews to run spook ships, and this incident, and how it was handled, with complete disregard for the safety of that tug and it's crew, if you ask me, fits the profile, and something of intelligence importance was either coming off, or going on to that boat. The first thing I thought, the first time I saw this clip - was "why the hell is somebody videotaping this thing from that position?" (and it was videotape back then, and if you know what a video camera recorder looked like in 1986 - it's not a handheld device.
happens at sea, and people die.
and in football, you better be ready to go full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, all the time, or you get run over and sunk.
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Is it just me? Am I the only one who finds it unbelievably ironic that, in a thread that Carl started with the caption "Focus," he's now discussing naval maneuvering?
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