Damaged submarine resurfaces in San Diego

The Navy sub that hit an underwater mountain in 2005, killing a sailor, has joined a San Diego-based fleet after undergoing $134 million in repairs to its shredded bow, it was reported today.

The San Francisco was cruising at 38 mph southeast of Guam when the accident occurred, fatally injuring Petty Officer 2nd Class Joey Ashley, a West Virginian who was taking a smoke break in an engine room and suffered a fatal skull fracture, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The impact tossed most of the San Francisco’s 137 crewmen around a cramped interior filled with jagged edges. Ninety-seven were injured in the Jan. 8, 2005, accident. Four and a half years later, the San Francisco has rejoined the fleet in its new home port of San Diego.

It took an unprecedented repair that involved cutting off the submarine’s front end and transplanting about 50 feet from the bow of a retired sister sub, the Honolulu, the newspaper reported. Capt. Brett Genoble, commander of San Diego-based Submarine Squadron 11, said that the sub could even be repaired was “testament to the robust design.

“It’s tough for me to believe you can have a more significant collision than that,” he told the Union-Tribune. In mid-April, the San Francisco arrived at Point Loma Naval Base, then returned to sea for drills almost immediately.

Now it’s back pierside while workers upgrade many of the 28-year-old warship’s electronics systems. A Navy investigation into the crash showed that the San Francisco’s crew and the mission’s shore-based planners had relied on a single set of charts commonly used by submariners that did not show the mountain.

Tags: SDNN

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