Great Sage of the Sea
Posts: 602
Location: Visalia, Ca. | Subject: USS Hartford
Just received this note off the USS Seadragon email list.
Sources not cited, but if true it sheds new light on how the Hartford collided with the New Orleans, and how bad it was and might have been. The message included the same pics we have seen here, so I didn't include them.
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Hi Guys,
FYI. (Sent as received)
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For all:
Here are some pretty good open source pics. Narrative below. Additionally, Kurt was possibly eerily correct about engineering casualties on the surface ship...the New Orleans was said to be dead in the water or nearly so because of engineering trouble (not verified). This would make here hard to hear by the sub, and could have set the stage for what happened. However the collision happened, the sub must have ended up getting rolled over on her side (82 degrees, they say) by the sail acting as a lever against the bottom of the New Orleans. Although those sails are very strong, HY-80 steel, the rest of the sub is about 6000 tons, so you can see what happened.
In my estimation, they are lucky. The scopes penetrate the hull and ripping off the sail all the way could have caused some nice big holes to open up to sea thru the periscope penetrations.
Jim
There was significant damage .... we've got a slew of pictures.
The Hartford collided with the New Orleans
The collision was severe enough that there's SIGNIFICANT damage to the front of the sail, the welds on the port side of the sail are all ripped open, from fore to aft, and the entire sail is listing off to stbd by about 10 degrees.
It was at night, a JO was on the scope. He was given a bearing to look at - and didn't see it until they were hit.
At the collision, the ship rolled 82 degrees to stbd.
Think about that for a second ..... 82 degrees.
The crew was unable to access the bridge, and were being given steering instructions via VHF radio from other ships alongside.
Pretty nasty! The crew said they're feeling very lucky to be alive. Navy engineering teams were at work Monday in Bahrain inspecting the damage to two warships that collided Friday in the Strait of Hormuz, hurting 15 sailors.
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USS Hartford
