It has been a while since I had a new sea story for my collection. This was submitted by Commander David Campbell, USN (ret)
My boat the USS GUARDFISH and it was attempting a repair on the surface in heavy seas. Where specifically is classified. A rogue wave came up at least 20 plus feet and broke over the Bridge with the bridge access hatches open. The hatches were open because the bridge was manned by the Officer of the Deck and his lookout. The top of the bridge, referred to as the sail on a submarine or fair water, is just 13 and 1/2 feet above the main deck in a dead calm.
The sea state at this time was running at 4 -6 feet. When the wave broke over the boat sail it also drove the boat down and thus we were taking a solid stream of water down the down both the upper and lower bridge access hatches. A cable is always running down these hatches which is connected for this class boat to the bridge control box which shows rudder angle and compass course from the gyro.
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| USS Guardfish, Underway, planet Earth |
This stream of water hit the bottom of the ladder in the Control Room and went both port, shorting out the MK 113 Fire Control console and starboard, into the ship diving console, then onto the Ballast Control Panel so we lost most of the ships control instrumentation. The fan room flooded through the outboard induction valve as were also surface ventilating the boat, which drained to the torpedo room, so we also had flooding in the Torpedo Room.
The Diving Officer of the Watch yanked the bridge control box cable free of the bridge control box and then shut the lower bridge access hatch. The Captain now in Control ordered the outboard induction valve to be overridden to “SHUT”, as we had no control or proper valve position indication on the BCP (See above. The TLA's* are going to fly fast and loose now, ). An unqualified officer then ran into the bow compartment pushed the Fwd Aux. Room Watch stander out of the way, as it was his job to do the override, and then pushed override palm valve for the Fwd Group Main Ballast Tank Vent Valves, to open instead of the Outboard Induction Valve Palm valve next to the OIV (see above). This hydraulically opened the Fwd Group Vents. Thus caused the boat to start submerging with the OOD and Lookout isolated on the bridge due to the lower bridge access hatch being shut.
Needless to say things got slightly dicey as the OOD and crew went through the process of overriding the OIV and Fwd Group Main Ballast Tank Vent Valves shut, blowing the Fwd Group MBT Ballast Tanks to put air back into these tanks to keep the boat on the surface.
The key point is the boat took a huge rogue wave over the bridge w/ the upper and lower access hatches open and the crew took actions to mitigate this casualty. Thus the boat DID NOT SINK and it took a short period of time to recover all systems and bring the boat back to full operational capabilities.
--Commander David Campbell
*Three Letter Acronyms
