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To: Oral Roberts who wrote (94442)	1/9/2005 5:55:31 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793782

This sounds like the answer. SUB AGROUND: UNDERSEA PEAK TO BLAME? Defense Tech - defensetech.org It's still unclear why the USS San Francisco ran aground Friday night. But retired Rear Admiral Hank McKinney, the former commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet's submarine force, has a guess: underwater mountains, or "sea mounts." "I expect that we will find out from the Navy that this grounding was the result an unknown sea mount or one that was incorrectly charted," he tells Defense Tech. Submarines have run aground in the past in the "open ocean" while running submerged generally due to a navigation error. With the advent of GPS and navigation satellites, these types of incidents are extremely rare today. I assume from the news that a sailor was critically injured and damage was done to the forward ballast tanks, that the submarine must have been moving at high speed and collided with a "sea mount", an underwater mountain. The force of this type of collision could do a lot of damage and could injure people in the submarine. You might check out the USS RAY (SSN 653) which had a submerged collision with a sea mount in September 1977. Edit: All of this is speculation. Submarines do not have an underwater "radar" to detect sea mounts. They rely on accurate charts and accurate navigation to ensure that they steer well clear of known shallow areas. All submariners, particularly the navigation team, are trained to operate the ship in an extremely conservative and safe manner to avoid these types of incidents.