Unofficial transcript: Day 5, Session 3
Choose a session: Day 1, Session 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
Day 2, Session 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Day 3, Session 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
Day 4, Session 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
Day 5, Session 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Page 71
DAY 5 SESSION 3 MARCH 9, 2001 10:00 AM
EXAMINATION OF CAPT KYLE (CONTINUED):
CAPT MACDONALD: Be seated.
VADM NATHMAN: This court is now in
session. We will recall Captain Kyle.
CAPT MACDONALD: Let the record
reflect that all members of the court, counsel, and
parties are again present.
Captain Kyle, will you take a seat in the
witness box and you understand you are still under
oath.
Q (By Capt MacDonald) Did you, as part of your
reconstruction effort, did you conduct a analysis of
the effectiveness of visual searches at periscope
depth?
A Yes, I did.
Q Could we have the next slide, please?
Sir, could you depict to the court what this
slide depicts? I know we have seen the upper
portion, the purple dots, in previous exhibits.
Could you tell us what your analysis adds to
this picture?
A This is a plot on the left hand side of the
depth, ship's depth, that is recorded on the sonar
logger. The sonar logger is really a readout of the
Page 72
video's digital depth dectector, and it has that
logged every second.
This orange series of dots, around this scale
over here, is the pitch of the ship -- basically, the
angle of the tack to the water. Also logged in the
sonar logger, it's really the angle of the boat based
on the ship's navigation sweep, and it's basically
correlated in time relative to the ship's depth and
sort of adds a little bit of the story as to what was
going on in the effort to control the ship's depth at
periscope depth, which is sort of the first critical
element in the periscope search.
Q Captain, was does it add to the story?
A It kind of tells you a couple things about the
condition.
First of all -- this gold line right here is
zero pitch angle, which puts the boat at even pitch,
basically, no angle on the boat. And that is, in a
common trip to periscope depth, the ship would be
normally such that if it was at periscope depth, it
would have a little bit of an up-angle to help
control the boat at periscope depth.
As I discussed ship control training at the
training center, normal process for going to
periscope depth, the diving officer of the watch who
Page 73
is responsible of maintaining periscope depth will
bring on added ballast before he leaves 150 feet to
compensate for sea state near the interface.
The action of the ocean running over the --
near proximity to the back of the hull of the
submarine tends to cause a low pressure area and
causes the boat to act lighter than it really is as
you get close to the surface.
And so to compensate for that, the diving
officers typically will bring on water to make it
easier to control and keep the periscope depth.
In this case, one interesting thing is that the
boat, when the depth is stable, you see the depth
stable here, and here -- the pitch angle on the boat
during those periods of stable depth or why it's
fairly constant is negative -- it's a negative pitch
angle. The boat is actually being driven with a
down-angle to compensate for the fact that it's
light.
The diving officer did not bring on a lot of
water in advance of going to periscope depth here, or
either that, he was surprised, the sea state was
higher than he anticipated, and there was more
surface action causing him to feel lighter than
normal. It's sort of an uncustomary attitude for
Page 74
periscope depth. The normal one is with a slight
up-angle, it's easier to control because the stern
keeps the boat away from the surface.
RADM SULLIVAN: Captain, I had a
question on that. In normal practice, your
experience about going to periscope depth, what does
the diving officer do when the ship is preparing at
150 feet to ensure that -- to help ensure that when
he reaches periscope depth, that he has a good handle
or a good understanding of his ballast?
A Sir, as I said earlier, normally the officer of
the deck would make an announcement that we're
preparing to go to periscope depth. He would have
this briefing that I discussed, the preparatory
briefing, with all of his key team members.
Among them would be the diving officer of the
watch, and they would discuss the evolutions, plan,
the housekeeping things that would affect his
station. They would also discuss what depth he
intended to be at periscope depth, because the unique
requirement, you know, in order to say we are going
to snorkel or do something like that, the ship would
have to be operated close to the surface. It would
be good to tell the diving officer early that that
he's going to go shallower than normal.
Page 75
So once he assesses the plan -- any indications
of what the sea state was the last time there was
periscope depth, you can get a measure of sea state
by listening to the see underwater, and based on his
assessment of sea state, he would bring ballast on
the ship to compensate for that sea state.
And depending on what that ballast is and what
is overall condition of trim was at the time, he
would bring on probably on the order of twelve to --
10,000 to 20,000 pounds for an average sea state.
And the officer of the deck would allow him to do
that. That takes a little bit of time.
There as fast flood method and a slow flood
method that floods these tanks, and you like to do it
in the slow flood mode -- quieter, just quieter.
That's just a better overall submarine practice -- it
takes several minutes to bring on that much water.
And this would be going on while the ship was
doing its maneuvers to go to periscope depth.
While you are doing your target motion
analysis, the diving officer is preparing the ship in
terms of ballast to go up to periscope depth at the
same time.
And -- and usually before you go to periscope
depth, the officer of the deck would ask the diving
Page 76
officer, are you ready to go up? Do you have the
ballast of the ship properly? And they would have
one last interchange beforehand, how much water did
you bring on? If he brought on a lot of water, the
officer of the deck knows he has to keep some speed
on on his ascent, to help the diving officer
compensate for the added weight that he's carrying.
Submarine speed allows the control surfaces to
compensate for the weight the ship it's carrying, the
extra wait it's carrying.
RADM SULLIVAN: After you've been
deep, running high speed, certainly the buoyancy of
the submarine will change in the water column?
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
RADM SULLIVAN: So during the --
typical Team A legs of three to five minutes on a
couple of legs -- what does the diving officer do
before he decides -- how does he know he has a good
trim?
THE WITNESS: That's a part of the
discussion. I didn't cover that, sir.
If the ship has been deep for a significant
period of time, it's been a long interval since the
ship got a good trim -- and what I mean by "good
trim" is the diving officer can quickly assess the
Page 77
trim of the boat to really understand that he needs a
speed -- few minutes at five knots constant speed.
Because the boat at high speed can carry/mask a
lot of weight -- either out of buoyancy condition
light on heavy -- the planes, the faster the boat
goes, the more effective the planes are at
controlling the depth, the slower they go, the more
buoyancy factor becomes apparent.
So the diving officer would need a period of a
few minutes at five knots at low speed to really
assess the overall buoyancy condition of the boat.
And it really depends how long it's been since
the last time he was slowed to do that.
They compensate for known changes in buoyancy.
For instance, if we are making water, drinking water,
he's bringing on water sea water back aft to put it
in tanks. He will periodically pump ballast over the
side to compensate for the generation of drinking
water, so they're trying to do that to keep up with
the trim.
But before you go to periscope depth, in an
ideal situation, you would allow the diving officer a
few minutes -- ahead one-third, five knots -- to
assess the trim of the boat before he headed up to
periscope depth.
Page 78
Is that strictly required?
No, sometimes you don't have that time. But in
an ideal situation, you give the diving officer a
chance to assess his trim first.
VADM NATHMAN: This graph -- does it
effectively change when you have a trim change? Does
it effectively change the height of the periscope?
THE WITNESS: No, sir. The
periscope is raised essentially to full height to the
stops when it's raised. The only circumstance that
-- where it might not be at full height is if you
have a particularly short scope operator, he may
lower it a couple of inches, and it's only enough so
he can see out the optical.
VADM NATHMAN: Not a high change?
THE WITNESS: No, no. But I am just
trying to orient you to the fact that this boat in
this particular condition appears to be trimmed light
so at periscope depth, they are operating with a
down-angle on the boat to keep a constant depth.
I believe the first ordered depth was 60 feet
and it looks to me that the boat pretty much attained
a steady depth 60 feet right here.
The diving officer is coming up with positive
trim, positive trim, he realizes he's coming up
Page 79
pretty fast, he pushes the boat down to hold it.
He's recognizing how fast it's coming to periscope
depth, and he's trying to control the ascent and
level off to 60 feet. And it looks pretty good.
What I am trying to say is I am trying to
calibrate us to the fact that 60 feet was ordered,
and in my belief, judging from the whole analysis of
the depth gauge, which gauge was the most accurate,
the ship had been using the shallow water depth gauge
which is a hydrostatic gauge, a mechanical gauge I
pointed you that out in the ship control trainer on
the boat, ship control station.
And it has been tested at the shipyard for
accuracy found to be within six inches of accuracy
throughout its entire range, a fairly accurate gauge.
It's not out of calibration. That was the gauge the
ship believed was the most accurate. That was the
gauge they were using on this particular day.
It's my experience that the digital of that
gauge is seldom used for periscope depth operations
because the shallow low water gauge is more
accurate.
There has been a test conducted on a digital
depth gauge by the shipyard, but it's not a standard
test. And frankly, the results I've seen on that, I
Page 80
think, are highly questionable, it's not -- I am not
sure the test was done properly or accurately, and I
don't really believe the results on that particular
test at this point.
And we have -- that is still being evaluated by
the design engineer, the system engineer back at the
Naval Sea Systems Command for resolution of what does
that data really mean in terms of -- is it an
accurate calibration.
So, what I -- what I am saying, my feeling is
that the shallow water depth gauge was probably
pretty accurate. The digital depth gauge was
probably off a few feet.
They were controlling at 60 feet -- the
corresponding digital reading was about 63
and-a-half, indicating about a three-foot error
between the shallow water gauge, which I think is
accurate, and the digital gauge at 63 feet.
Do you have a question, sir?
VADM NATHMAN: I do. This may not
deal with -- I don't think I want an absolute answer
in terms of depth differences here, but it just kind
of goes to how you would expect the submarine to
react to what they thought were depth differences.
We heard some testimony about a six-foot
Page 81
difference. And I'm -- I am not in my mind, it's not
clear to me yet what the six-foot difference was. It
might be what you talked about in that other
equipment.
But if you felt like you had a difference in
six feet, is that six feet a significant number to a
submariner?
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. In my own
personal experience, I had a great deal of
frustration with my depth gauges, it seemed like they
were reading differently each time. And at periscope
depth, six feet is a big deal.
It is a big deal.
VADM NATHMAN: The digital depth
gauge is good for depth control. When precise depth
is not that critical, it's fine. But the shallow
water gauges are generally better for the fine
control of periscope depth. That's why we have it,
that's why it's there. It's a wider scale.
VADM NATHMAN: In my experience, my
experience operationally is in flying -- I couldn't
know if it was six feet or not, unless it was an
aircraft carrier. So it's all visually -- it's
relative, it's not absolute differences in height --
so it's a concern for a submariner to have a six-foot
Page 82
difference, how would you expect them to react to
this concern? Would you expect a plaque card or a
template or an indication or a log entry or --
THE WITNESS: If it was not really
that far, we have a system that is called a
calibration, an out-of-calibration label, where you
can actually assign an error to the gauge.
And there is a sticker that goes onto the
meter. And there are process by which we can
determine which gauge is most accurate.
When the boat dives or is going deep from
periscope depth, we do know one benchmark and that is
that the head window is a 64 feet seven inches, so as
you submerge the boat, typically, the last thing you
do -- the officer of the deck is looking ahead, and
when the seas cross the window, he marks that, scopes
a wash, he announces it, and the diving officer marks
it on his indicators and he determines which gauge
reads the closes to 64.7.
VADM NATHMAN: So you are going a
realtime calibration?
THE WITNESS: Clearly on a rough
day, when you have waves, it's a little rougher in
that. But you kind of get an idea which is the
closest one. It's not a precise. The only time to
Page 83
be precise, if you had a mill pond sea with no
oscillations, but it's pretty close -- it will
certainly show you that one of them is off by six
feet.
VADM NATHMAN: Counsel.
THE WITNESS: If I could go a few
more points on this. If that's okay.
I pretty much established in my mind that this
digital gauge was off by about three feet from the
shallow water gauge. And I think the shallow water
gauge is about right.
So he came up -- it looks like he came up to 60
feet, and as I said, he's trying to hold that. He's
got some negative pitch on the boat, maybe a little
too much negative pitch because the boat starts to
sink, it goes down and bowls out through most of this
periscope depth time -- he's down here at 66 to 67
feet.
If you apply that three -- if you apply that
three-foot error, that brings it up to maybe 63 feet,
which as I said a minute ago, the head window --
centerpiece is about 64 and-a-half feet.
So there is very little scope out of the water
during this entire phase of the periscope depth
evolution.
Page 84
RADM SULLIVAN: And that would have
been during the initial periscope depth?
THE WITNESS: 38 second time.
So that's between 40 -- the scope would
probably break somewhere in here. It's kind of hard
to know, because the seas were kind of swelly that
day. We picked this time as being pretty close.
So starting from here, you need 24 seconds of
low power sweep. This time right here would be the
initial three sweeps somewhere in that period. And
we've already achieved 60 feet, and we're sinking
down a little bit, heading back down to deeper
depth.
And then we stabilize out here. The diving
officer puts on positive pitch to try to recover to
his ordered depth of 60 feet. And then I believe an
ordered depth of 58 feet was ordered right in here.
He comes up, and it looks like he stabilizes
out here at probably -- this is about 58 feet.
The diving officer and the helmsman both report
the minimum depth they got to was about 57. They
over-compensated, which would be these up here, which
fits -- the three-foot error continues to fit just
about perfectly across this whole chart, 57 feet on
the shallow water gauge, and then the emergency deep
Page 85
drill is given.
So, what I am basically saying is the periscope
depth period, there is a good period of it in here
that was fairly close to the water interface. There
was not very much scope exposed even from a calm sea
state, let alone one with sea state in it.
RADM SULLIVAN: So you would
probably get some wash across the head window?
THE WITNESS: You might get some
wash. But in any case, you're very close -- you're
very close to the interface and we know -- I wasn't
out there that day, but I did see a lot of the news
video that has been played over and over again of the
boat that day, and there was obviously some swells,
some chop, and so your eye is very close to where the
base of those are, and those swells are on either
side of you, it's very difficult to see a long way
when you have these oscillating mounds around the
scope.
RADM SULLIVAN: So help me with
this, Captain, because the depth he was ordered to go
up or higher by the officer of the deck at request of
the captain, as I understand, but at the time they
were actually at the higher depth, if you will, was
1339 and 30 seconds to 49 seconds; is that what that
Page 86
says?
THE WITNESS: I would say to about
45.
RADM SULLIVAN: So, fifteen seconds?
THE WITNESS: If I would say that's
58 feet right there, maybe that's 57. That's from
like point in time 29 to time 44, or 45. So that's
about 13 or 14 seconds.
RADM SULLIVAN: That he was actually
at the ordered depth?
THE WITNESS: 58 feet 57 feet,
somewhere in that area. That's what I get from
this.
RADM SULLIVAN: And at this depth
here this is 63, so he's at 60 feet here, again at
that level. So that's a little bit longer, back to
about time 22. So it's probably 20 seconds of good
observation time.
So 20 seconds at that height, say you were
searching in high power or -- you do it twice, low
power and high power -- it's subjective, but what
kind of section could you cover?
THE WITNESS: You couldn't cover the
whole 360 azimuth in high power at that range.
RADM SULLIVAN: What about a ten
Page 87
degree?
THE WITNESS: It depends how fast
he's looking. And I have some demonstration -- or I
had an agent of ours that works on training aids put
together some visual aids to show you the effect of
being at deep depth versus shallow depth, and see how
fast you could turn and see things, if you would like
to see that I would portray that for you.
VADM NATHMAN: I would like to see
it.
CAPT MACDONALD: Commander
Harrison, could you cue up the videos please?
VADM NATHMAN: Could we finish the
discussion on the slides?
THE WITNESS: Before we do that, I
would like to go over the last slide on this and then
we can just -- we'll come back to that in just a
moment.
This is a similar depiction or similar
generation of plots based on the reconstructed data.
And this is the range from Ehime Maru to
Greenville over time, the bearing over time, and the
aspect of the ship.
And as you mentioned, Admiral Nathman, this
shows again decreasing range steady bearing just
Page 88
depicted on these two plots. That's not what I want
you to focus on. It's this one down here.
This is the aspect of Ehime Maru versus
Greenville.
The time they are at periscope depth was right
in this time frame. You can see the aspect is about
-- it's difficult to see here -- this is fifteen
degree increments here -- it's about starboard 30.
VADM NATHMAN: Or maybe less.
THE WITNESS: Maybe less. But
starboard 30 decreasing, starboard 30, if you use
just trigonometry, shows you half of the length of
the ship. If you look at it, it's not like this it's
like this. Starboard 30, if it's a 150-foot-long
ship, 170-foot-long ship, you are seeing 85 feet of
it. So it's not a bow on picture, there is
significant hull length that would be visible through
the periscope, if you got a good look at it.
RADM SULLIVAN: In your experience,
if a submarine officer looks at a contact that has a
30 degree aspect, what do they tend to call their
angle of balance?
THE WITNESS: They normally call it
greater than that.
RADM SULLIVAN: Because -- why?
Page 89
THE WITNESS: Because it looks
longer. It looks like you are looking at more of the
ship than you are, and there is a natural -- it's a
natural thing that most junior personnel people
looking out the scope typically call it.
In fact, there is sort of a thumbrule -- what
it looks like in my gut, I divide by two, and that's
probably what it really is.
And until you really look at how to look at the
ship and make the assessment, what is the angle, the
natural tendency is you feel you are looking at more
of the ship than you are.
VADM NATHMAN: But that is like
reverse engineering, so you can assume you saw just
like you described, but I am not giving you 30
degrees here, I am saying maybe it's 20 -- so that is
going -- show me where you are in this periscope
search --
THE WITNESS: -- Let's just go back
one slide here. From time 38.
VADM NATHMAN: Okay
THE WITNESS: To time 40, or 39 --
40.
VADM NATHMAN: Let's look at the
other graph.
Page 90
THE WITNESS: 3940 -- 3840 to 3940,
right in here.
VADM NATHMAN: Okay, all right.
THE WITNESS: And this is the part
where the aspect narrows, because the ship is
turning, increasing speed, and pulling out in front
of the boat.
VADM NATHMAN: Are you satisfied
then on the green line, since it's not expanded at
all, that that's about 30 degrees?
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
VADM NATHMAN: I was looking closer
down, but I understand that's on the dive.
THE WITNESS: We started to drive
out in front of the boat of the Ehime Maru, so 30 I
think is good.
VADM NATHMAN: It's reasonable.
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
Okay, I think we are ready to show the AVI.
VADM NATHMAN: Are you going to
introduce this, captain?
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. I'll
explain it to you.
What we're seeing here is a -- I am -- I am not
-- I am trying to show in this, not necessarily an
Page 91
actual depiction of the sea state on February 9th.
What we asked this team of people who put
together training aids and training videos for us,
they had a variety of sea states and we picked --
they have a model that generates sea conditions.
And we picked one, and tried to replicate one
that was similar to what we saw on the news media
that covered the accident.
We also asked them to put a periscope at one to
two feet above that sea state, and show what it would
look like and this as random generated sea. There is
a random generator that generates the sea heights.
And we placed a contact at between about a mile
mile and-a-half away -- 2000-some-odd -- 24 hundred
yards I think away from the periscope, and he's in
there. He's in there in every case. He's in the
generation.
But if the sea is in the way, you just don't
get to see him. He's not there. But there will be a
little arrow that comes by and shows you where the
contact is in the model that we built.
And the lower part of the screen you will show
the bearing -- the bearing that the periscope was
looking at, and to get you ready to look for the
contact, the contact bears about zero two zero on
Page 92
this scale for that day.
The ship that is depicted in there, the
contact, is as best we could do within the model
parameters, roughly the size and coloration of the
Ehime Maru. So you get -- the size of the contact is
about right, and it's the right coloration.
There is also haze depicted, that we tried to
-- to make it look as much like the hazy day we saw
from the video taken by USS Asheville on that same
day, what did the sea look like around that day.
So it's a sort of a trying to replicate the
conditions that give you an idea of the effect of
search rate with the scope, and the sea condition
where you are relative to the sea.
The first sequence takes you at a depth of
about one to two feet above the seas, and the last
sequence puts you at a depth of about 10 to 12 feet
above the seas. And you will see the difference
between the two.
VADM NATHMAN: Captain, I think
before you do that, I also want to make sure I
understand that this is -- there is nothing absolute
about this.
THE WITNESS: No, sir.
VADM NATHMAN: And at best, this
Page 93
will give you a way of getting a sense what
relatively we should understand in terms of these
heights, and the way things are -- because everything
is relative. It doesn't replicate the sea conditions
doesn't have anything to do -- you could be on
bearing zero two zero and have a different sea state,
so this is a way of finding out what we can diverge
from, what are some things we can understand.
THE WITNESS: It's specifically to
designed to give you an idea of how a relatively
small contact is affected by the sea conditions, and
the way the scope is operated.
So we'll roll Video 1.
VADM NATHMAN: Will you narrate?
THE WITNESS: Yes, I will.
A SPEAKER: This is all part of the
exhibit we marked yesterday, Exhibit 39.
(Video shown.)
THE WITNESS: This is a rapid, three
sweeps, periscope depth. The arrow right you just
saw -- there is where the contact is located, the
bearing is on the lower right-hand corner there.
The scope is one to two feet above the sea
conditions, see there is no scope wash. But just the
mounds of the ocean block the view of the contact.
Page 94
This is now -- a high power look down the same
bearings at about a 30-second rotation rate, a little
too fast really for a high power search.
As a submariner, I will tell you this is a very
good picture of operating close to the interface.
It's a very good model. The contact just went by, if
you didn't see it there, he has a little white
contact went by there.
We are going to do another search and you'll
just see an arrow. He was not visible.
Keep watching. When we get up to north, get
ready to look for this. Same high power search.
He is in there. But he was not visible.
Would you like to look that one again? Did you
see the contact on the first? I was talking right
there. You want to run it again, sir?
VADM NATHMAN: Does counsel want to
see it again?
MR. GITTINS: No, sir, good point,
sir.
RADM SULLIVAN: Could I ask just one
question.
So if you had a contact and you are trying to
search out, what that also tells me is why it's
important to try to put it exactly on the bearing.
Page 95
THE WITNESS: Right. So you get a
chance to see --
RADM SULLIVAN: -- You are not
sweeping.
THE WITNESS: You wait for the time
that the contact is bugged (phon.) and the swells are
out of your way.
The next two videos, they are short, show 10 to
12 foot of scope exposure on the same day, the same
sea conditions, the same model, the same boat out
there.
VADM NATHMAN: Now when you say
"that exposure" help me with --
THE WITNESS: -- The depth of the
ship, the keel depth is now, instead of being 60 feet
or 58 feet, it's up near 50 feet. Just before
broaching, 52 to 51 feet. So you have a good amount
of periscope sticking out of the water.
Run Video 2.
This again is the high -- there is the contact
just went by, this is the 8 seconds per sweep low
power look. There he is again.
VADM NATHMAN: That could have been
a big wave.
THE WITNESS: What happened is if
Page 96
you saw that, you would continued your look.
What we train the officer of the decks to do is
to look at that. If it's very big, he would stop his
sweep, study that contact for a second to see if
there is imminent danger, collision imminent, in
which case he would initiate emergency deep to try to
avoid the collision.
If it's not an immediate problem, he would
continue his low power sweep to look for any other
close contacts. But unlike this video, he would not
just keep panning by. He would stop and assimilatge
the image of that contact, he would have to make a
pretty snap decision.
VADM NATHMAN: But those are
standards for the officer of the deck?
THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
VADM NATHMAN: Or anyone who is at
the periscope.
RADM SULLIVAN: The rule of thumb is
-- you are telling me -- which is the process -- if
it's taller than one division, it's time to leave
periscope depth, right?
THE WITNESS: That's correct. And
that's based on a hundred foot masthead height ship.
So if you saw one that is clearly a smaller
Page 97
ship than that, it's real close, and one is not
conservative. You would want to leave even if it's
half. If it's half as big a ship, you just scale it
down by the appropriate number.
Can you run Video 3 now?
VADM NATHMAN: What is this we are
going to see again?
THE WITNESS: This is a high power
look at the same height.
This is how -- this is the speed -- this is the
recommended standard speed for looking in high power
doing a careful search, a 360-degree search at high
power.
Now could you go -- this is -- this takes three
minutes to do this entire 360 degree search and that
is sort of the standard.
Now could you go a little faster maybe -- maybe
you could go a little slower on some days -- maybe --
but this is a good benchmark speed to do a detailed
speed in high power, 360 degrees around, that's how
fast, that's a good speed.
VADM NATHMAN: Let me ask you some
questions about the periscope itself.
Are these similar to binoculars in the sense
that if you have to wear corrective lenses, do you
Page 98
not have to wear lenses when you look out of the
periscope?
THE WITNESS: You have a diopter
setting. If your eyes are not that bad, you can
adjust it for your vision, and if you have very poor
vision, we issue glasses to people that you can
actually look up there and see -- use them through
the window.
RADM SULLIVAN: But the scope is
normally left on the CO's diopter setting?
THE WITNESS: It's not the
commanding officer's, actually. He should know where
the diopter setting is for his particular vision.
A SPEAKER: Is this fifty feet,
sir?
THE WITNESS: I can't say it's fifty
feet, per se. The modeler was asked to put 10 foot
of scope exposure, 10 foot above the seas.
This scan is not -- I can't depict the actual
ocean. It's just a rendition to show the effects of
distance above the sea. It's the same model running
in the background as we saw on the previous -- on the
previous depiction.
Again, that is a very obvious presentation of
the ship. You would stop and look at that, that's
Page 99
the same model, and the same location as it was on
all three videos.
And that's really the -- I think it just runs
out here. Really the end.
CAPT MACDONALD: Sir, I have no
further questions on the reconstruction portion of
the direct.
VADM NATHMAN: I just have a few.
EXAMINATION BY VADM NATHMAN CAPTAIN KYLE
Q Captain, I want to ask you a couple of
questions that go to your experience and not
necessarily some of the reconstruction here, I am
going to ask you that because of your obvious
position on the staff, in terms of being responsible
for training.
So I think you have an appreciation for
standards in the force, because I think you deal with
a lot of that; is that correct?
A That's right, sir.
Q All right. When the ship loses its Analog
Visual Sight Display -- AVSDU -- what do they kind --
that is an important instrument. I think we know
it's an important instrument, because you can see
sonar data on it, and it's kind of a sensitizer in a
little bit, I think, it's part of helping the watch
Page 100
team, but particularly the OOD or anyone that has the
CON understand what the sight picture is from the
ship; is that correct?
A Yes, I consider it -- on my ship, I consider it
a vital piece of equipment, very important.
Q Well then, if you don't have it -- talk to me
about how you compensate for the loss of that.
Well, first of all, what do you think is the
standard in the force for compensation?
Are there any rules on that, or if not, what's
the expected compensation?
A The normal situation, if the AVSDU video
display unit went down -- and I'll tell you that for
me, the primary cause of losing these is the failure
of the deflection amp in the CRT up there, and it has
a fairly -- I don't want to say it's a
high-failure-rate item -- but that's the normal weak
spot in that whole chain, is the failure of the
deflection amp.
And if there was a significant -- if you are
going to operate for a while, continue to be at sea
for a while -- if we were on a cruise someplace --
When I was -- I don't know if this is the case
today, but when I was a CO, we carried a couple of --
I would have the sonar men repairing the deflection
Page 101
amp. And if we didn't have any spare deflection
amps, we would cannibalize the deflection amp out of
one of the sonar repeaters, one of the ones in sonar,
and bring it out and put it in that location.
VADM NATHMAN: So, it's the same
WRA, you have the SRA card, you get a card for it out
of the same WRA, is that correct?
THE WITNESS: I am not sure what WRA
is.
Q Basically you have interchangeable cards?
A That's right. So we would -- it's an important
a piece of equipment. If it happened on my ship, and
we lost it, as Number 1 priority, I would get that
fixed. That is a primary issue.
In a case -- in the case in question, I happen
to know -- I haven't talked to the ship's navigator
who discovered that the equipment had failed on the
morning of the underway, you know, shortly before
they were getting ready to leave.
And you had a -- you are going out just for the
day for a few hours and coming back -- certainly
through your mind are, what are the chances of
getting this thing changed and back together before
we leave? Could we get this fixed before we went?
Do we have the parts, the expertise -- that
Page 102
would be the first option, to try to repair it.
You are in port. You can go to the Supply
Center and get parts, you know, there is more parts
available to do repeaters if you are sitting
alongside.
If he made a decision to continue, say, well,
we'll just have to compensate for this, then what I'd
have to go through my mind is how are we going to do
this? What's the right answer?
And in an ideal situation, you would have --
the department head that owns that piece of equipment
in this case, the weapon's officer, would be told to
propose a compensating procedure to operate without
this equipment operational and write a temporary
standing order that says, here is how we are going to
mitigate the loss of this equipment.
Q Now a temporary standing order could be
something written into the logs or something passed
down OOD to OOD?
A When equipment is down like that, you write it
out formally with a piece of paper signed by the
captain, proposed by department head, you know,
approved by the captain as an alternate -- as a means
of mitigation for equipment casualty.
In the meantime, before this piece of paper was
Page 103
written, you would probably establish some verbal
pass-down, here is what I want you to do until we get
this written. This is how we are going to mitigate
this problem.
And that's -- that's my --
Q Well, what would be your expectations in the
standing order?
Do you have any expectations?
A Well, there are several possibilities.
You could say, the OD will check his contacts
by going into sonar and looking at the sonar
repeaters.
You could say, we will station a plotter at the
contact evaluation plot to plot the data more
frequently, and in a more frequent rate, so it more
closely replicates what is coming off the sonar
display, rather than plotting every-other-minute
data. You can compensate by careful analysis of the
time bearing display on the fire control screen.
That gives you the same data that is coming out of
sonar. That is available in the control room.
All those are possibilities.
Whenever -- personally, I would say, go into
sonar is what I would feel more comfortable with
because it gives you the right -- you are looking at
Page 104
the screen you are used looking at. I also happen to
personally like the CEP plot. I probably would
personally rely on the CEP, and probably station a
plotter to take care of that.
Q I am going to get to that CEP, but if the OOD's
compensation then is to go more frequently into
sonar, would the sonar watch also know?
A Yes. This would be told to everybody in the
party.
Q So the watch team has an overall assessment,
you would expect. Okay, so you had an OOD up there
that you would expect to react to that, right?
He's got the CON, so he should react to it, but
are there other watchstanders that should react to
the fact that there is no AVSDU up there.
Does anybody else use it?
A No, no one else uses it. That's why we go
through the formality of writing a piece of paper,
because it's kept right in the commanding officer's
Night Order Book, this temporary standing order is in
effect. He would refer to it in his Night Order
Book, Temporary Standing Order Number 5, refer to
that for compensation of the AVSDU.
And the Night Orders are routed to everybody
on, right -- the maneuvering area, the chief of the
Page 105
watch, the diving officer. For this particular
equipment, the folks that are affected by this
equipment are the sonar team, the fire control team,
and the officer of the deck. And they would have to
get the word right at the beginning.
Q You implied I think in your earlier testimony
you talked about the officer of the deck checking
frequently by either looking over his shoulder or
looking at the display in the fire control watch.
Now, does the loss of the AVSDU -- does that
affect what he would do -- would he check more
frequently?
A Yes, sir.
Q Make me understand it better.
A Without being able to do your own analysis -- I
mean -- I can't tell you exactly -- I can only tell
you that that -- in preparation to go to periscope
depth my experience, even to this day as I position
myself in front of the AVSDU at some position where I
can look up to see what is going on.
If I am riding a boat today, I try to get there
and observe the AVSDU, and I immediately fall into my
own mental analysis of the contacts and what they are
doing. It's just part of the regimen.
And if that was not available, I would have to
Page 106
find some other place to stand to get the same sort
of data so I could do this assessment myself.
And that would be -- if I was riding the ship I
would try to go to the CEP, or I might go into
sonar. If CEP is not maintained adequately, it
doesn't have enough data there, I would have to go to
sonar and dig in, and get that information, or I
might go behind the fire control screen.
I try to stay away from the fire control screen
until the last minute. I would rather make my own
assessment mentally than go to the fire control
screen to see if it jives with what I've come on an
independent analysis, from what the fire control
operators coming with.
Q One place I am really interested, I am going to
a couple other displays, but I will come back and
talk to you about the mobility of the OD under
certain positions, particularly when he was coming
out of periscope depth.
Comment on the value, or again, in terms of
understanding the information as a officer who has
the CON and the deck -- of the value of the CEP,
without the loss of the AVSDU.
A Personally, I really like the CEP. I really
believe in it. I think it's an excellent plot
Page 107
because it gives you in a very expanded time frame of
what has happened with the contacts in relation to
maneuvers of our own ship.
That big black line -- and you see the contacts
where the black line crosses the contacts -- it means
I've taken a good leg on sight of the contacts, if it
hasn't crossed it, I can say, I haven't evaluated the
contact. Is it a guy that just looks kind of zero
right now, but he really has a slight right movement
or a slight left -- that's probably a distant contact
I've done some good maneuvers.
Just in a few minutes of study of the CEP plot,
you get a pretty good picture of the situation around
the boat. You have to study it, you have to look at
it, but it's an acquired skill.
I mean it's not -- I know a lot of officers
that have a hard time putting a horizontal -- a
situational -- converting a vertical plot to a
horizontal picture. Some people are more adept at
doing that than others and making that
correspondence. A lot of people when they look at a
horizontal display of contacts have to take a
maneuvering board and just put tick marks to see
where they all are, and they can look at it, and they
can make their own conclusions.
Page 108
That is a very common practice for a junior
OOD, a guy who has just been qualified for a short
period of time, to mark these contacts on the
maneuvering board, see where they are, and then make
their determination.
Q So there is an interim value to this.
One of my understandings, on the AVSDU, a lot
of displays, the time history is shorter because of
the displays. But on the CEP, it's a significant
time history. So you are building what I would -- in
my standpoint, a significant situational awareness,
and your ability to integrate that -- you will build
more situational an awareness with the CEP?
A Yes. And the CEP was basically drawn pretty
much to the standards of the manual, and you can see
on that one display we looked at a hour and-a-half of
data. The maximum data I have on a little screen
this big is 37 minutes on the AVSDU.
On the time bearing mode, you could scroll a
little bit more data back, but now you have to get
real close to the screen, and sweep in, and it's
harder for me to kind of understand what's there
because owns ship's course is not as clearly
presented on the time bearing display.
So the CEP, once you've accustomed yourself to
Page 109
interpreting it, is a very available plot.
Q If the CEP is poorly maintained --
(Proceed to Session 4 end 10:55 a.m.)
Choose a session: Day 1, Session 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
Day 2, Session 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
Day 3, Session 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
Day 4, Session 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
Day 5, Session 1 | 2 | 3 | 4
|
