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Tethered sailors washed off sub, report finds

Abruptly and seemingly out of nowhere, a powerful wave crashed across the aft deck of the attack submarine Minneapolis-St. Paul. It was 12:26 Zulu time Dec. 29, raining and windy, and the ship was on the outbound route from Plymouth, England.

A local British harbor pilot, an experienced civilian mariner who had guided more than 2,000 ships in and out of Plymouth — including American submarines — was inside the hatch of the escape trunk just aft of the sail, waiting to transfer off the ship to his waiting pilot boat. Three MSP crewmen stood topside, decked out in foul-weather gear and tethered by long lanyards to a safety rail.

Rough seas are normal for winter in Plymouth, local mariners had told the American crew. The submariners expected treacherous seas en route to their dive point farther out to sea. But they didn’t expect rough seas so early in the transit, and inside the breakwater.

As the pilot prepared to scramble up on deck, the first violent wave slammed into the submarine, pushing the heavy outer hatch down on top of him. The ocean’s force made him bite through his upper lip and sunk him in seawater inside the bathtub-like inner hatch. He pushed the heavy lid back open and looked topside.

Immediately a second wave hit, this time from the bow and then down the length of the submarine.

The three American sailors who had been on the deck seconds before to help guide him off the ship were now gone — shoved into the frigid, 53-degree water.

Read the Navy investigation

http://www.cffc.navy.mil/foia/reading.htm

Official video from the report

http://www.militarytimes.com/multimedia/video/041307submarine/

“All looked clear and normal while waiting for the pilot boat,” recalled Sonar Technician 1st Class (SS) James Sowa, one of the three crewmen. “We took some small waves over the deck, maybe ankle high. After that we took a wave waist high or higher, sweeping all three of us overboard.”

Now Sowa, Senior Chief Electronics Technician (SS) Thomas Higgins — the chief of the boat — and Sonar Technician 2nd Class (SS) Michael Holtz were fighting for their lives in the rough English sea.

The pilot could do nothing to help the three sailors.

“They were ... several feet below me and the [hull] had no physical means by which the men could hang on to anything or extract themselves,” he said in later official statements, copies of which were obtained by Navy Times and used to inform this account. “I called aloud, ‘Man overboard.’ ”

A mad scramble quickly ensued.

The pilot climbed back down the escape trunk ladder. There was “chaos” below as other sailors prepared to go topside to try and rescue their shipmates.

Wave after wave continued to slam the submarine. Water cascaded inside at an alarming rate.

“There was approximately 18 inches of seawater slopping from side to side,” the pilot said, “and some of the fluorescent lighting had flickered, then failed.”

Racing to rescue

On top of the sail, the bridge team was calling out commands, maneuvering the submarine to create a lee for the three struggling sailors while trying not to run aground on a nearby breakwater.

After first slowing the ship to 1.6 knots when the sailors went overboard, the control team later had to speed up to more than seven knots to maneuver the ship, according to the report. Despite standard operating procedures that call for speeds below 4.5 knots when sailors go overboard, the increased speed was necessary, commanders would later explain, to get into calmer water and ensure the ship did not run aground.

Cmdr. Edwin Ruff, the sub’s skipper and a 23-year Navy veteran, was on the bridge atop the sail. Despite the worsening weather, Ruff had been able to communicate with Higgins without a radio by calling to him from above. Just minutes before, both had been waving the pilot boat toward the sub for a hasty transfer. Ruff was frustrated with the slow pace of the pending transfer and told the COB to hurry up.

And then, he said, a swell slammed into the boat off the port bow.

“At the time or just before the men were swept overboard, MSP may have lurched. I believe someone yelled ‘Wave.’ I believe I yelled ‘Get below!’ ” Ruff told investigators.

“I don’t believe the men topside heard me, or if they had, that they would have been able to react in time to get below,” he said.

When he saw his men tossed into the sea, the wind was howling and everyone was yelling to be heard. Over the bridge-to-bridge radio, Ruff said to the English pilot boat, “Come in and get our guys.”

Surging water began washing Higgins, Holtz and Sowa back and forth across the submarine’s deck, from one side of the ship to the other. All the while they remained tethered to the safety rail, unable to drift free and be picked up by the waiting rescue boats.

The first of two sailors came topside to try and save his shipmates who, witnesses said, were being knocked against the hull of the ship.

But before he could hook his lanyard into the safety rail, the would-be rescuer was washed overboard. Untethered, he was quickly scooped up by British rescue boats.

Meanwhile, Higgins, Holtz and Sowa initially stayed together by grasping onto a boat hook. It was short-lived.

“The boat hook broke and after discarding it the men stayed together by holding onto one another’s lanyards,” the report states.

Soon, one of the waves washed all three of the men back on deck. The skipper watched it all from the sail bridge.

“The COB did not appear to be moving at this point. Petty Officer Holtz was moving but stayed on his back,” Ruff said. “Petty Officer Sowa was able to move, he checked on the COB, and crawled back to the forward escape hatch.”

A young seaman was waiting there. He grabbed Sowa and cut him free of his lanyard, and they both scrambled down the ladder to the flooded decks below.

Now inside the sub, Sowa “couldn’t walk or talk,” said the ship’s corpsman.

The ship’s rescue swimmer then went up to try and get Holtz and Higgins, but he too “was swept over the side of the ship almost immediately.” Fortunately, because he was not tethered, he was picked up by a waiting boat.

Meanwhile, Holtz and Higgins were being lifted up and dropped against the boat by the waves, witnesses said. The two were holding onto one another until a strong wave broke them apart, momentarily putting Holtz back on deck.

“Holtz tried to get up and was knocked off the boat by a wave from port. The waves were pounding both of them against the starboard side and both were under water numerous times,” said one witness, an electrician’s mate second class. “The COB and Holtz looked unconscious after one of the larger waves, but Holtz started moving again after a few seconds. From this point on, the COB did not move, but was limp and moving only because of the water.”

While in the rescue boat, a witness said, the swimmer shouted encouragement to Holtz, telling him to keep fighting and let his shipmates know he was conscious by putting his hands on his head. Several times, Holtz spat out water and put his hands on his head.

Closing the hatch

Meanwhile, the Minneapolis-St. Paul was moving dangerously close to the breakwater, and the ship’s movements were complicated by shoals and a large auxiliary ship moored nearby. Ruff and his crew were still trying to maneuver to create a lee for the men in the water, but without success.

“I am confident in my ability to drive the ship, but at this point, I was frustrated,” Ruff said. “I thought the men attached to the ship were very badly injured, and that the COB may have already died at this point.”

British rescue boats could not safely get close enough to free Higgins and Holtz. Below decks, more than six feet of water had poured into the deep bilge of the auxiliary machinery room. Ruff made a difficult command decision.

“I was concerned about running the ship aground so we decided we needed to turn the ship around. At this point my priorities shifted from saving the men to saving the ship,” Ruff said in his statement. “We made the decision to shut the hatch.”

Shortly after the hatch went shut, the EM2 witness said, “Holtz was washed onto the ship approximately three times, and the COB once.”

As he went from starboard to port, witnesses said, Holtz “hit cleat five very hard” on the right side of his midsection. He could only put one arm on top of his head. He again slammed into cleat five, this time with his left side. It would happen again and again until Holtz finally went limp.

Up on the sail bridge, Ruff had decided to increase speed.

“In order to control the ship, we used sufficient speed to cause the ship to ‘bite.’ I could see the COB and Petty Officer Holtz were in bad shape at this time ... so a faster bell would get us to calmer water and help quicker,” he said. “As we executed the turn, I could see the COB and Petty Officer Holtz being dragged by the ship, although their heads were above water. At some point in the turn, the COB’s lanyard broke and he drifted away from the ship.”

Less than an hour later, Higgins, 45, and Holtz, 30, would be pronounced dead on arrival at a nearby hospital. According to report, Higgins died of blunt force trauma and drowning. Holtz drowned.

There are conflicting accounts in the investigation report whether Higgins and Holtz were carrying knives that would have allowed them to cut their lanyards and get clear of the submarine for quick rescue, like the others. In their comments afterward, shipmates recommended providing quick-release buckles on the harnesses, or, as one senior chief said, “we should get rid of the lanyards entirely.”

Tethers to blame

Ruff and other officers blamed the accident on two causes: “The men died because they were harnessed to the submarine and because something happened to the sea state that we did not recognize or anticipate.”

The report’s executive summary was even more pointed:

“Had personnel not been tethered to the deck, fatalities, serious injuries, or significant equipment damage would have been unlikely. If personnel had not been tethered to the deck, nearby escort boats would have quickly recovered the personnel and the FET hatch would have been properly shut promptly after they went overboard.”

The report also cites a lack of crew training in risk management and procedures for a tethered man overboard.

In the conclusions of investigators, fault is assigned to leadership for not correctly analyzing available information on local sea conditions. The harbor pilot is also faulted by investigators for giving the crew “poor advice” and not sharing facts about “potentially dangerous sea states past the breakwater.”

It was later revealed that local ships were prohibited from departing Plymouth that day due to the harsh weather.

“Had I known British ships were not allowed to leave, or that seas were expected to build inside the breakwater,” Ruff wrote, “we would not have attempted the pilot transfer where we did and may not have gotten underway at all.”

Despite leaving four men in Portsmouth — Higgins and Holtz and two sailors who tried to save them but were rescued themselves — the submarine had to continue on a 14-hour transit in pounding seas to its dive point in the English Channel. It could not return to port in Plymouth because of changing tide conditions. Investigations and then disciplinary proceedings began days later in Rota, Spain.

Ruff was relieved of command on Jan. 19 by then-commander of the submarine force, Vice Adm. Charles Munns.

The executive officer received a punitive letter of reprimand at a nonjudicial proceeding.

Charges against two junior officers and a chief petty officer were dismissed.

On Jan. 11 the entire submarine force began a weeklong safety stand-down to revisit basic seamanship and evaluate risk mitigation.

Results of that stand-down and subsequent lessons-learned review have not been made public. But the officers involved in the Minneapolis-St. Paul investigation recommend revisions to regulations on “topside evolutions, equipment and personnel safety,” man-overboard procedures, piloting preparation checklists and topside operations training and qualifications. They also recommend a “readily accessible system to facilitate the sharing of lessons learned” and an exchange of the resulting information with appropriate British authorities.

Minneapolis-St. Paul returned to Norfolk on April 3, following a six-month deployment. Each sailor stepping off the ship was greeted by Tina Higgins, wife of the fallen chief of the boat, Thomas Higgins. She gave them each a personalized command coin on his behalf.

The crew also wore armbands over the sleeves of their dress blue uniforms. Embroidered with the names of Higgins and Holtz, the armbands read, “Rest Your Oars Shipmates.”