Distracted CO, poor navigation blamed in Burke grounding - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Distracted CO, poor navigation blamed in Burke grounding

NORFOLK, Va. — Lost situational awareness, sloppy navigation and faulty navigational gear caused the destroyer Arleigh Burke to run aground at high speed while en route to port May 15, according to a mishap report obtained Wednesday by Navy Times.

The incident, which cost the ship’s captain, Cmdr. E.J. McClure, her command, caused no more damage than some paint scraped off the hull. No sailors were injured and no damage estimates were included in the report.

The mishap occurred while the ship was traveling at 25 knots about three miles northeast of Cape Henry Light, near the entry to the Chesapeake Bay on the way into Norfolk. The ship remained stuck in the sand for an hour after the grounding.

The mishap report identifies several things that went wrong on the afternoon of May 15, and requests an investigation of the command’s claim that its Navigation Sensor System Interface and the Battle Force Tactical Training system were not reliable. The report also recommends that a scrubbed version of the investigation be provided to pre-command courses at the Surface Warfare Officer School, afloat training groups and navigation schools.

One factor that could have contributed to the mishap was a spot award of the Navy Achievement Medal to a crew member in the pilot house. The ceremony lasted two minutes and the ship ran aground 14 minutes later. The report states that the ceremony was not included in the navigation brief and “adversely impacted” McClure’s situational awareness.

The executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Allen Hobbs, and two other officers were administratively disciplined by strike group commander Rear Adm. Dan Holloway on July 3. They remain with the ship.

Capt. Larry Tindal, commodore of Destroyer Squadron 2, was on board at the time of the mishap. The report says Tindal “failed to recognize the risk associated with conducting an awards ceremony on the bridge during a restricted waters transit with excessive speed.”

Tindal remains commodore after a nonjudicial “meeting” with Holloway earlier this summer.

The Arleigh Burke deployed July 9 with the Enterprise Carrier Strike Group and is now operating in the 5th Fleet area.