Submarine schadenfreude? Not so fast...

 

There's been a certain amount of schadenfreude at the news that a new Chinese nuclear submarine sank at its shipyard mooring before it could be commissioned into the People's Liberation Army Navy.  It's since been salvaged, but it's going to take a long time (months for certain, possibly a year or more) to repair or replace all the water-soaked equipment in the hull before the ship can be declared operational.

However, we shouldn't be too harsh in our judgment of what may have happened - because the USA also lost a brand-new nuclear submarine, USS Guitarro, while it was still under construction.

On 15 May 1969, Guitarro was moored in the Napa River at Mare Island Naval Shipyard while construction was still underway. At about 16:00, a civilian nuclear construction group began to calibrate the aft ballast tanks, which required them to fill the tanks with approximately 5 short tons (4.5 t) of water. Within 30 minutes, a different, non-nuclear civilian construction group began an assignment to bring Guitarro within a half-degree of trim; this entailed adding water to the forward ballast tanks to overcome a reported two-degree up-bow attitude. Until shortly before 20:00, both groups continued to add water, unaware of each other's activities.

Twice between 16:30 and 20:00, a security watch advised the non-nuclear group that Guitarro was riding so low forward that the 1.5-foot-high (0.46 m) wakes of boats operating in the Napa River were sloshing into the sonar dome manhole, but the group ignored the warnings. At 19:45, the non-nuclear group stopped adding water to the ballast tanks and began to halt work for their meal break, leaving at 20:00. At 19:50, the nuclear group completed their calibrations and began to empty the tanks aft.

At 20:30, both the nuclear group, still aboard, and the non-nuclear group, returning from their break, noticed Guitarro taking a sudden down angle which put the forward hatches underwater. Massive flooding took place through several large open hatches. Efforts between 20:30 and 20:45 to close watertight doors and hatches were largely unsuccessful because lines and cables ran through the doors and hatches, preventing them from closing. At 20:55, Guitarro sank, leaving only her sail above water, earning her the nickname "Mare Island Mud Puppy".

In an attempt to correct what they thought was an out of trim condition, the non-nuclear construction team in the forward part of the boat purposefully defeated safety measures preventing accidentally filling ballast tanks while the sub was under construction. During construction, steel plates are welded over the ballast tanks flood ports to prevent water from getting into the tanks and putting the submarine in an unsafe condition. The construction crew put a fire hose down the tank's vent pipe and forced it past the check valve.

There's more at the link.

India's first ballistic missile nuclear submarine, INS Arihant, also sank at the quayside due to human error, and took months to repair.  So, yes, China's undoubtedly embarrassed by the loss of its newest, latest-generation submarine, but it's hardly alone in human error causing such damage.  One hopes that none of the vessel's crew or shipyard workers were injured or killed in the accident.

Peter