Everything went flying...
Ran into
this email from Brian Frie, a crew member aboard the submarine USS San Francisco which ran into an uncharted seamount while traveling at a 500 foot depth and running at full speed (about 30MPH).
bq.
To All,
I thought that I would put out a note since a lot of you have been calling and writing to find out how things are and if I’m OK and what happened. If you hadn’t heard, my boat hit a uncharted submerged sea mount at the highest speed we can go at about 500 ft. below the surface. There were about 30 of us that were seriously hurt and, unfortunately, one of my shipmates didn’t make it.
bq. First off, I am OK. I am pretty beat up with my entire left side and butt as one big bruise. My shoulder is separated and may require surgery. They will evaluate later this week. I am very fortunate that I hit the wall and didn’t go down a ladderwell that was right next to where I hit. If I had gone down that, I would have got really messed up.
bq. I took a tremendous shot to my left thigh from something. If it had been slightly lower in the knee area it would have been really ugly. But all in all I am in good shape. We hit it at about noon right after field day (where all of us clean the boat for several hours). Thank God we didn’t hit while we were doing this or it would have been much worse. We would have had flying deck plates through the air and such. Not good.
bq. As it was, it happened while chow was going on and most people were either sitting and eating or on watch. I don’t remember much of the collision. People describe it as like in the movie, “The Matrix,” where everything slowed down and levitated and then went flying forward faster that the brain can process. My mind has blanked it out exactly what happened. Adrenaline kicked in and I have no real memory of how I got down to middle level or what I did immediately following.
It is amazing that only one person was killed.
Posted by DaveH at January 23, 2005 1:19 PM