Civilians on Greeneville Praise Crew
March 22 -- Watching Cmdr. Scott Waddle guide the crew of the USS Greeneville, Susan Schnur was in awe of his control and poise as the submarine rose to the surface. Then came a strange noise and Waddle's face changed.
"His face kind of turned white and he, and he said 'Jesus, what the hell was that?,'" Schnur told an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. The noise was the Greeneville crashing into a Japanese fishing trawler near Hawaii.
Schnur and the other 15 civilians taking a VIP trip aboard the submarine Feb. 9 were escorted to the torpedo room while the crew handled the crisis. Waddle briefed the civilians several times.
"It wasn't supposed to be that way. It was supposed to be a lot of fun," said Schnur, roughly quoting Waddle about the excursion to demonstrate the nuclear submarine's capabilities.
Schnur's reflection on the accident — as well as those of 13 other VIPs — were released Wednesday on the NTSB's Web site. The NTSB posted transcripts from telephone interviews of most of the civilian guests.
The civilian accounts of the incident, which sunk the trawler and killed nine people, varied on many of the specific details of what occurred prior to the crash.
Some remembered as few as three turns of the periscope by captain and crew before the sub performed an emergency surfacing drill that led to the crash. Others remembered as many as five or six. The crew had failed to spot the Japanese boat in its vicinity prior to the crash.
But, the civilian accounts did seem to agree the crew seemed professional and attentive to their duties.
One "got a sense of, you know, everybody kind of had a job to do and they stuck to it," Mrs. Schnur's husband, Anthony Schnur, said in his interview.
"I was struck by the, the professionalism," he said.
Concerns About Distraction
During the trip, the visitors were allowed to hear sounds made by whales registered by the submarine's sonar. They stood outside of the sub on the topsail, had a tasty fish lunch, got to see how the torpedo room works, and at least one was allowed to blow the sub's horn.
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