Commander Andy Coles is the captain of HMS Astute which ran aground yesterday. Now he’s being investigated. Obviously this is a career-ending incident for him, but what will determine whether he’ll be allowed to leave, forced to resign his commission, or cashiered and dismissed?
And how will this affect the more junior officers?
Paging robby.
The last submarine to have an unfortunate accident near Skye was HMS Trafalgar in 2002. From the wiki article it doesn’t look like the officers in charge had their careers ended.
IANA submariner.
‘Common knowledge’, as conveyed by people who know about the U.S. Navy, is that collisions and groundings of a ship – especially a submarine – are career-ending events. Depending on the severity, a skipper might remain in command. Or he might be shuffled off to a desk job. From what I’ve heard, the skipper can pretty much forget about promotions. He may remain in the Navy, but that’s as far as he’ll go. Since the U.S. military forces have an ‘up or out’ policy, it seems longevity would be limited. Within the past year (I think) a couple of F/A-18 pilots were permanently grounded after flying too low over a football game. (They were supposed to fly over it, but they flew so low as to ‘create a hazard’.) They weren’t thrown out of the Navy, but there’s not much worse for a Naval Aviator than to be permanently grounded.
Note again that I’ve never been in the Navy. I’m just relating ‘common knowledge’ among people I’ve know who have been in the Navy, and it may or may not be accurate. Other navies have different traditions.
Not ended but impacted.
The CO was court-martialed and bumped to a desk. He has had one other ship command, HMS Triumph, but that was while it was in dock having the reactor refueled and pretty much everything else ripped out and upgraded. So he has either ridden a desk or given only non-mobile commands. As far as promotions go… I don’t see any. I think he is still a Commander. His current position is with US CENTCOM, prior to that he served as secondee to several contractors (basically assigned to work for civilian companies). They didn’t kick him out. But the RN doesn’t seem to want to let him work directly for them anymore. This is all certainly in line with Johnny L.A.'s analysis.
The trainer was also court-martialed. Since then I can’t find any record of what happened to the guy. He doesn’t have a current page on the RN.
The trainee who actually crashed it was moved out of subs and has achieved command of a mine sweeper. So he has been able to achieve some success, even though he had to transfer to a different department in the RN to do so. He has also received a promotion to full Commander. Of the three though he received the least blame, was not court-martialed, only censured.
Remember that what will happen is likely not to be a court martial per se but a court of inquiry. If the evidence presented shows that Coles gave sailing orders appropriate to avoid known hazards and to proceed at a safe speed, and then retired for the night, as even ship’s captains must do, and the Astute fetched up on an uncharted shoal, as some reports have it, he could be exonerated. While he is completely responsible for the safe operation of his ship, he is not responsible for knowing what nobody knew.
We used to be friends with a former Navy SH-60 (Seahawk) helicopter pilot. He crashed on a drug interdiction mission where his tail rotor hit the ship they were investigating at the time. There were some circumstances that apparently didn’t make this a career ender for him, except then as a co-pilot on another mission about two years later, he had a similar incident occur. This one didn’t down the helicopter, but came close. We lost touch with him and the last I heard, he was a mortgage broker in Florida.
Not sure about the Royal Navy, but in the U.S. Navy, the commanding officer (CO) would likely be relieved of command as soon as the submarine reaches port (with some notation that the squadron commodore had “lost confidence in the commanding officer’s ability to command”). Assuming that the CO was merely negligent, he would likely receive Admiral’s Mast (non-judicial punishment under UCMJ Article 15) for negligent dereliction of duty, with the likely punishment of a punitive letter of reprimand. This will end all future promotions and non-desk jobs. The CO would typically be allowed to retire with benefits and an honorable discharge.
Other officers facing similar punishment would be the Officer of the Deck (OOD) at the time of the incident and the sub’s Navigation Officer, if the grounding was due to a navigation error. If the sub’s executive officer was involved (i.e. present in the control room at the time of the grounding), he could also be at risk.
For a relatively minor incident such as this in which there was no loss of life and no significant damage to the vessel, this would be the limit. Likely nobody would be court-martialed.
This may the case in the Royal Navy, but there is basically no way that a U.S. Navy commanding officer could be exonerated in a case such as this. The CO is responsible for everything, whether or not he is awake. In particular, he is responsible for acts or ommissions by officers under his command, as well as their training. If they screw up and ground the ship, it’s the CO’s ass on the line (as well as theirs).
BTW, I find it doubtful that the shoal in question was truly uncharted. You either have bottom depth data for the area in question on your charts or you don’t. If you don’t you should have been proceeding at a safe speed and taking soundings to avoid running aground. You should also have some margin of error in shallow areas in case there is some changes in the bottom topography since the chart was prepared.
In The Daily Express (so take it with a pinch of salt) it is alleged that Coles manoeuvred against his judgement to pick up an “inspection team”, and he is the fall guy for this. :dubious:
The Royal Navy holds its Commanding Officer’s to account, and quite rightly so, but it is a mature organisation which having invested so heavily in training an officer (15-18 years for a submarine CO) it will not give up on his or her talents and professional acumen because of a single error of judgement; unless of course there is crimminal negligence or the like. Whereas most people realise how complicated an aircraft or a tank is because they can identify with it very few people actually understand how demanding and complicated a nuclear powered submarine is and how hostile its normal operating environment actually is. What might seem to be a stupid mistake within the reported press is most probably way more complicated than a non submariner realises. Regarding the TRAFALGAR incident both the officers court martialled have subsequently been given excellent jobs and remain fully embraced by the Navy and both have been promoted. The trainee although no longer serving on submarines has also been promoted and has enjoyed a successful surface command.
Well, the U.S. Navy must be an “immature organization,” because the culture in the USN with respect to mistakes is completely the reverse of this.
The USN has a completely zero-tolerance attitude toward mistakes, whether they are in judgement or otherwise. I’m a former U.S. Navy submarine officer, and I know several officers whose careers ended prematurely because of relatively minor screw-ups, or simply because their department failed an important test or inspection.
Unfortunately, this has produced a group of officers who are terrified to make a mistake. I had a commanding officer who was so terrified of screw-ups that he drove his crew into the ground with overwork, including redundant QA (quality assurance) checks, additional supervision, and endless inspections. This created its own problems as you had officers and crew working ridiculously long work hours, often going days without sleep.
There was a U.S. Navy officer from the last century who famously ran his ship aground as a young officer. Today, that officer would promptly find himself out of the Navy and on the beach–permanently. In 1907, however, while the officer in question was court-martialed, convicted of hazarding a Navy ship, and received a letter of reprimand, the incident had no other apparent effect on his career, and Chester Nimitz went on to become a 5-star fleet admiral in WWII.
I agree with you Robby and my fear is that we become risk adverse with that sort of culture. I think the RN has got it about right. Punish mistakes and hold to account but don’t throttle submarine commanders and their crews to the point where they will not take risks - thats no good on ops, you just as well not have a submarine service because you would achieve very little in what is, in even in peacetime, an inherently hostile environment. I’m a serving post command submariner. Cheers.
Wrong tense, my friend. And you should see the Army and Air Force-much worse even than the Navy. I’m often surprised we can get anything done at all.