In my experience, most COs who are involved in collisions and groundings are relieved of their command. They then get to drive a desk until retirement. If the incident is serious, retirement arrives sooner rather than later, with a punitive letter of reprimand at a minimum following the inquiry.
The Officer of the Deck (OOD) on duty at the time of the incident, and the Navigator (if the incident was related to a navigational error), more often than not share the COs fate.
There has been an ongoing discussion for many years regarding the modern “zero-defect” Navy, and how it discourages risk-taking. After all, if your career can ended by a single mistake (even if minor), you tend to produce very cautious officers. Many people question how these cautious officers would fare in battle.
My submarine CO was so concerned about preventing such incidents that he constantly assigned additional personnel to watch sections. We routinely operated with an OOD and an OOD-qualified “Conning Officer” who had the conn and directed ship’s movement to free up the OOD. The CO himself constantly micromanaged the OOD.
In today’s Navy, ENS Nimitz, after running his ship aground, would never have even made it to LTJG (lieutenant junior grade).
In 1984 the carrier USS Kitty Hawk bumped into a Soviet Victor class submarine in the Sea of Japan. I wonder if the skipper got yelled at or a medal?
I saw her when she was in drydock in 1988 and they were properly fixing the bulb under the bow. After the original accident they filled the couple of tanks forward with concrete until they had the dock time to do the job right.
Lesson learned by the Soviets, don’t play chicken. It’s like a semi hitting a VW bug.
The danger of a Red-Blue incident getting out of hand was so scary that the US and Soviets signed the 1972 (Prevention of) Incidents at Sea Agreement. It outlawed things like training you weapons on the other guy (!), interfering with flight operations (!) overflying the other guy (!) Dropping objects in the sea in front of the other guy (!) and conducting simulated attacks (!).
Since all this stuff was outlawed, we can assume all of them were done from time to time.
People (even those with deep-draft command) are idiots.
when HMS Nottingham grounded on a well-charted rock on July 7th 2002 the Captain was court martialed even though he was off watch at the time. The Captain was reprimanded and the XO and OOW were dismissed their ships.
see http://www.navynews.co.uk/articles/2003/0309/0003091201.asp
I worked with Navy officers for over 30 years and although every one I talked to denied it, I still maintain that wartime requires a different qualities in officers than peacetime. However, the record of replacement of officers for failure to perform during wartime would indicate that most of them are fast learners. Not all that many officers in high command positions were replaced in early WWII. And, of course, following the end of that war we went almost immediately into a virtual permanent alert condition during the cold war so to the navy it sort of felt like wartime.
The US Navy has suffered two submarine collisions in recent years, and IIRC both captains were relieved after inquiries.
In Feb. 2001, the USS Greeneville surfaced beneath a Japanese fishing vessel near Pearl Harbor, killing 17 aboard the Japanese ship. The Greeneville’s captain was on the bridge but was permitting civilian visitors to operate some of the controls, possibly obstructing his own crew. He also failed to immediately render assistance to Japanese survivors still in the water, IIRC.
In Jan. 2005, the USS San Francisco collided with an undersea mountain, which was on some maps aboard but not others. (Side question: Why doesn’t the Navy have a single, ultradetailed set of maps for the whole world by now, or at least those places where its ships regularly go?). One crewman was killed and two dozen badly injured. The sub was badly damaged and is still being repaired, I think.
The Defense Mapping Agency is a disaster. For some reason American troops rely on American (and only American) maps. Needless to say mapping the whole world is a big job and the DMA is simply not up to it.
In Grenada US troops were without proper maps.
In Italy a hotdog Marine pilot cut the cables to a cable car. Many, many civilians were killed. The cable was marked on European maps as a hazard, but not on the American ones.
When that submarine hit the undersea mountain a couple of years ago (off Guam?) it turns out the maps had not been manually updated as per a change order. We knew the mountains were there, but the charts had not been updated.
