From Yahoo wrote:From: "Richard(Gold83-87) QM" <sorrem@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 11:02 am
Subject: bonehead # 5
I don't know the whole reason behind this one. The title of the
story is "How the Madison Sunk at the Pier" If my memory serves me
right they were going to work on the aft ballast tank vent valve.
They decided not to put a seal over the bottom free fload vents.
What I remember most was the majority of the crew standing on the
pier watching the Madison sink as they open the valves. Did I
mention that the shore power was still connected in the aft hatch.
I guess when they started take in water they new they had a problem.
From: "gradyh627" <gharrison@...>
Date: Fri May 7, 2004 6:09 pm
Subject: Re: bonehead # 5
Sinking the boat pier side qualified as a SUBLANT incident... I
remeber that one, as a matter of fact I participated. Unfortunately
I was EDO in maneuvering when it happened. We were to pop an after
main ballast tank vent that was leaking. The tender wouldn't give us
a belly band saying the check valves of teh other ballast tanks
would seat (RIGHT!). We popped the vent pierside without the
bellyband, things stayed quiet for a while. Actually we were venting
the other MBTs as well and were slowly sinking by the stern. We knew
something was amiss when I saw a waterfall into ERUL through the
escape trunk, the cofferdam was installed without a gasket and we
had shorepower on... I shut the hatch and divorced from shore
power... I guess I must have dropped the non-vital buses as I think
to recall hearing a general alarm and a nuclear weapons security
violation... It would have been almost funny had we had high
pressure and/or the low pressure blower available and not tagged
out. It turned out to be a real Cluster F trying to keep the boat
afloat.
After recovering from this beautiful evolution of submerging
pierside... the MBT vent was put back into place without repair.
A few days later our DCA tested the emergency blow system pierside
with the isolation valves in bleed instead of shut and hosed down
the pier... So much for that DCA
After that incident, I got the DCA job and had to do the MBT
replacement tender-side with a belly band on December 31st (at
night)... the divers put the bellyband on the wrong side, cut off
flow to RPFW, alarms lit up maneuvering... emergency extraction of
divers while we were overrinding danger tags restoring cooling
flow... Dropped the MBT vent and nicked the seating surface... Had
to call the squadrom repair officer from his new year's eve party to
bless off the nick... All the while the navigator was continuously
hurling insults at the tender crane operators for breaking a nav
light while lowering the race track on the sail.
It was my most memorable new year's eve ever, ever.
I must thank our Eng, Jim Dullea who helped me keep my sanity that
night with words like, don't worry Grady, we're just snorkeling
through bullshit...
It wasn't bonehead stuff, just another great Navy day... all this
and a paycheck too.
Grady