Defense Begins to Take Shape in Submarine Crash Inquiry

They have not told their stories. They have yet to explain their actions. But after a week of testimony and cross-examination during a rare Navy inquiry, the details of their defense have begun to emerge.

The captain of the nuclear submarine that struck a Japanese trawler would have made better decisions about the sub’s course if his crew had supplied him with more accurate data.

The second-in-command wasn’t the one who looked through the periscope and missed seeing the 191-foot Ehime Maru, so he bears less responsibility for the Feb. 9 collision, which killed nine.

And the officer of the deck--No. 3 in command when the crash happened--was too inexperienced to stand up to a demanding captain, who allegedly pushed the submarine through safety procedures too rapidly before the accident.

The three officers are the focus of the Navy’s inquiry into the collision between the Greeneville and the Ehime Maru. The officers have not testified and may never.

But their attorneys’ cross-examination of witnesses last week provided these first indications of how they likely will defend the men at the helm of the attack submarine. It also gave the first glimpse into what the officers believe happened leading up to the collision, which could end their Navy careers.

So far, there has been little aggressive finger-pointing by attorneys for Cmdr. Scott D. Waddle, captain of the Greeneville; Lt. Cmdr. Gerald K. Pfeifer, the submarine’s executive officer; and Lt. j.g. Michael J. Coen, officer of the deck.

Placing blame is “not blatant” yet, said one Navy spokesman, adding that the men are shipmates, endured a terrible trauma together and take responsibility for the incident. But “it may get to that,” he said, as the attorneys launch their defenses.

The inquiry could take up to a month or more. At its conclusion, the panel of three U.S. admirals hearing the case will recommend whether criminal charges, or other punitive actions, should be filed against Waddle, Pfeifer and Coen.

In its first week, the inquiry has made little progress in solving the enduring mysteries of Feb. 9: How could a well-trained crew have misjudged so badly that the 6,500-ton submarine rocketed into the 500-ton fishing vessel during a dramatic maneuver called an emergency blow?

And how could a talented and experienced skipper have done a proper periscope search of the ocean’s surface and never seen the Ehime Maru, a trawler filled with teens learning commercial fishing?

“Shortly after the collision, I raised the periscope and looked back to see what we had collided with,” Waddle told Time magazine in the March 12 edition. “I was dumbstruck. I had no idea any other vessel was in the area. . . . It was as if something died inside me.”

That view--that Waddle had no clue the Ehime Maru was nearby--appeared to be one of the major tenets of his defense as it trickled out last week. His attorney, Charles Gittins, did not respond to requests for an interview.

But Gittins emphasized the skipper’s experience and “best judgment” in court; if Waddle had only had better backup, the crash never would have happened. He did all the right things, looked in all the right places, so it wasn’t his fault.

“His defense is ‘I did it by the book,’ ” said Jay Fidell, a former Coast Guard legal officer who served on high-level boards of inquiry during the Vietnam War. “Gittins brought the book in--Naval Warfare Publication citations and others--and tried to show through cross-examination that Waddle had actually done what was in the book.”

Gittins also raised the specter of two earlier Navy tragedies that resulted in greater losses of life than the sinking of the Ehime Maru and which the Navy diligently examined. Neither commanding officer was charged.

In cross-examining the first witness--Rear Adm. Charles H. Griffiths Jr., who headed the Navy’s preliminary investigation of the collision--Gittins asked if he recalled the Navy cruiser Vincennes, which shot down an Iranian civilian airliner resulting “in lost life of all personnel on board.”

Griffiths said he did. Then Gittins asked whether Griffiths recalled the destroyer Cole, which was attacked by a terrorist bomb in a Yemen port, leading to 17 deaths. Griffiths said he did.

“Cmdr. Kirk Lippold, who was the commanding officer of that ship, was responsible for that ship as the commanding officer pursuant to United States Navy regulations, correct, sir?” Gittins asked.

“Correct,” Griffiths answered.

“You have no evidence--and you uncovered none during your investigation--that the commanding officer of the USS Greeneville, Cmdr. Waddle, intended to operate the USS Greeneville unsafely, would you agree with that?” Gittins said.

“Of course,” Griffiths said.

The unspoken point? That if the commanding officer of the Vincennes could shoot a missile at an Iranian airliner in 1988, killing 290 civilians, and not be charged, and if Lippold wasn’t charged for not preventing a terrorist attack on his destroyer last year, why should Waddle be charged in the sinking of the Ehime Maru?

Gittins and Coen’s attorney both engaged in the clearest examples of finger-pointing that cropped up during cross-examination. They both emphasized that Petty Officer Patrick Thomas Seacrest, who was responsible for analyzing sonar data and telling officers about it, did not speak up when he saw that another vessel had come close to the Greeneville just before the emergency blow.

“If the officer of the deck and the commanding officer had received that information . . . could they have taken actions in order to avoid a collision with the Japanese vessel?” Lt. Cmdr. Brent Filbert asked Griffiths.

“Most emphatically, yes,” Griffiths said. “It was a key piece of information that they were not provided.”

Just before the collision occurred, the Greeneville rose to periscope depth. Coen did the first quick sweep with the periscope to make sure that the ocean’s surface was clear of other vessels. Then Waddle took the periscope from him and performed a second sweep.

A major criticism is that Waddle only spent 80 seconds at periscope depth making sure that the coast was clear instead of at least three minutes, which is the standard, according to testimony.

Filbert, who did not respond to an interview request, went to great lengths to emphasize that Coen was not allowed to look through the periscope long enough--or under good enough conditions--to have seen the Ehime Maru.

“Would it have been difficult for him to have seen the Japanese vessel when he was doing those rapid sweeps, in your opinion?” he asked Griffiths.

The chief naval investigator noted that Waddle was a far more experienced periscope operator than Coen and looked through the instrument at an even shallower depth than Coen and used the periscope’s high power, unlike Coen.

Even Waddle “did not see the Ehime Maru when conditions would have been more favorable to see it,” Griffiths said. “So I would say it’s reasonable to assume it would have been difficult for the officer of the deck to see the Ehime Maru in the brief searches he conducted.”

Filbert also emphasized the fact that Waddle was far more experienced than Coen and that the younger man would be intimidated by his commanding officer and unlikely to stand up to him.

“How did Cmdr. Waddle describe Lt. Coen’s experience as an officer of the deck” when he was questioned during the Navy investigation? Filbert asked.

“There was no in-depth description,” Griffiths answered. “There was a statement, to wit, that the officer of the deck needed careful watching because he was inexperienced, something to that order.”

Gittins argued during cross-examination that there is no record that Waddle ever said that during the Navy’s investigation. Pfeifer’s attorney, Lt. Cmdr. Timothy D. Stone, also questioned the reliability of the investigation during his cross-examination.

The Navy investigation concluded that Pfeifer, the executive officer of the Greeneville, found deficiencies in the sub’s operations before it executed the emergency blow but “chose not to make the commanding officer aware.”

Stone, who did not respond to an interview request, argued otherwise during cross-examination, noting that Pfeifer did indeed raise some concerns with Waddle. But one of the main points that he tried to make last week was that Pfeifer was not required to speak up because he was not a so-called watch stander.

In the regimented world of submarines, watch standers are the men who are actually on watch--operating equipment or with other official duties. The executive officer, while responsible for the day-to-day running of the submarine, is not a watch stander.

“As a non-watch stander, he’s not automatically in the chain of reporting . . . to the officer of the deck and then up to the commanding officer,” Stone said to Griffiths.

“You’re right,” Griffiths said. “He’s not automatically in that.”

The inquiry will resume today for its second week. Hisao Onishi, captain of the Ehime Maru, is expected to testify, along with Rear Adm. Al Konetzni, commander of the Pacific Fleet’s submarine force.

Konetzni is expected to be asked about the Distinguished Visitors Program, which brought 16 civilians aboard the Greeneville the day of the crash. Griffiths has testified that the visitors interfered with the submarine’s operation.

Capt. Robert L. Brandhuber, chief of staff of the Pacific Fleet’s submarine force, is also expected to testify during the week. Brandhuber, who escorted the civilians, will be the first witness who was actually on board the Greeneville when it struck the Ehime Maru.