Crew Flees After Fire Aboard U.S. Sub

An uncontrollable fire and flooding aboard a Navy research submarine 100 miles from San Diego forced the captain to order crew members to abandon ship in heavy seas early Wednesday morning, officials said.

Forty-one crew members of the Dolphin, the oldest active submarine in the Navy, were evacuated about 2 a.m. from the submarine to a boat launched from a nearby oceanographic vessel. Two others were plucked from the choppy sea by a rescue swimmer dropped from a Coast Guard helicopter.

Navy officials at the submarine base at Point Loma said that it was unclear how the fire started or the extent of the damage to the submarine, which holds a series of performance records for the Navy. None of the sailors suffered injuries beyond “scrapes and bruises,” officials said.

Navy and civilian salvage specialists were on ships adjacent to the Dolphin throughout Wednesday to determine how the sub, which remains on the surface, could be towed back to its home port. Crew members were brought back aboard the oceanographic ship William A. McGaw, used by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Cmdr. Christopher D. Orwoll, the Dolphin’s executive officer, praised the “absolute professionalism and bravery” of the crew in fighting the fire and flooding for three hours before the abandon-ship order was given.

The fire erupted while the Dolphin was on the surface to recharge its batteries during a multi-ship mission to test new methods of launching torpedoes.

“Their extraordinary efforts ensured the safe recovery of the entire crew and stabilization of the vessel,” Orwoll said.

The Dolphin, commissioned in 1968, is the last diesel-powered submarine in the U.S. fleet. For more than three decades, it has been used as a research vessel to test innovations in communications, sonar, weaponry and surveillance. It is the only submarine in the Navy with that capability.

Fire aboard any ship at sea is dangerous. But aboard a submarine it can be “a nightmare scenario,” said retired submarine skipper Harry Mathis. “You’re so confined and the smoke travels so quickly. Basically, you’re inside the fire while you’re fighting it.”

Submarine crews go through extensive training ashore on firefighting and undergo repeated drills at sea. Submarines are constructed with water-tight hatches between compartments to help isolate fire and keep it from spreading.

“If they had to evacuate the entire boat, you know it was serious,” Mathis said.

The Dolphin is assigned to the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command in San Diego, a test facility.

At 165 feet in length, the Dolphin is roughly half the size of attack submarines, which are equipped with Tomahawk missiles and other weaponry.

As a diesel submarine, the Dolphin needs to make trips to the surface every few hours so that its diesel engines can get oxygen needed to recharge the boat’s batteries. Other submarines are nuclear-powered and can stay beneath the surface for weeks.

Abandon-ship orders have been extraordinarily rare. On Wednesday, that decision had to be made by the Dolphin’s skipper, Cmdr. Stephen Z. Kelety. There was not time to consult with higher-ups, officials said.

The Dolphin holds a number of records for the U.S. Navy, including the deepest dive ever made by a submarine (more than 3,000 feet), deepest launch of a torpedo and deepest use of e-mail communication back to a surface location.

Although much of what the Dolphin has done is still top-secret, it is known that it assisted in developing surveillance systems during the Cold War when U.S. submarines continuously tracked and eavesdropped on Soviet submarines.

“The Dolphin is a unique and very important boat,” Mathis said.