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Design Safety Safety Submarine Accidents a 60-Year Statistical Assessment by Christopher Tingle

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Design Safety Safety Submarine Accidents a 60-Year Statistical Assessment by Christopher Tingle 031_039_TingleFeature_0909:Layout 1 11/12/2009 9:11 AM Page 31 DesignDesign Safety Safety Submarine Accidents A 60-year statistical assessment By Christopher Tingle TWO WATERSHED EVENTS OCCURRED IN 1963 sures occupied by adversaries, both above and Abstract: An analysis that effectively spelled the end of America’s post- below the surface. of submarine accidents war period of national innocence: the assassination These weaknesses have been reasonably well from 1946 to 2005 was Tof President John F. Kennedy and the destruction of appreciated since the earliest of submarines, as the conducted to determine the nuclear submarine Thresher, commanded by accident record will attest. Since the 18th century, whether improvements Lieutenant-Commander John Harvey. more than 1,800 submarines have been sunk and in design and manage- Just as the context for both these events were roughly 60,000 submariners have perished world- ment systems have markedly different, so too would be the fallout from wide in peace and in war (Gray, 2003). reduced the probability each. In the case of JFK’s assassination, it would mark While these figures may seem relatively high, of an incident. The the end of the moral rectitude of U.S. politics and the consider them in the following context: analysis showed that sanctity of the office of the president. Robert MacNeil •Early submarines were notoriously unsafe. from 1946 to 1974, 0.92 of the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour summed this up However, when coupled with the drive to maintain sunk per 500 available by stating, “. perhaps we lived in a fool’s paradise a technological edge, these early losses resulted in submarines per year; before the Kennedy assassination” (Proctor, 1993). improved design and operation. and 38 fatalities per In the case of the Thresher accident, the result •Major overt conflicts naturally increase the risks 30,000 available sub- would be scrutiny of submarine design and the to submarines. Losses in these scenarios will contin- mariners per year, while implementation of assurance systems. It marked the ue to occur despite improvements in design and from 1975 to 2005: 0.31 beginning of SUBSAFE, a quality assurance pro- operation. sunk per 500 available gram of the U.S. Navy designed to maintain the safe- The question remains: Have improvements in submarines per year, ty of the nuclear submarine fleet. Specifically, it design and operations realized benefits in terms of and 12 fatalities per provides maximum reasonable assurance that sub reducing losses or has the increasingly complex sub- 30,000 available sub- hulls will stay watertight and that they can recover marine coupled with the ebb and flow of the geopo- mariners per year. from unanticipated flooding. litical situation introduced even greater risk resulting Interestingly, and by a twist of fate, both Kennedy in relatively more losses? and Harvey share more than just a tragic place in To determine this, the author analyzed subma- U.S. history. Both had apparently received a gift rine accident data that has been collated since 2001. from enigmatic Admiral Hyman Rickover, director The scope of the data covers the 60-year period, 1946 of the U.S. Navy’s Naval Reactors Branch. The gift to 2005. These data were selected as they ensured was a plaque inscribed with an old French fishing elimination of accidents attributable to poor design prayer: “O God the sea is so great and my boat is so during the early part of the 20th century as well as small.” Rickover had made a habit of presenting these plaques to new submarine captains, which Christopher Tingle, CD, CRM, M.Eng., P.Eng., is a principal engineer with BMT was intended to be a reminder of their vulnerabili- Fleet Technology Ltd. in Ottawa, Ontario. On behalf of BMT, he is also director of ties. Kennedy, a World War II U.S. Naval Reserve configuration for CSMG Inc., which provides in-service support to Canada’s four officer, had also received the plaque (which now Victoria-Class submarines. During his 24 years of commissioned service to the resides in his presidential library). Canadian Navy, he served in various capacities, including engineering officer aboard While the Thresher’s demise did not put the the Canadian submarine, the HMCS Ojibawa; the Navy’s SUBSAFE project director brakes on the U.S. nuclear submarine program, it and the Victoria-Class submarine in-service class manager. He was also quality underscored the fact that these ever-increasingly systems manager for the Collins-Class submarines with the Royal Australian Navy. complex platforms were still susceptible to their Tingle holds a B.A.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto and an environment, a dark, frigid world of extreme pres- M.Eng. in Nuclear Engineering from the Royal Military College of Canada. www.asse.org SEPTEMBER 2009 PROFESSIONAL SAFETY 31 031_039_TingleFeature_0909:Layout 1 11/12/2009 9:11 AM Page 32 the significant number of submarine losses due to rine accidents and Jane’s Fighting Ships (JFS), which the two major wars at that same time. The data also describes fleet compositions and from time to time include submersible accidents. While submarines records submarine losses. and submersibles have entirely different design •Databases. Several official databases are avail- intents—the former as a strategic deterrent and the able online, notably the U.S. Coast Guard’s accident latter for research and recreation—both operate database and U.S. Navy’s Naval Sea Systems under the same physical constraints, providing an Command (NAVSEA) ship casualty reports, as well inextricable link in terms of risk management. as unofficial databases such as globalsecurity.org, The data are an aid to assessing whether the situ- fas.org, deepstorm.ru, navsource.org and bellona.org. ation has improved as well as an aid to identifying It should be noted that online sources can be unreli- areas for further improvement in terms of the magni- able with respect to sustained availability. Readers tude and nature of the incidents that occur. The infor- wishing to seek out these sources are cautioned that mation also provides probabilistic accident data for they may no longer exist in their quoted state. risk assessment tools such as event and fault trees. •Reports. Two reports provide a compendium of submarine accidents: the Australian Department of The Accident Data Defense’s 1992 audit review of submarine safety major Over the course of several years, data regarding accidents since 1945, and the Arkin and Handler (1989) submarine and submersible accidents (for reasons of report of ship and submarine accidents. brevity, future discussion regarding submarine acci- •Investigations and inquiries. Signatories to the dents includes submersibles) for the period 1946 to International Maritime Organization (IMO) conven- 2005 have been gathered from various sources tions must investigate significant accidents in their ter- including the following: ritorial waters or accidents involving their flag state •Literature. Several books have been written on vessels. An example of this type of investigative report the subject of submarine accidents. These include includes the Canadian Transportation Accident Inves- Gray (2003) for submarine accidents in general, tigation and Safety Board report (1994) concerning the Busby (1976) for submersible accidents, Sontag, collision between sailing vessel Moonglow and the Drew and Drew (1998) for U.S./USSR cold war sub- Chilean submarine Thomson. In addition, governmen- marine activity, Kévorkian (2005) for French subma- tal subcommittees often seek additional information regarding expenditures and losses, as evidenced by the congressional Armed Services Investigating Definitions Subcommittee that probed the foundering of Guitarro in 1969 (U.S. House of Representatives, 1969). •News and journal articles. In addition to news Fate Categories stories, more in-depth journal articles stand out, in- Damage: An accident yielding damage but without fatality. cluding Pritzlaff (1972) for submersible accidents, Decommissioned: As a result of the mishap, the vessel is decom- and Kostrichenko and Eizenberg (1997) for a com- missioned from further service. pendium of Soviet and Russian submarine catastro- Significant damage: An accident yielding at least one fatality. phes. The latter is typical of the wellspring of newly Sunk: Vessel unintentionally sunk. available foreign language information made acces- Sunk vessel: Collision or action resulting in the demise of another sible through online translation engines. vessel. •Oral histories. The Internet and the proliferation Unknown: The fate is unknown. of forums and blogs related to submarines make it easier to tap into the oral history that currently exists. Immediate Causes For each incident, data attributes such as date, Collision: Submarine hits another vessel or man-made infrastructure. name, class, fate, cause, location and owner have been Disease: Personnel succumb to a disease. gathered. The fate and immediate cause categories Explosion: Vapor explodes (not necessarily leading to fire). and their corresponding definitions are described in Fire: Material and/or personnel is/are damaged/injured by fire. the definitions sidebar at left. To provide some rela- Flood: Submarine’s watertight integrity is compromised reducing tive context for these incidents, an exposure basis the reserve of buoyancy. detailing the total number of submarines and sub- Grounding: Submarine hits the bottom, shoreline or ice. mariners (seagoing or otherwise) by nation has
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