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Civilians Describe Sub Experience

NTSB Releases Interview Transcripts

Some of the civilians aboard the USS Greeneville when it collided with the Japanese fishing vessel Ehime Maru told investigators that they were told not to say anything about some of the drills conducted before the Feb. 9 tragedy.

USS GREENEVILLE COURT OF INQUIRY
USS Greeneville tragedy
USS GREENEVILLE
USS Greenville
EHIME MARU
Ehine Maru
The revelations come from National Transportation Safety Board interviews with the civilians. The transcripts of the interviews were released Wednesday.
  • Click here to read the transcripts of the interviews

"You read the press that the maximum depth of the submarine is 600 feet or 800 feet or whatever the number was," Michael Mitchell said. "We exceeded that depth."

Hawaii resident Susan Nolan told investigators that officers asked them not mention to others that Greeneville skipper Cmdr. Scott Waddle took the submarine below 800 feet during the civilians' tour.

"They said that we are not suppose to tell anybody else," Nolan told investigators.

Waddle admitted during the Navy's court of inquiry that he took the sub to a depth not allowed when civilians are on board.

Some of the visitors also described a demonstration in which they put Styrofoam cups into one of the torpedo tubes. After the sub submerged, the civilians retrieved the cups, which had shrunk in the extra pressure of the tubes.

The interviews covered all stages of the voyage, from the time the group left Pearl Harbor the morning of Feb. 9 to the time they returned the next day. They revealed little that was not already known from the naval inquiry.

The visitors said that the crew was professional and that officers, some of the civilians called them baby sitters, shadowed them all the time. They also said they were told not to interfere with the sub's operations.

"(Captain said) if you choose to stay on in the control room I have very strict rules," Susan Schnur said. "You do not get in the way, you do not touch anything and -- touch anything without permission -- and you do not talk."

"My impressions of the crew, unbelievably professional, you know, in everything that they were doing," Michael Mitchell said.

  • Click here to read a letter from the families of the Ehime Maru victims
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