"RB" wrote in message
...
I still don't how the board let the Captain off so easy. Of course, I
wasn't there to hear all the evidence they heard.

The Captain in question wasn't charged, so the board was not hearing
evidence
about his role, except as a witness.

Normally, the Senior Officer Present has a clear duty to take command in
times of peril if he thinks the situation is being handled improperly. I
was told that this particular Captain was a qualified submariner in that
type vessel (I think I even heard he was an ex-CO of one), so was fully
qualified in that regard.

The CO is assumed to be fully qualified for his job. A staff captain that
decides to
step in had better have his ducks in a row. As you point out below, the
situation that
day was very far from clear cut.

The case as made by the original poster wouldn't hold up in a kangaroo
court.
Without going into the detail, part of his narrative was a civilian
commenting on
"odd body language". If you're down to that, you got nothing.

Lance

The next question would be whether or not the Captain, given the
surrouding
circumstances, should have known the situation was growing perilous. I
don't know the answer to this one. I would have had to hear all the
testimony and evidence before I could judge that part.

Was the Captain there onboard in uniform? If so, that is a sort of prima
facie evidence that he would have automatically been accorded honors and
deference by the Skipper. And, it adds weight to the idea that he should
have intervened, if he saw things getting out of hand.

It's a very interesting case and situation.

Took me a bit, but I finally was able to understand quite clearly that the
combination of large waves, distance from, and periscope limitations of
the
sub, in heavy seas, all contributed to them not being able to detect the
Japanese vessle almost atop them. If the Japanese vessel was bow or stern
on, when scope sweeps were made, and either the sub. or the Japanese
vessel,
or both, were down in a wave trough, it would have been easy to visually
miss them.

Lots of lines of coincidence converging in one place, at one time, to
produce a disaster.