Submarine Collision

RAY SUAREZ:

Since Friday, the Coast Guard has been searching. Nine people are still missing from the "Ehime Maru." The Japanese fishing boat was struck by a U.S. submarine about 20 miles southeast of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The rescue effort was to end today.

REAR ADMIRAL JOSEPH McCLELLAND:

For five days thus far we've used 12 ships, 11 aircraft, to have used 2 ships, 11 aircraft. And we're assisted by the "Ehime Maru" to recover 72 separate search areas on day and night searches covering an area of over 38,000 square kilometers.

RAY SUAREZ:

The Navy now plans to send an underwater robot to the ocean floor to hunt for the ship and possibly bodies. But the weather won't allow that now.

ADMIRAL CRAIG QUIGLEY:

The weather is lousy right now in the area where the "Ehime Maru" went down about 30 knots of wind six to 12 foot seas and because of those lousy weather conditions we have not been able to deploy the Super Scorpio or the side scanning sonar to bring them into play.

RAY SUAREZ:

The Japanese government has asked that the ship be brought to the surface– a task the Navy says would be very complex.

TOM SALMON:

The feasibility of salvage is something that we're going to be looking at during the survey that will be done. It's a very complex problem. The ship is hundreds of tons. It's in nearly 2,000 feet of water so it will be… it would be a technically very challenging operation.

REPORTER:

In theory, how you would go about raising a vessel like this, would you bring in cranes…

TOM SALMON:

It would most likely be what we call a heavy lift. There are lift resources in the world, sheer legs that are capable of lifting thousands of tons. That's… making the lift is not the hard part; it's rigging. It's attaching to the object on the bottom that's going to be very complex.

RAY SUAREZ:

Meanwhile, in a TV interview this morning, two of the 16 civilians on board the U.S.S. "Greeneville" described the incident. One of them pulled the levers of the ballast controls to initiate the rapid ascent to the surface.

JOHN HALL:

Once you pull the levers pull them down I counted for ten seconds out loud, and then put the levers back in place. The seaman that was standing next to me put his hands over my hands and made sure the levers were in and locked, and he said, "sit down."

REPORTER:

When you reached the surface, what did you feel and what did you hear?

JOHN HALL:

There was a very loud noise, and the whole submarine shuddered.

REPORTER:

What did the captain say at that point?

JOHN HALL:

I remember his words pretty vivid. He said, "Jesus, what the hell was that?"

RAY SUAREZ:

In Washington today, Pentagon officials also emphasized this was a standard, supervised procedure.

REAR ADMIRAL STEPHEN PIETROPAOLI:

In a technical sense they had their hands on control surfaces did at the control station. In a real sense, they were 100% the entire time, as always. Many of you have done this procedure yourself, although perhaps not an emergency surfacing, in driving the submarines — when you've been brought to a submarine; in a real sense, they have a fully qualified, very interested watch-stander standing directly behind them over their shoulder, with their hands on your hands, ensuring that you don't have a sudden spasm and do something you should not do.

RAY SUAREZ:

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash. It said it didn't know the control room contained civilians until it was reported in the press.

JOHN HAMMERSCHMIDT:

It's very important for us to ascertain that. And we will be asking questions along those lines.

RAY SUAREZ:

News of the civilians onboard also was kept for several days from officials in Japan, where 15 crew members returned home today. Government leaders voiced their displeasure about the end of the search effort.

YASUO FUKUDA ( Translated ):

We strongly urged the U.S. Government to keep up their searching effort. We demand the further searching and rescuing effort by the U.S. Coast Guard.

RAY SUAREZ:

The Navy's preliminary investigation into the accident could be completed as early as the end of this week.

JIM LEHRER:

As we reported in the News Summary, late today President Bush ordered a review of civilian activity during all military exercise and the Coast Guard called off its search for the nine people missing from the Japanese ship.