US Navy Makes Personnel Changes in Choppy Wake of USS Newport News Collision
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The U.S. Navy’s commander of Combined Task Force 54 has completed administrative personnel actions involving members of the USS Newport News (SSN 750) crew. On January 29, the nuclear submarine’s Captain, Matthew A. Weingart, was relieved of command due to a lack of confidence in his ability to command. Captain Norman B. Moore was temporarily assigned to assume command of the Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine.
The submarine is now in port in Bahrain following the January 8th collision between the USS Newport News and the Japanese 160,000 DWT tanker Mogamigawa. The submarine is now undergoing damage inspections and assessments, which will be followed by temporary repairs. Although damage to the submarine was originally described to be minor, the Navy has announced that the Newport News will not finish its scheduled deployment. Instead, the sub will return to the United States for permanent work before it redeploys. Meanwhile, the tanker is said to be undergoing repairs to one of its port side ballast tanks and the propeller at a Singapore shipyard.
No U.S. Sailors or Japanese merchant crewmembers were injured when the USS Newport News and the merchant vessel collided in the Strait of Hormuz. At the time of the incident, the submarine was underway and proceeding submerged when it struck the vessel, near its stern. Damage to the M/T “Mogamigawa” was described at the time of the incident as minor and there was no oil spill of oil or leakage of nuclear fuel, according to US and Japanese government officials. Both ships remained able to navigate, and the submarine surfaced after the incident.
The collision has spurred an internal U.S. Navy investigation into the cause of the incident. The Mogamigawa was enroute to Singapore from the Gulf with a crew of eight Japanese and 16 Filipinos. U.S. and allied navy vessels regularly patrol the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea and western Indian Ocean, attempting to block smuggling of weapons to Iraq and Somalia, nuclear components to Iran, as well as other illicit activities. The 34-mile wide Straits of Hormuz, the entrance to the Persian Gulf and through which as much as 40 percent of the world's crude oil supplies must pass, are flanked by Oman and Iraq.
The incident is not the first between U.S. Naval ships and a commercial Japanese vessel. As recently as February of 2001, another U.S. Navy submarine struck a Japanese fishing vessel off the coast of Hawaii, killing nine. And, within the past three years, at least two other collisions between U.S. Naval assets and merchant vessels have occurred in the shipping lanes around the Persian Gulf. Beyond this, Weingart is the second commanding officer to be removed from a United States Navy submarine in the past two weeks. On January 19, the captain of the submarine Minneapolis-St. Paul was also relieved of command an accident in which four crewmembers, two of whom died, were washed over the side in heavy seas.