Commander Steven Drysdale reprimanded for crashing submarine Superb
A Royal Navy commander who crashed a nuclear submarine into a large rock after mistaking a figure 1 for a 7 on a chart was reprimanded by a court martial.
Commander Steven Drysdale was in charge of HMS Superb when he decided to take a short cut to get to the Persian Gulf in time for operations. He misread the 132m depth of a stone pinnacle as 732m and ordered the sub to dive.
The £32 million submarine, which was capable of carrying Tomahawk cruise missiles, suffered damage to its sonar equipment when it crashed and had to return to Britain.
HMS Superb was suffering technical problems that caused her to lose speed as she travelled down the Red Sea in May 2008, but when Commander Drysdale ordered a new course to be plotted he failed to spot the rock.
The new route was drawn directly across the spot where the pinnacle was marked on the map, making it more difficult to see, the court martial at HMS Nelson in Portsmouth heard. New procedures have been brought in by the Navy as a result of the incident.
Lieutenant-Commander Andrew Cutler, Officer of the Watch, and Lieutenant Lee Blair, Navigating Officer, were also repriminded after admitting failures over the incident.
Captain Stuart Crozier, prosecuting, said that Commander Drysdale and Lieutenant-Commander Cutler decided to dive to 250m instead of 100m in order to travel faster in colder water.
Captain Crozier said: “The three defendants all looked at the chart and the sub was taken to 250m. No thorough check was made to establish whether this depth was safe from obstacles.”
He added: “On assessing the chart, Officer of the Watch Cutler saw he could cut the corner of a dog-leg, saving about three to four miles.
“He then instructed the plot officer to draw a new line on the chart. However Lieutenant-Commander Cutler did not check the depth around this new track.
“Unfortunately, with the sub now dived to 250m, this new track went directly over a pinnacle which showed only 132m of available depth.
“This was not seen by the plot officer, or the Officer of the Watch, who had ordered the change of course. At 10.01 on May 26 2008 the sub collided with an underwater obstacle and decreased speed from 16 knots to three knots in very short order.”
