The 9 February collision in which the fast-surfacing submarine USS Greeneville (SSN-772) sank the Japanese training ship Ehime Maru reminds us once again of the thin line that separates a disaster from a near miss. Magazines have carried a photo that shows Midshipman Scott Waddle 20 or so years ago as he embraced his father, an Air Force colonel. The expressions on both faces are joyous. Then we fast forward to the images that have filled the television screens of late as a mature Waddle, now a commander and until recently commanding officer of the Greeneville, arrived for court of inquiry sessions at Pearl Harbor. As he walked hand-in- hand with his wife Jill, both faces were grim, reflecting the enormity of the tragedy that has resounded within the Navy and in faraway Japan.
In the course of doing hundreds of oral history interviews, I have heard of many instances in which luck, good and bad, has been a factor. Almost 20 years ago I interviewed Vice Admiral John McCrea, then in his 90s. He recounted an incident in the summer of 1943 when he was taking the brand-new battleship Iowa (BB-61) through a tortuous channel into Casco Bay, Maine. As he conned the ship, he didn't order the rudder over quite soon enough, and the ship scraped against a rock ledge and tore a long gash in her bottom. But Captain McCrea had an angel on his shoulder. Before taking command he had been naval aide to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and they developed a mutual affection. The hard-bitten Admiral Ernest J. King was then Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Fleet, but he figured Roosevelt would say something to him if he wanted McCrea punished. The President said nothing on the matter, so McCrea retained command and went on to become a distinguished flag officer.
In the mid-1980s I interviewed Admiral Mel Pride, a pioneer naval aviator who helped devise the arresting gear for the Navy’s first aircraft carrier, the USS Langley (CV-1). He was a laconic old gentleman, reflecting both his personality and his New England heritage. But at one point he went into more detail than usual. He told of an airplane crash in the mid-1930s, when he was serving as a test pilot. The crackup left him with a compound fracture of the lower leg, and he was due to have it amputated. But shortly before the scheduled operation, a new surgeon came along and said he thought he could save the leg. He did, and years later Pride pulled up his trouser leg to show me his crooked-but- still-intact shin. That surgeon was the difference between Pride retiring for physical disability as a lieutenant commander or retiring long afterward as a four-star admiral, which he did.
When I was serving on board the tank landing ship Washoe County (LST-1165) in the late 1960s, I observed yet another instance. Our usual practice was to take on equipment in Naha, Okinawa, and then transport it to Vietnam. One evening we took aboard a load of trailers in our tank deck. Tractors backed them into the ship, men lowered the fifth- wheel arrangements into position to support the forward part of each trailer, and pulled out. Then it was up to our seamen to attach turnbuckles that would fasten the trailers to the deck to keep them from moving when the ship was at sea. But on one trailer the fifth wheel didn’t quite lock into place—the thin line that led to disaster. As a young seaman tightened the turnbuckle, he brought the trailer crashing down on top of him. He died a short time later—as much a casualty of the Vietnam War as those who were killed in country. A simple procedure performed not quite correctly meant the difference between life and death.
By all accounts, Commander Waddle has been a fine naval officer. His wife told Newsweek magazine that he has the personality of an aviator, but he didn’t have the eyesight for it. He became a nuclear submariner instead. The stereotype has it that nuclear submariners are sober, methodical individuals. But Waddle seemed cut from the same cloth as the swashbuckling diesel submariners of World War II.
But the very traits that had served submariners so well in the past proved Waddle’s undoing on the day of the collision. His aggressive, can-do spirit led to tragedy. A petty officer in his crew, thinking his captain was on top of the situation, failed to pass on a timely warning of a contact. And the self-confident Waddle himself made a periscope scan that was too quick to detect the Japanese ship nearby. The Greeneville went soaring to the surface, right under the Ehime Maru. With better luck, he would have surfaced 50 or 100 feet away, and the result would have been the same sort of near miss that so many naval officers have experienced and then wiped their brows with relief. Instead, the submarine tore open the hull of the Ehime Maru and sent nine people to their deaths. Whatever punishment the Navy’s judicial system may impose, it will be less severe than the thoughts that will haunt Commander Waddle for the rest of his life: “If only . . .”