Flank Speed

From the bridge of the racing, rolling destroyer-minesweeper Hobson, the air craft carrier Wasp was simply a dark bulk 3,000 yards off to the left, against the mid-Atlantic night. Like the destroyer, which was tearing through the rising seas with all hatches battened down, she was operating under simulated war conditions, and was completely blacked out save for a glimmer of light at her truck. The Wasp had planes in the air; when she began a sweeping 120DEG turn into the wind to pick them up, she came boiling through the darkness at 27 knots, as full of ferocious and implacable motherhood as some vast and angry sea monster.

It was the destroyer's task to perform the maneuver with her in such a manner as to be instantly ready to save any pilot who went into the sea from a bad landing. It was also her task to avoid the carrier's 27,100-ton hull. Last week, before a board of inquiry at Bayonne, N.J., Lieut. William A. Hoefer Jr., 27, an ex-merchant mariner and senior surviving officer of the Hobson, told what happened in the moments before the Wasp rammed and sank the destroyer in the worst peacetime disaster of modern U.S. naval history.

The Blame. He blamed the accident on the destroyer's captain, Lieut. Commander William J. Tierney, 32, of Philadelphia. He noted that the skipper had received a dispatch the day before from the destroyer squadron commander calling for "prompt and resolute action [in performing maneuvers], even at the expense of an occasional mistake . . ." He suggested that it might have "affected the attitude" of Commander Tierney in handling the ship.

At the beginning of the maneuver, Lieut. Hoefer testified, the destroyer's captain, running on the inside of the Wasp's sweeping turn, ordered "right standard rudder," thus turning his vessel in the same direction as the Wasp. But shortly thereafter he called for "left standard rudder" and turned the Hobson toward the path of the onrushing carrier.

Lieut. Hoefer, who was officer of the deck, had "stepped to the starboard wing of the bridge and asked the captain if he had the conn," i.e., if the captain was taking over responsibility for the ship's course. "He answered, 'I have the conn.' " After the vessel turned to the left, the O.O.D. went so far as to warn the skipper that the Wasp was closing perilously fast. Tierney, he testified, did not reply, and, with the Wasp 1,240 yards away, ordered "left standard rudder" a second time.

Into the Sea. What, the court asked, would Lieut. Hoefer have done at this point? "Right full rudder, hard full rudder!" he said. But the skipper, with the carrier only 750 yards away, had called, "Increase to left full--increase to hard left!" Then he signaled the engine room for flank speed. A few seconds later, with a fearful rending of steel, the Wasp crashed into the destroyer; only a few minutes after that, Commander Tierney leaped into the sea, never to be seen again.

Just what the Hobson's captain was attempting to accomplish by his series of orders was not clear. Lieut. Hoefer did not deny that if successful they would have put the destroyer "expeditiously" on station--presumably if the Hobson's first left turn had been followed by a snappy turn to starboard. When he realized he was in danger, Tierney may have hoped that by cutting more sharply to the left and speeding up, he could dodge the Wasp. The Navy refused to disclose all the testimony or to assist in speculation about ho'w the crash happened. The Hobson, said the Navy, had been conforming to "highly confidential tactical doctrine."

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