Reporter recalls his turn operating USS Maine

CONCORD, N.H. – Reports that civilians were at the controls of a nuclear submarine when it rammed a Japanese fishing boat off Hawaii last week has some New Hampshire civilians recalling their turns at the controls of the submarine USS Maine.

“I had no idea that we could put anybody else at risk,” said Roger Wood, who worked for Dover radio station WOKQ when he took a 17-hour cruise on the USS Maine in 1995.

He said it was an “eerie” feeling when he heard that the USS Greeneville hit a Japanese trawler when it surfaced Friday. Nine passengers on the boat are missing and feared dead. A Navy spokesman said Tuesday that two civilians were at key control stations of the submarine when it practiced the emergency surfacing maneuver that led to the collision.

Wood said he and other civilians on the trip were allowed to control the Maine, under close supervision, but not during surfacing maneuvers.

Wood was invited with other New England reporters to take a shakedown trip on the Maine before it was christened in Portsmouth in July 1995. The trip left from New London, Conn., and went to waters off New Jersey, where it dove as deep as 700 feet.

Grant Bosse, who worked for radio station WGIR in 1995, also was on the trip, as was his father, Leigh Bosse, who owns a Hillsboro weekly newspaper.

Grant Bosse, who is now a legislative assistant in the Statehouse, remembers doing an emergency surfacing maneuver on the Maine. In that maneuver, water is blown out of the submarine’s ballast tanks and the craft surfaces quickly, “like a rubber ball in a bathtub.”

“It was very clear that they had checked the surface [with sonar] before surfacing. But I realize it’s hard to tell what’s on the surface when you are 500 feet below. And once they blow out the tanks, there’s no stopping,” Bosse said.

“It was exhilarating. You’re going up at a rate that is more vertical than horizontal.”

Wood, now the news director at WERZ in Exeter, said the Maine’s crew carefully checked the surface through a periscope before diving and saw a fishing boat a few miles away. The crew would not dive when a fishing boat was visible, he said.

“They wouldn’t dive until the horizon was clear 360 degrees,” he said.

National Transportation Safety Board member John Hammerschmidt said investigators hadn’t determined whether the civilians on the Greeneville had any role in the accident. The Navy allows civilians aboard its ships and submarines to promote its service, educate civilians about the Navy and accommodate journalists’ requests, he said.