Civilians recount tale of submarine collision

"I need to take a look," the skipper said, according to another passenger on the sub. "OK," he concluded, seeing nothing amiss.

The submarine sank below periscope depth, into the otherworldly serenity of still water, then shot up. For the novices aboard -- and at the controls -- it felt a bit like being in a descending plane.

Built to serve as an unseen, unheard killer, the submarine this time did not see or hear what was above in the choppy waters off Hawaii a week ago.

Everyone heard a loud noise and felt the shudder of an unexpected impact. Cmdr. Scott Waddle let out a startled epithet.

On the Ehime Maru, the stricken Japanese fisheries-training vessel, skipper Hisao Onishi reacted, too. "Like iron being shredded," he said of the hit.

He felt he had sailed his 180-foot trawler "over some kind of a big building." Instead, it was a 360-foot submarine breaking the surface. The sliced vessel sank quickly, leaving 26 survivors grasping for safety amid diesel oil and debris.

Nine crew members are missing, and Japan is demanding answers about how the collision occurred, why a couple of civilians were allowed at the sub's controls, and whether that made any difference.

On Thursday, two of the civilian passengers described the events on NBC's "Today" show, adding to the harrowing accounts from the Ehime Maru's survivors of what happened when the sub rose like a "whale" from the sea.

For Hall, it was a chance to do one better than Walter Mitty, the James Thurber character who daydreamed of himself as a Navy pilot and other action heroes to spice up his ordinary life.

Hall, identified by his company as a director of Fossil Bay Resources Ltd., of Dallas, was among more than a dozen civilians aboard the Greeneville as part of the Navy's public relations effort to build support.

Heading back to Pearl Harbor in the afternoon, the captain offered Hall and another landlubber a chance to help in a practice emergency surfacing.

"Sure, I'd love to do that," Hall recalled saying. "I was a little nervous about it."

Hall pulled the two levers of the emergency blow switch, counted out loud for 10 seconds and pushed them back in place, just as he was told. A crewman placed his hands over Hall's to make sure the switch was locked.

That's to ensure "you don't have a sudden spasm and do something you should not," explained Rear Adm. Stephen Pietropaoli at the Pentagon.

Hall went on: "Immediately you sit down and the submarine began to rise and it came very quickly."

Another civilian, Todd Thoman, a former employee of Fossil Bay, said a crew member had scanned the surface with the periscope, for two rotations, and then the skipper looked around himself.

In the high-tech Navy, the periscope's view is shown on flat computer screens that many can watch. No one saw anything.

"He brought the periscope down," Thoman said of the skipper, "and we proceeded with the maneuver."

Pietropaoli, speaking for the Navy, said the second civilian at the controls was at the helm. He said that during an emergency surfacing, the helmsman does nothing more than hold controls in a neutral position while the critical work of raising the sub is done by others.

He said there was no indication the two closely supervised civilians contributed to the collision, but "we'll continue to look at that."

When the sub hit the trawler, Waddle exclaimed, according to Hall: "Jesus, what the hell was that?"

The skipper took the periscope and immediately saw the stricken vessel. Waddle quickly regained his composure, Hall said.

"He said, 'Would my guests go directly to the crew mess?"'

The civilians were led down one level under the control room and began watching the chaos outside, via a flat-screen monitor showing the view of the periscope.

"Once we saw the ship taking on water and the crew bringing things out, we knew it was going to be devastating," Thoman said.<