Attack submarine USS Connecticut (SSN-22) arrived in its home port in Bremerton, Wash., on 21 December after transiting the Pacific Ocean on the surface due to damage from a collision in the South China Sea.  Connecticut reached Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton after pulling into the San Diego harbor a little over a week ago following a surface transit from Guam. While Connecticut went through an initial round of repairs in Guam, the Navy in November announced the submarine would undergo more repairs in Bremerton. The boat was damaged when it hit an unmapped seamount in the South China Sea in October. The collision damaged the ballast tanks and forward section of the boat. The submarine had to conduct the transit from Guam to San Diego, Calif., and San Diego to Bremerton entirely on the surface due to the damage. 

The collision rendered the boat’s sonar dome inoperable, making it unsafe to travel underwater. While the boat is slated to finish the rest of its unplanned repairs in Bremerton, the Navy’s public shipyards already face a backlog of work.  Jay Stefany, the Navy’s acting acquisition executive, told Congress in October that fixing Connecticut at one of the public yards would likely affect the workflow. “If we ended up doing [the Connecticut work] in one of the public shipyards that would certainly cause perturbations in all the other work in the shipyards,” Stefany told the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee at the time. “It just shows how … the world gets a vote and things change and unexpected incidents create more demand for repairs… The attack subs have always been the poor cousin in the public shipyards in terms of getting priority, but we know particularly a Seawolf-class submarine is extremely valuable in terms of the mission in that part of the world,” he added.

Source: USNI News