U.S. Navy investigators in San Diego were called to Subbase Bangor on Sunday to determine how a nuclear submarine severed the tow line connecting an empty oil barge and a tugboat off Cape Flattery.
The sub USS Topeka was on routine operations Saturday about 12 miles west of the Cape Flattery coast when it severed the two cables between the Alaska-based tug Ernest Campbell and the double-hulled barge it was pulling, leaving the barge adrift in high seas.
Unconfirmed reports Sunday indicated that the tow cable might have been deep under water because of high seas, and the submarine — which was on routine operations off the Pacific coast — ran into the line, breaking it.
The Navy had no comment.
After the incident, the USS Topeka, part of Squadron 11 based at San Diego’s Ballast Point submarine base, steamed eastward through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and was moored at Subbase Bangor on Sunday pending the investigation, a Navy spokeswoman said.
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The rest of the story appears in Monday’s Peninsula Daily News.