"Without the others' knowledge," the report said, Best abruptly surfaced.
Commander Waddle was in charge of the Greeneville, an attack submarine, when it abruptly surfaced beneath a Japanese fisheries training vessel.
The Navy submarine that abruptly surfaced on Friday and sank a Japanese fishing boat off Hawaii was following standard procedures and did not use highly accurate active sonar devices that might have better detected that the vessel was near, Navy officials said today.
In a statement released on Friday, the safety board reported that the Greeneville remained at periscope depth for only 90 seconds before submerging to a depth of 405 feet and surfacing abruptly by filling its ballast tanks with air.
Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board and a preliminary inquiry by a Navy commander have found that the presence of the civilians, including two who occupied control positions when the Greeneville surfaced abruptly, proved a distraction to the crew.
Scott D. Waddle, has told naval investigators he was not informed of its location as he prepared to surface abruptly and did not see it when he swept the horizon through the periscope, the officials said.
Investigators testifying before a rare court of inquiry at Pearl Harbor Naval Station over the last week outlined a series of errors by the captain and crew in the moments before the submarine surfaced abruptly and collided with a Japanese trawler called the Ehime Maru.
In parallel efforts to untangle Friday's naval accident off the coast of Hawaii, Navy and civilian investigators spent today debriefing crew members and reviewing logs from the Navy submarine that surfaced abruptly as part of a drill and caused the sinking of a Japanese fishing vessel.
As their lawyers cross-examined Admiral Griffiths on Wednesday and again today, it was clear that their strategy was to identify circumstances that would explain why the officers were not aware that a fishing trawler was nearby when the Greeneville surfaced abruptly in a maneuver called an emergency main ballast blow.
The day after the couple's meeting, a video surfaced that abruptly replaced Hadiya in the national mind.
Their doubts surfaced late Friday over the abruptly annulled appointment of a Palestinian leader for a senior United Nations post.
