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As the executive officer, and not knowing my status, Chris got to CCS before I did. Communication with the crew was critical in these first few minutes. He picked up the microphone to make an announcement on the 1MC public address system, but it did not work. The back-up system was down as well. One by one, he attempted every method possible to try to communicate with the crew and the repair lockers. Nothing worked. Every circuit seemed to have been damaged or destroyed by the explosion.

By now people who had organized into small damage control parties were beginning to survey the damage. One by one, each group would
come back into the engineering control station to report that USS
Cole
had a massive hole on the port side. The most telling description was when some said that it looked like a giant had taken his fist and punched through the ship. No one had ever seen this much damage to a ship before. For many it was almost incomprehensible.

A wave of debris had been blown from one side of the ship to the other, almost coming out the opposite side. This created a great divide inside the ship, making the port side impassable. Initially, even portions of the starboard passageway on the other side seemed blocked, and in order to go forward of the damaged area, personnel had to go up to the main deck, cross it above the damage, and then go back down inside. As time progressed, Chris continued to have a lot of trouble communicating to the crew members that were on the other side of this damage.

When I reached the central control station, I found Engineer Officer Debbie Courtney and her engineers to my left, reviewing the status of the only operating gas turbine generator, number 3. They were discussing the kilowatt power load on the generator, the number and types of pumps still running, and what other equipment they needed to get back online and operating in order to save the ship. The flat screen plasma displays and indication panels that normally showed the status of the alarms throughout the ship were just continuously scrolling data and no one could make any sense of the readouts.

To my right, the damage control assistant, Sean Dubbs, a brand new ensign who had finished specialized training a few weeks earlier and had been flown out to the ship while we were operating in the Adriatic less than two weeks before the explosion, was calmly plotting the damage control status reports. That team, working under Chris, was taking in information, analyzing what they knew against what needed to be done, and making decisions that could well determine whether we stayed afloat or sank at the refueling pier.

It was at this point that I made what I consider to be the smartest decision of my command tour: I kept my mouth shut. I didn't know enough at this point about what was going on or had been done to walk in and take charge.

Standing there in CCS watching the messengers delivering vital information to each of the two teams at work, I watched as Chris and Debbie continued to develop a better picture of the status of the ship. After silently watching what was going on for about thirty to forty-five seconds, I finally said, “Engineer, XO, when you two are ready, tell me what we've got.” Seconds later, both were standing in front of me.

Chris then updated me on the damage to the ship as messengers from the repair lockers continued to report it. He reported that they had initially been unable to establish normal communications via the ship's internal voice communications system (IVCS). Falling back on the standard for shipboard communications since World War II, they had gone to the secondary system of sound-powered phones. This phone system requires only the power of a sailor's voice to vibrate a diaphragm, which transmits those vibrations through a drive rod to an armature centered in a wire coil, creating an electric current that is transmitted to a receiver, where the process is reversed and the voice can be heard. Even though this system is extremely reliable, they were only able to communicate with Repair 3; apparently the sound-powered phone system to Repair 2 was not working.

In an attempt to overcome this obstacle, Chris had ordered emergency communications wires, also known as salt and pepper lines, to be strung from the central control station to Repair 2. A team had been busy doing this when I walked in. Within a few minutes of my arrival, however, sound-powered communications were established and maintained with both repair lockers. While standing there taking reports, messengers from the repair lockers ran in and out of CCS with messages. Even with communications established, the most reliable form of communication, a sailor from a repair locker would be used for the near term to guarantee the flow of information.

The battery backup system—the alarm systems for the ship to sound general quarters and other emergencies—which was tied to the 1MC system, even the alarm indicator systems that could have shown the engineers in the command center where the ship might be experiencing flooding, fire, or smoke—all had failed. Without these systems, the crew did not have the benefit of anyone or anything to tell them what to do or what
had happened to the ship. But they did not let that stop them from doing what they could see obviously had to be done.

In the immediate aftermath of the explosion the engineers had determined that none of the alarms could be relied on to provide accurate data, and they quickly came to ignore them. Every few seconds as I stood there, alarm indicator lights would start flashing and their associated aural annunciators would start ringing from random signals in the system. Each time, someone would reach out and immediately press a button to acknowledge and silence them without even bothering to determine their origin or cause. It was controlled pandemonium as everyone was trying to figure out what happened.

Debbie briefed me on the status of the engineering plant, including the generator and what pumps were online. Next she told me about the lack of firemain pressure, which would make it impossible to fight a serious fire if one broke out. Everyone in the central control station was on edge knowing that thousands of gallons of fuel had leaked into the area beneath the smashed galley and into the destroyed main engine room 1. If those areas could not be quickly and completely electrically isolated and the fuel flashed to a major conflagration, the ship would have almost no chance of staying afloat. She also reported that one of the two still functioning gas turbine electricity generators had shut down, for unknown reasons, and that power was out in the forward two-thirds of the ship. Chris confirmed that main engine room 1, the general workshop, and the fuel lab, which controlled the flow of fuel into the tanks during refueling, had all been destroyed and flooded. Two members of the crew who had been working in the lab with “Drew” Triplett at the time of the explosion, Gas Turbine Systems Technician-Electrical Second Class Robert McTureous and Gas Turbine Systems Technician-Mechanical First Class Kathy Lopez, had survived the blast, though severely injured, and had escaped by swimming out of the hole in the side of the ship into the harbor, where shipmates fished them out to safety. Triplett was still missing.

I already knew the galley had been destroyed, and now learned that water pouring into the ship had flooded auxiliary machinery room 2 just aft of main engine room 1, the supply office and supply support, as well
as the reefer deck, where all the ship's canned and packaged food was stored. The refrigeration machinery and the computers that tracked maintenance records and personnel watch qualifications had also been inundated. Water was also seeping into main engine room 2, the largest single space on the ship, with the gas turbine engines that powered the port propeller shaft and other vital equipment. All around the starboard shaft where it passed through the bulkhead separating this engine room from auxiliary machinery room 2 and the flooded spaces forward, water was spraying in at high pressure.

The situation was dire. Debbie looked up and even though she knew the answer, asked: “Captain, are we going to lose the ship?” The engineers heard the question, stopped what they were doing, and listened.

“No, we are not going to sink,” I said after only a brief pause. “If those are the only spaces we've lost, we are not going to sink.” On
Arleigh Burke
–class destroyers like this one, it was possible to sustain flooding damage to all four of the main engineering spaces and remain afloat, if just barely.
Cole
had as yet lost only two of these spaces to flooding. “Let's get the flooding and shoring teams down there,” I ordered, and the mood immediately changed. The sense of relief was almost palpable.

But bad news kept coming in. The repair lockers were reporting no firefighting water pressure, and Debbie and her engineers had shut down the pumps that pressurized the system. The ship would be in grave danger if fire broke out. Chris and Debbie were both aware of the live-wire problem in the ruined engine room and the galley, now full of water and fuel, and Chris had ordered aqueous film-forming foam liquid poured in to try to prevent ignition. Teams of sailors had dragged blue five-gallon jugs of it to the galley area and were pouring it down into the blast hole. Soon the repair locker teams were able to isolate and bypass the part of the firemain that had been severed. The fire pumps were restarted and, with the pressure successfully raised to the required 150-psi mark, damage control teams began spraying fire-fighting foam around the entire area damaged by the explosion. The imminent danger, it seemed, was past. The rescue and triage of wounded crew members and their treatment in hospitals was the next priority.

I
LEFT THE CENTRAL CONTROL STATION knowing that the damage control effort was well in hand. Altogether, it was clear that the men and women of USS
Cole
were doing a noble and heroic job of saving their ship and their shipmates, one that would go down in the annals as one of the most distinguished such performances in the history of the Navy.

I stepped gingerly between the wounded lying on the deck, who were still being attended to by their shipmates. Walking forward again toward the mess decks, I found that the sailor who had been killed outright by the blast hitting the mess decks still lay in the passageway. He had been covered in a blanket and moved to the side. I paused for just a moment to consider the daunting hours ahead of us and then moved on.

Crossing through the dark mess decks, I reentered the small vestibule at the forward end that led to the mangled area of the mess line. Instead of going through, however, I went up the ladder to the watertight door that opened back onto the open area at the middle of the ship. The carnage of the injuries seen so far in the crew hardened my resolve to save them. No matter what my feelings were inside, now was the time to dip into that inner reserve of strength and be strong for their sake. As their captain it was my duty and obligation not to let them down.

For many of the crew, the blast and its immediate aftereffects had seemed like an eternity packed into a few short seconds. After the odd twisting and flexing of the ship slowed and
Cole
settled back into the water next to the pier, there was a deafening silence, followed by the thump of boots running through the passageways. Inside the galley, where so many had been getting early lunch when the blast came, it was almost pitch dark with thick, acrid smoke. Seconds later the screams and moans of the wounded echoed off the bulkheads.

Hospital Corpsman Third Class Tayinikia Campbell had just finished listening to the XO announce a few minutes before that the ship would finish up refueling early and get underway in about two hours. Standing in the medical treatment room, she was listening to the CD player as an RJ Kelly song thumped in the background. There with her was a young deck seaman, Eben Sanchez-Zuniga, who had just transferred into the Medical Division to learn the hospital corpsman profession. Suddenly the whole ship shook violently beneath them, the lights went out, and the CD player went dead. Campbell was thrown backward as the doors to medical flew open with an ear-splitting bang and smoke poured in. She and Sanchez looked at each other and instantly headed off to their emergency stations.

Petty Officer Campbell had taken only a few steps before she began to hear the voices calling, “I need a doc, I need a doc!” She turned and faced the devastation of the mess line and the smoke-filled confusion of the starboard passageway and hollered, “I'm right here!” She asked another sailor to take her keys to the aft battle dressing station where she had been headed and unlock it, but right now she needed to help the wounded at her feet. As she worked in the cramped space of the passageway, the wounded just seemed to keep coming from the area of the mess line, from inside the mess decks, and soon from inside the chiefs' mess. At one point, she remembered hearing herself ask out loud, “Where is my Chief? Where is Doc?” A hand touched her shoulder and she looked up to see Lieutenant Mikal Phillips,
Cole
's gunnery officer, who had heard her question. “It's all on you, kiddo,” he said quietly. They expected the worst, but unknown to either of them, “Doc,” Hospital Corpsman Chief Clifford Moser, the
ship's senior medical corpsman, had survived, but was working on other wounded sailors topside, in the center of the ship between the stacks.

Master Chief Parlier was also a medical corpsman, but as the senior non-commissioned officer on board, his duties as command master chief lay elsewhere, with helping Chris and me run the ship. Now, in the middle of a medical crisis, his skills once again turned toward saving lives. Just after the explosion, he had made his way from the back of the ship to as far as the barbershop when he saw Chief Mark Darwin, a gas turbine systems technician, lying on the deck with extensive injuries to his left side. Darwin had just finished eating lunch in the chiefs' mess when the blast picked him up and threw him through the air, knocking him briefly unconscious. When he came to, he heard groans and moans around him but could see nothing. The mess was completely dark, thick with acrid smoke and it was sealed shut by the wreckage. He was bleeding from his wrist and his left arm and shoulder did not seem to work. Taking a rag out of his coverall pocket, he tied it as best he could to stem the flow of blood. When it became possible, he crawled out into what had been the galley, over what felt to him like the bodies of dead or wounded sailors, until he was picked up and carried to the area near the back of the ship by the barbershop and Repair 3. Master Chief Parlier determined that Chief Darwin had broken bones in his left shoulder, broken left ribs with a possible punctured lung, and unknown internal injuries in his abdomen, besides the deep cut on his left wrist.