heavily-redacted version of the official Command Investigation

Lots of Discussion of this over at The Stupid Shall Be Punished

Heavily redacted?

Are you always this good with understatement?

On a serious note....I can't say I am shocked. Worried, yes. Shocked, no. I saw this coming down the pipe 10 years ago, but as a lowly E-6, any warnings I shouted got lost in the winds of all the senior heads bobbing up and down....and the shouts of "Yes, Sir!"

Nothing in this report is unfixable....but you have to want to fix it, and the first step in fixing a problem is admitting there is a problem...and in the Navy of today, that's admitting failure. The culture won't stand for it.

I went thru a failed ORSE 20 years ago because my CO at the time violated SUBSAFE over the objections of the rest of the command. Sadly this is not an isolated problem nor a new one.

Read the report.....it is....very interesting, to say the least. I would like to read the unedited version....but I am not willing to return to active duty

quote:

Originally posted by PO1_Kline:
Heavily redacted?

Are you always this good with understatement?

The title I put on the link url was what Bubblehead used on his post over at The Stupid Shall Be Punished
I do agree that the Navy might have saved a whole lot of black marker ink if they had just released taht report on black paper with only white ink where they wanted us to read.

Here is a quote from an anonymous Ens posting over at the same blog:
========================
How many great petty officers and JOs get out because they lose the sense of higher purpose that comes with military service after they have to violate their integrity weekly or monthly just to get by? How many guys gundeck chemistry or rig for dive, because they didn't learn, like everyone else, that training you can gundeck, but some things are sacred?
=========================

Good Lord has anyone know someone who gundecked a rig for dive check?

quote:

Originally posted by Chief_Torpedoman:

quote:

Originally posted by PO1_Kline:
Heavily redacted?

Are you always this good with understatement?

Good Lord has anyone know someone who gundecked a
rig for dive check?

Ahh maybe I'm off track here but shat no , even kidding about that could get your azz kicked .

Definitely not a good place to joke! Rig for dive is as orthodox as it gets.

I appreciate the importance of rig for dive as much as anyone here. But there is very little in a submarine you can blaze off and not be endangering something....pre startup lineups, reactor valve lineups, precrits....

In my mind, there is no room for blazing in the plant...or the ship. And while I won't say I have never blazed off training, I was lucky enough to have an EDMC that actually seemed to care about the training program, and we actually had a good one.

Never met a blazer who didn't get caught....And they all should....It could be someones life you are messing with....Rig for dive especially should be hit hard...Court-martial In my mind.

I guess the guys on the Hampton didn't see it that way. Maybe they were just past the point of giving a sheite. I don't know, and won't second guess them. I have been put into impossible situations by individuals who cared about nothing but their own arses before, but was lucky enough to find a way out without compromising my integrity.

I am grateful for some of the people I got to work for and with while in the Navy...I feel sorry for these guys that didn't get to share in that experience. There were probably some good submariners in the bunch...and due to what seems to have been a very very very bad command climate, they never will get that chance.

Dam! I couldn't imagine the officers I worked with back in the day doing some of that stuff. I can't say it didn't happen but I was just a kid and a forward puke at that...but I still can't see it. Monthly test ?!? are you kidding me the only paper test I can remember was the ships final exam before my board. I know the nuc's had them but I sure don't remember them for most coners You had to be able to draw systems and answer questions (oral) but this sounds like so much dogsnot! We had to train our guys in the division on watch stations and how to do the maintanece correctly. If you got relieved off the stack and your relief found a contact you missed you were giving so much sheite by your piers that you didn't want it to happen again. If the OOD found a contact before you. The Sup would kick your tail. We trained to operate the equipment. and keep are shipmates safe, not to keep the paper pushers happy. I'm looking forward to Mack's reply on every CO over the last fifty years had to cheat to make CO. I just hope he doesn't burst a artery! I just read the TSWS blog and shook my head thinking "Say it aint so Joe". These "Training binders" sound more like handcuffs to give the bad guys a fighting chance in a shooting war. To bad the ones who will be getting shot at are not the ones who started this dogsnot in the first place.

Sludgecat

Oh, Sludgecat, Lad...I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you about my arteries poppin'. (They're in good shape, by the bye). I'm not there in that environment anymore - I 'talk story' about the old days, and I miss 'em, but there's a new world out there under the sea. I was at the beginning of it, but even the early nukes were basically manned by transplanted diesel boat sailors. Some of us were dragged kicking and screaming into the Admiral's Program. 'Shanghai'd' in some cases...

Having said that, it seems to me that discipline and such, are one thing. But the true character of a ship comes from the heart of the skipper. If he has stone in his heart, there will be nothing but rubble on the mess decks and the wardroom.

That's all I'll say. The contemplation of the ruin saddens me.

"Mack the Knife"
CDR USN (Ret)

I agree. The skipper, in this case, has to bear the brunt of the blame. If the environment was ab bad as the report suggested, then I am not suprised at all by what happened here.

The scary things I think of (not that they keep me awake at night...I am way past that stage) are

(1) Why didn't any of the other senior leadership at the command try and stop this crap? I shudder to think the XO and Department Heads didn't have the guts to stop...or at least slow down...this sheit avalanche.

(2) How many good sailors are out of here as a result of being trapped in this crap?

(3) How many other commands out there have this same stuff going on?

(4) Is the Submarine Force looking for it?

Just a few musings....

Interesting musings...I discussed this (prior to your post) with the five folks who work with/for me. All are former nukes. Two officers, three enlisted. They have been out anywhere from 2 years to 3 weeks. Sharpest people you'd ever want to meet and have working for your company. They say that the answers are:

1. People become inured to the situation they're in.
2. Lots. I have 5 of them with me - what's that tell you?
3. More than you want to know. They could name names.
4. Not with sufficient vigor, according to my associates.

An unscientific poll, to be sure, but that's what they tell me of the current state of things.

"Mack the Knife"
CDR USN (Ret)

quote:

Originally posted by PO1_Kline:
(1) Why didn't any of the other senior leadership at the command try and stop this crap? I shudder to think the XO and Department Heads didn't have the guts to stop...or at least slow down...this sheit avalanche.

(2) How many good sailors are out of here as a result of being trapped in this crap?

(3) How many other commands out there have this same stuff going on?

(4) Is the Submarine Force looking for it?

Just a few musings....

Please forgive my butting into a conversation on the sub forum and please please forgive the comparison I'm about to draw, but that report sounded like about par for the course... on a conventional surface ship.

I'm personally very disappointed by this incident (or series of incidents) because the nuclear Navy had, until news of this first broke last fall, done a very good job of convincing me that the nuclear Navy wasn't like that dirty, twisted conventional Navy I qualified in. Now, I just can't help but wonder just how much of that "gold standard" Admiral Donald was referring to is merely gilded.

quote:

Originally posted by AoiSonlee:
Now, I just can't help but wonder just how much of that "gold standard" Admiral Donald was referring to is merely gilded.

Many people involved in this, including the CO, got there at least in part through Admiral Bowman, who may have been a great guy and great chief of Naval Personnel, but wasn't good for Nuclear power ("zero attrition" is never a term that should be applied to the nuclear pipeline under any circumstances-despite what he may have wanted to believe, you can't achieve zero attrition without lowering standards)

Admiral Donald is a lot more selective than the former NAVSEA08 head was. For example, Bowan had a policy that if someone made it before him for an NR1 interview, they were already in. Admiral Donald threw the first 3 guys that appeared before him after assuming command for the same interviews-which shocked his staff. Also ended the zero attrition thing (thank god).

my 2 cents.

I was an ET nuke about 20 years ago. Our nuclear training on my ship wasnt any better than what they had on the Hampton. I remember my RO qualification test was about 50 pages long and i had a couple of days to finish it (lookups allowed). Of course i got the magical 3.0 grade on it. We also had weekly divisional and departmental tests and i never saw my grade.

Onetime for an ORSE i was selected to take the written test and i passed. Then the ORSE board said too many peopel passed so the test was regraded and i then failed. I never did see that test again and i was never retrained.

My point is the shipboard training program for the nuclear navy was a joke. It was there to meet requirements - not to educate.

I see bad things coming , maybe it was our LPO , or our Chief , or our Div O , or COB , or XO or CO but it was clearly understood you did NOT gundeck . And I was A-Gang , glowbees had it stricter . Thirty years back , what a difference a decade makes .

nah-I've heard what dbil said from many senior nukes.

difference is, he was trained properly beforehand. He knew the right answers when asked, which the hampton crew did not.

I rememeber a guy we had who was really junior who was trying to blaze everything. Asked him where a few of the things were, told me he had no idea. I told him he should probably at least learn where the things were that he was blazing lest someone important ask him where they were.

Please explain the Zero Attrition policy??
Was that a shipboard thing or a whole Nuke program thing??
I lost many fellow students from my class due to attrition in the A school and Power School pipelines. I can't imagine that not being the case.

What else got screwed up when the Nukes got booted from Orlando???