Navy CO jettisoned

Posted By Thomas E. Ricks Monday, July 18, 2011 - 10:56 AM Share

For hitting a buoy in Bahrain, brave boys.

Oh! For hitting a buoy in Bahrain.

(HT to JB)

Balthazira/Flickr

EXPLORE:MILITARY

(5)

HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE

HUNTER

4:22 PM ET

July 18, 2011

Could have been worse

...he could have been schtupping a boy in Bahrain. I hear that is fashionable there.

GOLD STAR FATHER

4:40 PM ET

July 18, 2011

Could have been worse

Thought fer-sher Hunter that you'd throw something in there about the Good Captain being an Annapolis grad...

HUNTER

5:27 PM ET

July 19, 2011

Joint

I are [sic] in a JOINT environment now, trying to be good...LOL.

VIC LESPERANCE

1:54 PM ET

July 19, 2011

Relief From Command

As noted in the comments section of the Navy Times (?) article accompanying this post, Captains are rarely directly in charge of navigating the ship. Nevertheless, his latest episode in the Navy command trials and tribulations story again proves the adage that one can delegate authority but can't delegate responsibility.

I know that the following suggestion is probably impractical but a one day standdown with the Captains and Executive Officers participating in a secure webcast seems appropriate. The earlier suggestion/directive regarding memos to PCOs does not appear to respond sufficiently to an emerging problem.

The blog talk last week informed me that Goldwater-Nichols removes the CNO from direct responsibility of ships and Captains. I am unsure about that but believe that the Navy still polices its own people. They need to read Bowditch on seamanship and have a discussion about maritime matters. Non maritime matters such as commanding responsibly in the mixed gender underway environment also need refreshing. That leads to this question - do they have any formal training prior to assuming command? Except for emergency situations, they should have at least a week of training focused on general command issues with perhaps a day on ship specific training (general history and naval design of the ship, possible lessons learned since launch of the vessel and its class, etc...). If that doesn't occur now, it could help explain some of the issues.

This is a serious problem especially in wartime that needs some serious attention by the powers that be - whomever they are Goldwater-NIchols notwithstanding!

PHEBE HAZY

7:27 AM ET

August 16, 2011

Why are we so interested in Bahrain?

Actually, there is not much different in this case. The Navy has ALWAYS had this attitude towards groundings and such. Always. There have always been some skippers who found a way not to get relieved, and others who didn’t have a prayer. I know when I was on the Kennedy, we collided with the USS Bordelon, mangling her badly enough to get her decommissioned, but the skipper got another command. It has always been nearly uniformly “one mistake and out” with groundings. My ginger lee was a thirty year naval officer, and I have had this conversation with him about this very . He had served on a lot of boards of inquiry over his career, and he told me that was always You might not be found culpable, but those people never went as high as fast, and rarely got command again. You can apparently run a crappy ship and get promoted, but running that crappy ship aground gets the attention of the promotion boards.