Eight thousand officers and men of the naval reserve, the Navy’s second line of defense, were cruised on destroyers or other commissioned vessels of the Navy during the summer of 1930. In a series of fifteen-day cruises along the coasts of the United States the personnel who will comprise the nucleus of the country’s “civilian navy” in the event of war were instructed in up-to-date methods aboard a man-of-war.
The enlisted men and petty officer ratings, some of whom had never been to sea before, probably benefited more from their experience than did the officers. Swabbing decks, shining brightwork, standing wheel and lookout watches, learning how to heave a lead and point a gun, they picked up the essentials of the minor but fundamental duties of their grades. That the reserve officers did not profit as much as the men they commanded was due, in some ships, to an overemphasis on supervision, and in others to an almost total lack of such supervision.
In considering the first of these causes it would seem that since the war perhaps a greater advance has been made in the organization and the administration of the naval reserve than in the training of our second line of defense. The lead line and the gyrocompass were in use then as now, but war-time necessity had brought about less detailed supervision, had rationed out more individual responsibility and had given both officers and men more initiative and self-confidence and more latitude of action. In getting back to a peace-time basis, it was well that commanding officers and others senior in rank should draw freely from their knowledge and experience to supervise the activities of those under their command in order to bring about a rigid and uniform standard. But in many ways and particularly in the training of reserve officers on the passage of the years this tendency has become too detailed to be beneficial. With the passage of the years this tendency has become stronger and stronger until at present reserve officers, and in many cases, regular junior officers are allowed so little latitude in ship handling, in watch standing, and in general duties that their training is seriously handicapped. The modern method seems designed to relieve the reserves and the embryo admirals, the Navy’s junior officers, of as much responsibility as possible.
“Damn,” one of the somewhat disgruntled reserve officers exclaimed, “in war time I used to have the deck while my ship was running through the submarine zone with lights out and zigzagging, and the old man wouldn’t be sticking around the bridge the way the skippers do now. Now, one of the bridges of these destroyers during a reserve cruise is almost as crowded as Times Square and the reserve officer of the deck can scarcely give an. order without detailed advice. I want to learn but I don’t think that’s the way.”
The reserve’s objection seems justified to one who has been on reserve cruises both as a “regular” and a reserve. In the majority of cases the reserve officer does not learn as much as he should during the fifteen-day cruise because he is not allowed sufficient responsibility, and accordingly he leaves his ship at the expiration of his tour of active duty without the feeling of self-confidence which he should have on the bridge or in the engine-room. In but few ships is he allowed to stand a top watch alone, even at the end of the cruise, and his chances for ship handling are few if any. Even in the daylight hours when chances of accident are less than at night, the reserve watch officer is supervised ad infinitum, until what self- confidence he has may be shaken or lost.
In some ships this fault of too much supervision does not exist but the reserves are still denied responsibility. On ,one cruise which the author made as a regular, and on many others of which he has hearsay knowledge, the reserve officers were called on scarcely at all to fill the regular duties of their rank, and spent much of their time in lolling about in their bunks or playing cards in the wardroom. This condition is the fault of the commanding officer of the cruising ship. Unfortunately too many commanding officers and others associated with reserves consider the two weeks of cruising as a holiday designed especially for the reserves’ benefit at the expense of the Navy. Both of these faults, over and under supervision and their consequent accompaniment withholding of responsibility, are tendencies in the wrong direction in the training of reserves. Perhaps it is a wise safety factor but scarcely a good training system.
Other criticisms of the reserve training system during the summer cruise as it is constituted today can be briefly detailed. The cruise itself, for maximum benefits, is too much “inshore” and not enough “deep sea.” There are usually only one or two nights when the ship is under way after sunset and at no time, in the majority of cases, is the ship out of sight of land. Thus obvious handicaps, both as to practice in celo-navigation and to ship handling at night, are inherent in the training schedule.
The target practice fired by the reserves is to a very high degree artificial. All practices, of course, suffer from the same fault, but the practices fired during each fifteen-day cruise are more obviously “practices” than any of the rest. It seems that for the sake of scores and competition as much as for the sake of value and knowledge gained in the practice, the old short range, slow speed firing is retained. The value of such a practice to the officers is extremely doubtful. It would seem a bit more realistic and would provide considerably more practice if the speed of target and towing ship could be increased, the range opened, and the course changed once during the firing. The present 1,000- yard point blank firing accustoms the reserves to a firing routine which is of dubious if any value in war time.
The final criticism of the training methods is rather applicable to the engineers than to the deck force. Since destroyers and all ships would be called upon frequently in war time to run at maximum or near maximum speed, it would seem wise to inaugurate a bit of high speed running in the training cruises to accustom the reserve engineers to the problems that such speeds bring. An hour or less at twenty-five to thirty knots would suffice if careful and intelligent instruction were given by the “regulars.”
A complaint, rather than a criticism, which the author has heard voiced by some reserve officers is the final “kick” to be recorded here.
“Many skippers think we can come directly from our desks or factories to the bridge of a ship and remember all our professional tasks as well as if we had never been away. We get rusty and it takes us time to brush up on these details. But nevertheless the commanding officers give us fitness reports sometimes in which our abilities are compared with those of the regulars instead of comparing us with other reserve officers.”
This complaint, based in at least one case on just such an invidious comparison, should be heeded, for there is no more embarrassing blow to the pride of a reserve officer than to feel that he is of little or mediocre value to the Navy. In all fairness his merits should be compared with those of other reserves rather than with officers of the line.