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A 30-year veteran looks back on his career and on the changes and challenges that have shaped his Navy—here, in 1964, the Kitty Hawk (CVA-63), Uhlmann (DD-687), and Kawishiwa (AD-146) refuel at sea.
■ ith the end of my career approaching, I find myself looking back at where I’ve been and what I’ve seen during my time in the service. The Navy of today is so different from the one I joined more than 30 years ago that it is impossible for me to describe the changes fully, but I have recorded a few observations that illustrate how I saw service life change during my time on board.
There has been great progress in technology, power, capability, and effectiveness, but I recall that earlier Navy with many fond memories. It was much bigger and—for its time—also powerful, capable, and effective. The 1964 fleet had roughly one thousand ships, most of them built during World War II. I remember an Atlantic Fleet exercise in 1966 with multiple aircraft carriers, amphibious forces, and a large service group. Huge formations, multiple screens, and complex night underway replenishments—I haven’t seen anything like it since, not even in the Tonkin Gulf during the carrier strikes or in the Persian Gulf during Desert Storm.
In 1964, the fleet had a lot of World War II-era sailors as well, both officer and enlisted. There also were many Korean War veterans. There were a lot of people around who had seen real combat at sea. Today, even Vietnam veterans are becoming scarce, but that conflict—as well as the recent Desert Storm affair—was unique as far as the Navy is concerned. It has been years since we have had veterans of blue-water combat among us. I remember taking damage-control training from people who could describe from personal experience what it was like to try to save a ship that had been torpedoed, and learning gunnery from veterans of surface actions in the Pacific. They brought a perspective that is harder to duplicate today. For example, I think that today we have become accustomed to the idea of operating from blue-water sanctuaries, even in combat. We also have built wonderfully capable and complex ships—but they are less able than their predecessors to endure significant damage and fight on.
In that Navy, we had more early opportunities for responsibility. In the days before Destroyer School—the forerunner of the Surface Warfare Officers School—it was not uncommon for some sharp destroyer division
Whatever the challenges, our people will do their best. May our leaders always be worthy of them.
officers to “fleet up” to department head, often at the young rank of lieutenant (junior grade). Before I was ordered to my first command as a lieutenant, I counted the lieutenant commands in the Navy and came up with more than 50. In the destroyer force, we had a lot of lieutenant-commander commands. It was easy to find senior officers who had held four, five, or more commands at sea. Today, it is rare for anyone to get command at sea before reaching the grade of commander—and one or at most two ship commands is typical in many successful careers. If there is one thing that emphasizes the difference between that Navy and today’s, it is that responsibility in those days came earlier and more frequently.
That Navy was much less structured, which cuts both ways—mostly in favor of today’s way of doing things. We did not have the pattern of career training that we have now, from Surface Warfare Officers School to Department Head School to prospective executive officer, commanding officer, and major command courses, augmented by many other schools along the way. Personnel qualification standards were many years in the future. There was much more on-the-job training, and qualifications were handled more loosely. On the positive side, one was able to do a lot more things more quickly; but the results were sometimes uneven, even tragic. In the days before the Propulsion Examining Board and the Operational Propulsion Plant Examination, for example, steam plants were run with less regard to equipment and personnel safety— sometimes with catastrophic results. But, in that era of bent-line screens and close-in formations, we had far more interesting and exciting times on the bridge, and we were better for it. Smaller twin-screw, twin-rudder “tin cans” without large, fragile, bow-mounted sonar domes offered wonderful opportunities to develop shiphandling skills both at sea and in port.
As I recall, my first wardrooms contained a much higher percentage of bachelors. We were poor and lived on board. The mere fact that we lived, worked, and played together—in port and at sea—brought a higher degree of cohesion and camaraderie than I see today. For example, today’s high-tech era has brought us such entertainment advances as videotape libraries, closed-circuit television systems, and personal VCRs that allow people to sit, often alone, in their staterooms to watch the shows of their choice. I remember when the ship might have four or five 16-mm movies on board that would be exchanged regularly with other ships. When new movies were on hand, people would gather with some excitement to their respective messes to watch the movie. The arrival of a particularly good movie often would lead to “hot reeling" the film from mess to mess. It may not have been as advanced as our entertainment today, but it contributed something to unit esprit.
Even ashore, the standards of the day fostered cohesion. 1 remember reporting to the Communications School in Newport, Rhode Island, shortly after I was commissioned. My large room in the old wooden bachelor officers quarters (BOQ) had six beds in it, although I had only one roommate because the BOQ wasn't crowded at the time. The head was a central shower, sink, and toilet area down the hall. There were no televisions in the rooms, although in the first-deck lounge there was a television, a pool table, and a bar manned by stewards. Meals were served in the closed mess, a wonderful institution that went away with the steward rating in the 1970s. One ate there a lot on temporary additional duty (TAD), because one’s per diem was reduced and the food was good, cheap, and plentiful. In a short TAD, I made a number of friends, largely, I suspect, because you bumped into people not only in class, but in the rooms, the head, the lounge, at meals, etc.
Contrast that with the situation today. We have made vast progress in standards. Some of the BOQs today are palatial, with suites, mini-kitchens, televisions, VCRs, stereos, and mini-bars. We have succeeded in providing privacy in rooms and facilities. And we don’t provide food anymore, so everyone disperses to various off-base establishments to eat. The improvements do not encourage camaraderie.
Something has been lost along the way. We had officers’ clubs in those days. Many of them already were suffering from a lack of patronage, although there were exceptions. They were, however, universally available. Today, officers’ clubs are either dying or extinct, replaced in some locations by all-hands clubs—a concept that would have been unthinkable in 1964.
It seems that we had more time back then. My last sea command was a guided-missile cruiser. I had a superb wardroom, but I sensed that these officers had little time to enjoy the fun of operations at sea. In addition to watchkeeping, which always has demanded considerable time, they were faced with a more demanding and thorough qualification process and an explosion of paperwork. When we went to sea during my early tours, much of the paperwork stayed behind. We had something called correspondence in those days, and by going to sea you often could outrun it. Today, only admin junk mail comes in the mail pouch. Everything else comes by message and it isn’t possible to run away from it anymore. Indeed, you can’t even leave the telephone behind today. The explosion in communications technology is wonderful and it enables us to do much more. The capacity and number of these circuits keep expanding, but there is no parallel growth in human processing power.
Wardroom living has changed. Back then, we had stewards and wardroom meals were special. Even at sea in a destroyer escort, I recall putting on a long-sleeved khaki shirt and tie before the evening meal, which was relatively formal and elegantly served. Each member of a wardroom mess paid an identical mess bill for the month. There was no financial incentive to skip meals with your messmates. Today, many wardrooms subsist out of the general mess- in some cases because the ships were built that way, in others out of choice. Some wardrooms are almost like cafeterias and officers pay by the meal.
Today’s practice is more than a change in ship design or the replacement of stewards, however. Tastes have changed. In my cruiser, I insisted that my executive officer, who was president of the wardroom mess, operate the “old way.” I wanted my officers to see how well it could be done. It was not universally popular. I was surprised to discover that the officer duty section frequently would dismiss the food-service attendants at the end of the work day and order out for pizza or other fast food! This is the junk-food generation.
The social side of Navy life has changed, too. I can remember checking Service Etiquette to find how many calling cards to leave on the silver card tray in the captain’s foyer when he and his lady were “at home.” I also recall many suit-and-tie occasions, as well as numerous “happy hour” informal events. I think there was a lot more use of hard alcohol and tobacco back then. It seemed that most of our wardroom wives did not work outside their homes. There seemed to be a lot more social interaction within the wardroom community.
Today, the impact of dual-earner couples has had a dramatic effect on social patterns inside and outside the Navy. There is less time and energy, I suspect, for purely social matters. Our young officers, married or single, have the resources to pursue a wider variety of personal interests. While this is certainly better from the individual point of view, it has changed the character of wardroom life. Though still a unique and special form of service, the Navy today is a little more of a job and a little less a way of life for many of our officers.
Over the years, there have been many improvements for all hands. One is in pay. When I was commissioned, my base pay was $222.50 a month with $47.88 in subsistence allowance. That was it. Total. Another improvement is the way we deal with people. Back then, we were taught that a good officer takes care of his people, but I think we do a much better job of it today. Enlisted men often were not treated with much personal consideration then, and the conditions in which they lived in the typical small combatant were austere in every detail. Sailors were not permitted to store any civilian clothing on board ship, and every home port was crowded with locker clubs in addition to the tattoo parlors and bars. Today, of course, our sailors’ living conditions are somewhat more habitable and they are permitted to store their civvies in the ship. It is certainly better for the sailors and I would not change it, but I confess to missing the sight of all those bluejackets going ashore when ships made a visit to a foreign port. It added immeasurably to the presence mission of the fleet.
In the area of race relations and equal opportunity, the improvements are dramatic. Some of the things that were accepted when I was an ensign in 1964 would make headlines today and quickly terminate careers, This has been an area of great progress in which we can take pride. Another great change is ahead of us. The Navy of my personal experience has been all male. Thirty years from now today’s young ensign—he or she—will write of changes more sweeping than anything I’ve seen.
There has been a steady development in professionalism over my time in the service. I think this is especially so in my community. I am a surface warfare officer. That term did not even exist when I joined the fleet. We had aviators and submariners and “other” unrestricted line officers. One of the positive changes I’ve witnessed is the formation of a distinct and professional surface community, with extensive training and rigorous qualification standards.
In my early experience, I recall a high standard of well- practiced, procedurally correct operations. Things were single-service and command and control was simple compared to what we see today. Now, with the explosive growth in technology, it is a far more complex world. Operations, which are frequently joint, are always complex. As offensive and defensive systems have leapfrogged over each other in development, the knowledge and skill required to exploit their potential effectively have grown exponentially. At this late stage in my career, I am starting to question some of the assumptions I have held from the beginning. For example, the U.S. Navy, alone among the other navies, has had a jack-of-all-trades approach to officer development, at least for its ship drivers. I’ve always felt that this was correct and, personally, never had reason to regret my early engineer-officer tour in a steam ship.
The problem I am seeing today is that we have people in very responsible positions who have only general familiarity with the complex tools at their disposal. They must rely to a great degree on technicians for support. This is not unprecedented, but now the performance of their equipment or the information they receive may depend on asking those technicians the right questions or giving the correct instructions, based on knowledge that some of them may not have. Perhaps this situation can be corrected through better training, but I would not rule out reviewing the way we have chosen to organize our surface-officer corps.
There is, I think, a parallel problem at higher levels. We have some very bright, capable flag officers with minimal operational experience. These are quick-study individuals who may have earned their promotions in important and challenging “E-ring” positions, but who may find themselves learning on the job in battle-group assignments. This also is not unprecedented, and it is probably satisfactory unless a sudden situation presents itself that exposes a lack of the self-confidence and knowledge that come from real experience. For flag officers, I think the problem is exacerbated by the 35-year retirement rule that requires early selections, shorter and more varied assignments, and, effectively, less operational experience than used to be typical.
Another fallout from the complexity of modern operations is doctrinal and procedural weakness. In every deployment workup we struggle to reinvent wheels; to do things at least differently, if not better. New tactics and procedures are supposed to originate within the fleets, but that effort suffers from a lack of real organization and direction. Responsibility for training is fragmented among fleet, type, and training commands on both coasts. Recently, we set up the Naval Doctrine Command. That is a start, but that command is not in a position to influence the fleets directly, and its charter does not embrace training. I envy the Army, which has a four-star Training and Doctrine Command with the authority and centralized control that we lack.
Essential to our complex organization is a well-trained
Today, of course, our sailors' living conditions are somewhat more habitable and they are permitted to store their civvies in the ship. It is certainly better for the sailors and I would not change it, but I confess to missing the sight of all those bluejackets going ashore when ships made a visit to a foreign port.
It added immeasurably to the presence mission of the fleet.
and highly qualified officer corps. We must identify and promote those whose superior performance in meaningful duties and potential for greater responsibility is documented, but our tool is a fitness report system that has become meaningless. It is a problem that no individual commanding officer can fix. It has to begin at the top, and compliance has to be enforced down the chain of command. Grade inflation has reached the point where everyone is 4.0 and direct comparisons between performers are not made at all in some grades and often are avoided in others.
Someone who sat on a recent commanders’ selection board told me that they went all the way back to lieutenant (junior grade) and ensign fitness reports looking for reasons not to select. In other words, we are picking people for commander based on how they performed, or at least on how their performance was recorded, on their ensign and j.g. fitreps! This is wrong. Selection boards need something more substantial to work with.
I recall a time when fitness reports were much briefer and more honest. They actually discussed strengths and weaknesses and weren’t considered to be adverse. Of course, they weren’t shown to the officers reported on either. That isn’t likely to change, but there are other measures that could be adopted to bring about more grade spread, to limit recommendations for accelerated promotion, even to discuss areas for improvement (no one is perfect), and do it Navy-wide to avoid disparate results that would unfairly penalize some and reward others. It needs to be done, otherwise we necessarily select, from a pool of apparently equal candidates, only those who had the “right” jobs and knew the “right” people.
It has been a wonderful 30 years. I’ve enjoyed every bit of it. I envy the young officers who are just starting out in what is—despite its shortcomings—-a superbly professional and effective military organization. I predict that they will have active and meaningful careers. Nearly all of my years in the service coincided with the serious problem of superpower confrontation and the chilling potential for nuclear conflagration. That problem divided the world into two camps and tended to keep the lid on some potential difficulties in an untidy world. Today, the lid has been removed and some of those situations are furiously boiling, others are gaining heat on back burners. National leadership is struggling to find appropriate mechanisms to deal with a host of security issues. I believe that resorts to military measures are more probable in the years ahead than they have been since the end of World War II. Whatever the challenges, our people will do their best. May our leaders always be worthy of them.
Change will continue at an ever-increasing rate. It is inevitable. As we embrace progress, we must not lose sight of those elements that make our service way of life special. This is not a business. Going to sea is not a day at the office. We need to foster the traditions, the relationships, and the bonds that make men and women willing to sacrifice greatly, even completely, for the good of something bigger than themselves.
Captain Burke is the commanding officer. Tactical Training Group, Pacific. He expects to retire in 1995, after 31 years of service.