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he personnel organization on board b'Ps today was never designed. Like °Psy> it just "growed.” The aircraft carrier is undoubtedly the worst case, Stnce it is the largest and has the most c°mplex job in terms of people relationships. With the Air Wing on 0etrd, the large-deck CVA has over 5’°°0 men and 400 officers on board. blP ’s company runs around 2,800 men and 140 officers.
In today’s CVA organization, some 12 department heads (Operations, Air, Weapons, AIMD, Engineering, Reactors, Deck, Communications, Navigation, Medical, Dental, and Supply) report directly to the Executive Officer. Additionally, he acts as a department head for such officers as the Chaplains, Administrative Officer, Ship’s Secretary, Personnel Officer, Educational Services Officer, Legal Officer, Public Affairs Officer, and 3-M Coordinator, a total of 11 officers and the associated enlisted men. This is the fifth-largest of the 13 departments. Most of the classic CVA departments have had splinter groups break off to start up their own departments, such as Communications, AIMD, and Deck. Moreover, there is considerable discussion of further splintering. There are departments with over 500 officers and men, and others with less than 25. If only officers are counted, the range is from over 30 to as few as two.
Divisions seem to have no bounds either. They range from over 150 men to less than a dozen. The rank of the division officer ranges from lieutenant com-
mander to ensign, and an ensign is more likely to command the division of 150. The infrequency with which quarters is held leaves many men unaware of who their division officer is, or even if they have one. The personal contact envisioned by the requirement to maintain a division officer’s notebook is clearly lacking in such large divisions. And the tendency is to give the division officer job to the junior officer in sight, "for training.” Presumably the men of the division will do the training, for the department head surely doesn’t have the time. It appears that the CVA officer tries hard to stay out of the chain of command of the enlisted men. Of the 140 or so officers of a CVA, fully half are not in a chain of command. In other words they are used as production workers, leading no one.
The CVA is a hodge-podge of echelons, with group heads, section heads, principal assistants, division officers, and assistant division officers doing interchangeable jobs. There are two clear-cut echelons: Command and Department Head. That accounts for 14 officers. The rest are organized in every conceivable way. The term "division officer” should be clear-cut, but it is not. For example, there is an E Division, and as well an E-l, E-2, and E-3 Division. If you want to address them collectively you say "E Division,” or singly you would refer to "E-2 Division.” It depends on what you’re talking about.
Then, in the middle of all this, the division officer is subjected to a maze of requirements which seem at cross purposes to the work his division is chartered to do. Some of the 70 officers who don’t command departments or divisions are laying requirements on his men for support. The Damage Control Assistant owns one of the men he thought was his—the Damage Control Petty Officer—and sure enough, if the DCPO doesn’t do his job right, it’s the division officer who gets chewed out. Race Relations Education takes three or four men on a day’s notice (if he’s lucky). The Departmental 3-M Coordinator wants to know where his quarterly schedule is. The ship’s Career Counselor has one of his senior petty officers at a meeting. And on and on and on. The division officer’s main function seems to be signing special requests (he can no longer disapprove anything) and coordinating the response to the external forces which tear at his division. Frequently his senior petty officers go around him to get things done because they have seen that no one supports the division officer. In his spare time he is required to complete Junior Officer Training, which, by the way, still includes a correspondence course in naval law history called "Navy Regulations, 1948.”
And then comes discipline. Of course discipline and punishment are not synonymous, but they are closely related. One certainly doesn’t achieve discipline in a group of men—be they seamen or commanders— without punishment in some form. The commander is punished by being passed over for captain, which he would consider a rather harsh measure if not warranted. The seaman has little of the self-discipline that the commander has forged over the years, and needs more immediate and attention-getting punishment. It is for this reason that non-judicial punishment is provided for in Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice:
". . . Any commanding officer may, in addition to or in lieu of admonition or reprimand, impose one or more of the following disciplinary punishments for minor offenses without the intervention of a court-martial ...”
The provisions of this article are not available to the division officer, but if a man gets far enough out of line he may take him to the commanding officer for non-judicial punishment.
Enlisted men carried liberty cards 20 years ago- When the division officer thought a man needed to devote added attention to some facet of his work or appearance, the man didn’t get his liberty card for a day or so until the problem cleared up. If a man got on the wrong side of his chief altogether his liberty card would somehow get "lost” and he’d have to g° through the process of having a new one made. When this procedure was tested in court and declared illegal, the division lost an effective means of developing discipline which rarely worked a hardship on anyone. Of course, no one would seriously contend that such punishments are just or proper, particularly when they may be given capriciously, but it seemed an effective system- Somewhere along the way, authority to grant liberty at other than liberty hours was taken away, and then the authority to disapprove requests was removed. The division officer still evaluates enlisted men, subject to call from a polite department head and being "talked into” raising the marks of a man who has objected that they were too low. Some department heads raise the marks without even telling the division officer.
The result of this emasculation of the division officer’s authority is that the responsibility is thus removed. NWP-50A states an obvious principle of management: no one should be held responsible for factors over which he has no authority. Responsibility rests squarely on the commanding officer’s back for the discipline of some 3,000 men, and it cannot be delegated.
This, in turn, results in every division having the same state of discipline as every other, and that gravitates toward the worst. This is also where the log jam starts. CVAs get weeks and even months behind in mast cases. When that situation exists, the entire discipline
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y he decided not to come in until noon. Finally, he ls put on report. Three months later he had still not g°ne to mast. He asked his leading chief for a duty day °ff, which was indignantly denied. He took the ay off anyway. And the next three. For the next two rflonths he came back occasionally, always in time to
structure goes slack, since the division officer doesn’t Want to go through the hassle of a report chit if there’s any way to avoid it. Since there is no minor punish- rr»ent-—or reward—available to the division officer, he ls left with nothing but threats which prove empty ln a very short time.
Recently, a man who was put on report for being for 24 hours said he couldn’t remember the inci- nt- Upon questioning, the man who put him on ^eport couldn’t remember either! Another man was jCXoming very troublesome to his petty officer, not lng his work properly, coming back to the ship late an^ generally not performing well—never anything w°rth taking him to mast about, with its delays and |jCneral inconveniences, but becoming worthless. One
'vas draw his pay. Finally he became such a burden that he was administratively discharged. He had never been to mast, though a total of five months had elapsed. If the division officer had authority to punish minor infractions this might have happened anyway, but perhaps not.
Because of the impossibility of dealing with minor discipline problems at the division officer level, the incidence of minor offenses is getting out of hand, probably leading more or less to major offenses. The incidence of 15-30 minute unauthorized absences in the Navy which go unreported is unknown, but ap-
pears to be unconscionably high. Other offenses, such as disrespect to officers and petty officers, go unreported and uncorrected. Uniforms today are a rag-tag collection of tatters which should make us shudder. Yet, to take a man to mast because he was wearing red socks is preposterous.
Two proposals are recommended to return discipline to the ship and thereby put the zest back in sea duty. First is a stabilization of the ships’ organization; second is a formal delegation of certain non-judicial punishment authority. The former will require changes to NWP-50A and Type Commander directives, while the latter must be approved by the Secretary of the Navy or possibly the President.
The primary problem with the large-ship organization is in its size. NWP-50A allows for three echelons of officers—Command, Department Head, and Division Officer—yet the same publication indicates that a man’s span of control should be not less than three nor more than seven subordinates. Even allowing for seven division officers for each of seven department heads, which could never be done in a ship’s complex organization, that only comes out to 49 divisions. That is an average of 56 men per division for the 2,800-man CVA crew. To be more realistic, using the three-to-seven span of control rule the following is proposed:
The commanding officer/executive officer should not have more than seven subordinates. If we exclude "helpers” from this, that means that no ship should have more than seven departments. It is noted that Navy Regulations, 1948, which is no longer in effect, called for six departments for a CVA: Operations, Navigation, Weapons, Air, Engineering and Supply. CVAs now have 12 or (for nuclear carriers) 13. There is talk of making more.
There should be some upper limit placed on the size a division attains before it is split. To allow divisions of 150 men reduces officer contact to zero for a large segment of the division. Whatever his rank, the division officer should know each of his men to a considerable degree. A maximum size of 50 men is proposed as an absolute. For one officer to know the background, capabilities, limitations and needs of 50 men must surely extend him to the limit. When a ship has 51 or more billets for a given division it would be split and another division assigned.
With not more than 50 men per division it is clear that the number of divisions for 2,800 men would exceed 60. Without trying to dictate the number required for any given ship, it is apparent that the CVA would approach 80 or 90 divisions. Clearly the seven allowable department heads will have to exceed the recommended span of control if an intermediate echelon is not devised. And, in fact, two intermediate echelons are proposed. For convenience call them the Branch Head and the Section Head. In some chains of command the branch head, the section head or both could be missing depending on the circumstances and the span-of-control rule. Some definitions are in order:
► Department Head—Commands a principle functional area of responsibility in the ship under the commanding officer.
► Branch Head— Commands a major subdivision of 3 department which performs a complete function for the ship.
► Section Head—Coordinates the work of two or more divisions performing similar functions and trains division officers. In smaller organizations this function would be performed by a branch head or department head.
Examples of organizations employing these five echelons are provided in Figure 1, but it should be noted that these are examples and not proposals. Each ship should be allowed to organize its own crew under the guidance of the Type Commander. Administrative inspectors could check to see that the organization conforms to the guidelines.
Navy Regulations 1948 referred to the relationship between the division officer and his men as "command.” That is, the division officer was said to command a division. While Navy Regs 1948 is no longer in effect, the term serves nicely for this discussion. Thus, a department head commands a department, a branch head commands a branch, and a section head commands a section.
One other "echelon” or type of billet should be allowed. When an officer is not in command of any organization he should be termed an "assistant,” and no officer in command should be given that title. Thus the Damage Control Assistant would become the Damage Control Officer, and the Legal Officer would become the Legal Assistant. This title difference would clearly identify those billets to selection boards where an officer must exercise leadership and where he is 3 production worker. It seems reasonable to assume that command positions would become more attractive by that simple device.
In the matter of delegation of authority to reward and punish, it is proposed that division officers be returned the authority to sign enlisted evaluations. The Marine Corps NCO fitness report calls for the NCO 5 officer, normally the Platoon Leader (a second lieutenant), to make out and sign the fitness report. There is then provision for that officer’s immediate superior to sign as "reviewing official.” Thus the matter is settled within the company. In the Navy, the CPC evaluations must go to the commanding officer, who,
COMMAND DEPARTMENT HEAD branch HEAD SECTION HEAD DIVISION OFFICER
Commanding Officer Executive Officer Operations Officer
Navigator
Deck Watch Coordinator N Division
CIC Officer
A AW Officer
Decision Module Officer
11 Division Tracking Module Officer
12 Division
Intercept Control Module Officer
13 Division
Surface Warfare Officer Surface Warfare Officer
14 Division Electronic Warfare Officer
EW Division
Electronics Officer Shop 1 Officer OEl Division Shop 2 Officer OE2 Division Shop 3 Officer OE3 Division
Air Operations Officer
CATCC Module Officer OC Division
Strike Operations Officer IOIC Officer OZ Division SSES Officer OS Division Meteorology Officer OA Division Photo Officer OP Division
Engineer Officer
Reactor Officer
Reactor Mechanical Officer RMl Division Officer RMl Division RM2 Division Officer RM2 Division RLl Division Officer RLl Division Officer RL2 Division Officer RL2 Division
Reactor Control Officer RCl Division Officer RCl Division RC2 Division Officer RC2 Division REl Division Officer REl Division RE2 Division Officer RE2 Division
Main Propulsion Officer Ml Division Officer Ml Division M2 Division Officer M2 Division M3 Division Officer M3 Division
Damage Control Officer Repair Officer
Rl Division Officer Rl Division R2 Division Officer R2 Division R3 Division Officer R3 Division Auxilliaries Officer Al Division Officer Al Division A2 Division Officer A2 Division A3 Division Officer A3 Division Electrical Officer
El Division Officer El Division E2 Division Officer E2 Division E3 Division Officer E3 Division
Communications Officer Radio Officer CE Division Traffic Officer CR Division Signals Officer CS Division
on a CVA, is the equivalent of a regimental commander in rank and in number of men commanded. The rationale for the requirement to have the commanding officer sign any enlisted evaluation escapes this writer. Surely no one thinks a commanding officer can know the hundreds of men whose evaluations he signs! It doesn’t seem reasonable that it is in order to standardize evaluation marks. If that worked, the Chief of Naval Personnel should sign all enlisted evaluations and the CNO should sign all officer fitness reports. These reports should be made out by the man’s division officer, who knows him best, and should be reviewed by the division officer’s immediate superior—who is, after all, chartered to train the division officer. If that doesn’t get the job done right it can’t be done. This proposal could be implemented by the Chief of Naval Personnel.
Again, the authority to grant and disapprove a special request should be returned to an echelon which can exercise intelligent control. Many requests must now be forwarded to the department head or executive officer even though they could be decided at a much lower level. Only two reasons may be advanced for having approval authority at a higher level than the section head. First, in order to apply some sort of test to each request to see that the division officer has the "big picture.” This should not be necessary if the "big picture” is communicated to the ship’s officers and the section head can be trusted to follow the guidance given. If the section head can’t be trusted something more drastic than taking away special request approval authority is indicated. The second reason would be because the officer now exercising approval authority desires to approve or disapprove requests capriciously. Other than being silly on the face of it, such action is in violation of Navy Regs 1973.
Similarly, the authority to disapprove a special request should be delegated to the section head. The small number of abuses of this authority in the past do not warrant this further reduction of the division officer’s authority. Presumably this was a concession to mutineers’ demands and as such should be struck down immediately. Division officers are now being placed in the position of having to forward nonsense requests to the commanding officer for disapproval, then being criticized for not "talking” the man into withdrawing the request. A recent request was submitted to dye a beard green! These proposals can be effected by the fleets.
Finally, it is proposed that non-judicial punishment authority be delegated to section heads. In the Marine Corps, the commander of a company, nominally a captain but frequently a first lieutenant, has commanding officer status and NJP authority. The concept of having the commanding officer of 5,000 men be the lowest echelon with NJP authority seems to be peculiar to the Navy. Coincidentally or not, the problems of chaotic organization and slipping discipline seem to be led by the Navy, an outfit which can only survive with the closest cooperation between diverse groups. The following limitations are proposed:
► Forfeiture of not more than seven days pay.
► Extra duties for not more than 14 consecutive days.
► Restriction to the ship, with or without suspension from duty, for not more than 14 consecutive days.
► Detention of not more than 14 days pay.
These punishments represent that portion of the commanding officer’s authority which does not involve other divisions in the ship, such as brig time would. Full appeal authority to the commanding officer should be available on ships. The UCMJ does not allow for appeal to courts-martial on ships, so this appeal to commanding officer’s NJP should be spelled out.
If these authorities were delegated as indicated, the responsibility for discipline would be back at the division officer level where it can best be used. Division officers would be back in the business of running their divisions and perhaps something like leadership would return to the ships.
Commanding officers, executive officers, and department heads: I challenge you to reflect for a moment. Isn’t there something better you could be doing if your division officers had their job back? Can you really do that division officer’s job better than he can, even though you don’t know his men?
Let’s put the division officer’s job back in his hands where it belongs and get on with running the Navy.
Lieutenant Schelin enlisted in July 1954 and became an Electronics Technician. He served in the USS Piedmont (AD-17), and at NAS Whidbey Island. In 1959-60 he wintered over at Hallett Station, Antarctica. After changing his rating to Data Systems Technician in 1963, he served as NTDS Maintenance Chief in the USS Oriskany (CVA-34). As a warrant officer, he was the NTDS Maintenance Officer in the USS Jouett (DLG-29). As a Limited Duty Officer he served as Assistant Material Officer-NTDS on the ComCruDesPac staff and on the staff at Naval Schools Command, Mare Island. After a tour as Electronics Officer in the USS Enterprise (CVAN-65), he reitred last December.