The subjects of inadequate pay, poor housing or none, long and frequent deployments, family separations, poor medical care, inadequate bachelor housing, crowded, inadequate commissaries, and the low opinion, held by the civilian sector, of the military profession as a career in our affluent, inflated, materialistic society, all have been discussed to death. The dollars needed to correct all of these problem areas are not likely to be forthcoming in adequate amounts in the near future. If we are to have a Navy at all in the 1970s and 1980s, we must concentrate on obtaining funds for building new ships, aircraft, and weapons systems to modernize our overage and obsolescent fleet.
As we have been forced to apply these priorities, people have once again been asked to sacrifice. It would appear that this time, in these times, we are asking too much, and the best of our young men are getting out after their obligated service. Those whom we can retain, both officer and enlisted, are seldom the best: frequently, they are those whom we would reject if we could afford the choice.
It will not be possible to disguise the circumstances so that the ships and the heroes and villains will be unidentifiable in the following two case histories. It is not our purpose to embarrass anyone, but a rigorous self examination is needed if we are to stop devouring our young—and murdering future generations of Navy men—because of the ineptitude we display in the handling of men.
Case in Point No. 1. She is a 14-year-old, wooden-hulled, 171-foot, 800-ton minesweeper. She has been assigned to Commander Mine Force Pacific, and is scheduled to deploy to the Western Pacific, to be assigned to Market Time anti-infiltration patrol off the coast of VietNam.
The type commander has ensured that her entire assigned crew has sufficient obligated service to complete an eight-month overseas deployment, the longest deployment ever contemplated for her five officers and 65 enlisted men. Her permanent crew was stabilized in time for all to undergo mine countermeasures refresher training together.
Barely sufficient time was allotted to overhaul the engines, which had exceeded their steaming hours allowed before sailing. The first identifiable frustration factor set in when sufficient repair parts for engine and generator overhauls could not be obtained in time, thus causing overhauls to be completed only by reassembling engines with some new parts, but also with many old and worn parts. The pride of expert enginemen was assaulted, but they dared not complain to the new captain, not knowing what his reaction would be.
The recurrent breakdown of engines on the long deployment, predictable but not preventable under the circumstances, was a continuing frustration factor for commanding officer and crew members alike. It was overcome by patient understanding, as the situation developed, by some of the most colorfully phrased naval messages ever originated by a lieutenant commander demanding priority repair part support (promulgated to the crew so they knew they were being backed up), and by the growing expertise of an engineering gang which disassembled and reassembled engines so often that engine internals were as well known to them as the faces they shaved every morning.
Seldom before in the history of a peacetime war—we told ourselves—was more hardship thrown on a small and only marginally self-sufficient ship. A 100-mile stretch of the Coast of Vietnam was assigned as out Market Time patrol area just as the northeast monsoon struck. The storm lingered for the initial patrol which lasted for 50 uninterrupted days. There were no port visits, no ship’s store, no air conditioning, no recreation, no gedunks, no rest, no respite, no pay days, no laundry service; seldom was there any mail, and there was no retreat from the heavy weather which kept the small ship constantly rolling, pitching, twisting, and yawing. Sleep was impossible, and torrential rains made the open bridge a sodden endurance contest. Rough seas required keeping the weathertight doors battened down, and the resultant heat and humidity made sleeping much like spending a night in a sauna bath. Underway replenishment was more dreaded than anticipated. It occurred every five days, under marginal conditions and at a considerable distance from the coast, adding to the danger of a man overboard or serious injury from parted fueling rigs. Not even Christmas Day was celebrated in port. There was only the endless steaming, boarding, inspecting, and searching for the gun-running trawler that never appeared.
Yet, these hardships were cheerfully accepted as part of the job. There was a reason for our being there, the ship’s mission was understood, and the men were more than equal to the task.
We had, by this time, achieved “unit identification.” An informal ship’s motto was coined to meet each new adversity: “We can handle it.”
A period of maintenance in Subic Bay improved the performance of the ship. All bugs in main propulsion were worked out, and the evaporators made more fresh water than their rated capacity. When the day’s work in port was done, the ship’s company played as they had worked—together. They drank beer in the same bar, they threw parties, and they provided their own shore patrol. They took care of each other. They refused to allow non-rated men to go AWOL. Petty officers assumed responsibility for juniors, even while on the beach. There were no AWOLs, no assaults, practically no venereal disease, and mutual respect was evident up and down the line throughout the entire ship.
Back on the line, the opportunities to shoot and get shot at were greeted with enthusiasm. General quarters could be set in 90 seconds; the boarding party could be mustered in one minute flat in the middle of the night. The electronic gear was brought “up” and stayed up. The ship was recommended for, and ultimately received, both the Navy Unit Commendation and the Meritorious Unit Commendation for heroic and extremely meritorious actions. Two officers and six enlisted men were awarded the Bronze Star and the Navy Commendation Medals with Combat V. We were a Ship: we had spirit, pride, and a sense of accomplishment.
When, in mid-cruise, we received word that the deployment had been extended from eight months to ten-and-a-half months, the reaction again was “We can handle it!” At that time, almost a fifth of the crew had reached the point where they had insufficient obligated service to complete the extended cruise and 90% of them either re-enlisted or extended their enlistment to finish the cruise, even though faced with additional patrols and a 40-day transit across the Pacific to home port, with its attendant boredom, long watches, and interminable days. There were even two excess electronics technicians who, ordered to shore duty, prevailed on the Enlisted Personnel Distribution Office, Pacific (EPDOPac) and EPDOConus to let them complete their cruise instead of departing early and flying home by commercial air for 30 days leave and their well-deserved tours of shore duty.
For the calendar year, then, the enlisted retention score was: 85% of those eligible re-enlisted or extended with intentions of re-enlisting. As for officer retention, four out of five, comprising 80% of the junior officers, extended their obligated services for an additional tour; two out of the four requested immediate augmentation into the regular Navy.
Of the 65-man crew, 61 were advanced in rate, so that only four non-rated men remained on board on the homeward bound cruise. The ship made full power on the way home. We arrived in home port for leave, upkeep, family reunions, and a general stand down, proud of our achievements and ready to enjoy an anticipated year in the States.
The personnel types greeted our floating petty officer factory with cries of glee. Within four months, only the captain, one other officer, and 11 enlisted men who had made the long cruise together remained on board to receive their Unit Commendation Award.
The capable, closely-knit crew was decimated far beyond the degree required to reduce its rating structure to the type norm. Many men were transferred after only four months in the United States to other mine force units due to deploy again for eight months. Wives and families who had been sustained by frequent family-grams and enthused by their husband’s rapid advancement—not to mention the prospect of the ship’s remaining in the States for an extended major overhaul—saw their men sail off again before small sons and daughters had learned to recognize that strange man in blue as Daddy. The answer to our smooth and practiced re-enlistment pitch which had been so successful in the past, now became, “If I thought I could stay in this ship and if I had any guarantee that I won’t get shafted like Jones and Smith and Brown, I’d ship over. But you can’t guarantee that, Captain, and nobody else in the Navy will either, so I’m getting out.” And, out they went, so that an 85% retention became 20% a year later because of this single frustration factor.
To adjust the seniority of the rates on board, the ship should have lost 30%, not 80% of her men. In their “take from the rich and give to the poor game,” the enlisted detailers broke up a team, and callously redeployed men who had just returned from overseas.
To re-enlist the few who were left, to build a new esprit de corps in a crew in constant flux; to re-achieve unit identification, to regain the knowledge and expertise which had been lost, to overhaul and convert under marginal conditions in a civilian shipyard, to break in a new executive officer and four out of five junior officers, to attempt four main engine overhauls with inexperienced men and the continuing unsolved problem of insufficient repair parts on a “not to interfere with the shipyard” basis, was both a challenge and an exercise in frustration. A good part of the sincerity went out of the re-enlistment interview. One felt more like a con artist than a counselor when explaining the re-enlistment contract that would place the re-enlistees at the mercy of hyper-active enlisted detailers.
Sure, it was the “needs of the service,” the fallout of the 1966/1967 Vietnam buildup, the shortage of experienced men, and the “guns and butter” national policies that destroyed our unit. But, couldn’t it have been done in some way other than the almost mindless game of musical crews we were forced to play?
Case History No. 2. While chaotic detailing was also a factor in this second example, other frustration factors were present.
She was a shining new 1040-class destroyer escort, 414-feet long, 3,400 tons, SQS-26 bow-mounted sonar, single screw, single rudder, automatically ballasted, fin-stabilized, powered by two JP-5-burning 1,200-pound, super-charged, pressure-fired steam generators, sleek, streamlined, air-conditioned, electronically sophisticated, essentially automated, computer-augmented, nuclear capable, adequately manned, and uniquely habitable.
She was a ship with pride, unit identification, and esprit de corps. The commissioning crew was mostly still on board, veterans of the fitting out, the sea trials, the post-shakedown availability, the first underway training at Guantanamo Bay, and almost a year in a post-delivery shipyard period, being fitted with a unique and incredibly advanced electronic suit. What fresh-made commander with only a year on the beach between commands could call command of her an exercise in frustration? Yet, it was.
With both technical evaluation and operational evaluation scheduled and in progress, the new skipper took over and the exodus of the commissioning crew and wardroom began. The engineer officer left with the first captain. The operations officer followed in a month and he, in turn, was followed in a few weeks by the sonar maintenance officer (a lieutenant replaced by an ensign); the ASW officer (a lieutenant replaced by an ensign); and the communications officer (a lieutenant replaced by an ensign). More followed in the next month.
To have the CO, XO, and three out of four department heads replaced in a three-month period is a shock for any ship. Still, we survived, absorbed at least a 60% wardroom turnover and a 40% enlisted turnover, and put to sea for a HUK deployment with the Squadron Flag embarked, combining the deployment with OpEval of our unique equipments.
Before we left, after an extended at-sea period following nuclear weapons acceptance inspection, nuclear training proficiency inspection (outstanding grades on both), annual administrative and supply inspection, and every other inspection anybody could think of, the executive officer brought four additional first-term re-enlistees in for the usual ceremony. Their oaths made our ship re-enlistment champions of the squadron, flotilla, the Destroyer Force Atlantic, and as far as we know, of the Atlantic Fleet.
Once again, we had a stable crew. A reasonable operating schedule had produced more than the required or desired retention rate in an individual ship. And so, off we sailed to become hunter-killers, deployed to both the Mediterranean and North Atlantic.
We became another close-knit crew. We entertained foreign dignitaries and were entertained in return. Competitive sports events with our host countries were legion. Tours and cultural exchanges were arranged. Discipline was excellent, AWOLs infrequent, courts-martial nil, dope, marijuana, homosexuality, desertion, dissidence, racial tensions, all nonexistent. Reliability of electronic sensors and main propulsion, phenomenal; and, best of all, our initial outfitting of repair parts, after two successive overhauls, was particularly responsive to almost all our requirements. An entire ship’s company, proud of what they could do, and essentially in love with their equipment, implemented both orderly preventive maintenance and maintenance data collection to such a degree that two subsequent inspections could find no, repeat no, significant discrepancies in any work center on board ship.
Senior chief petty officers kept an active re-enlistment counseling program in high gear. Massive bonuses, in amounts ranging up to $10,000, were well publicized as the first increment of new re-enlistees reached the point of decision and picked up their options for schools and reassignments of their choice. The eligibles were falling in line, the rest were interested; a Navy career seemed attractive.
Then the roof fell in. Before the short deployment was over, the word came out: “Throw all the Reservists out; let them go home; we have to save some money; reduce forces and economize.” The “Two-by-Sixer” program was upon us.
Up until that time, none of us knew or cared who was a Reservist and who was a regular. But now it was different. No longer could these young men calmly make a decision about a career in their own time—it was go regular now, extend, or get out!
The impetus and momentum to our guidance and counseling program petered out. The ship’s office, paymaster, and personnelmen prepared discharges for almost 20% of our crew, among which was truly irreplaceable talent, a goodly portion of which we had had a better than fair chance of retaining. Electronics technicians who had been trained by civilian industry, master mechanics, shipfitters, electricians, and the heart of the radio gang—all were told to “ship or git.” The ship suffered, not only from the actual loss, but also from the psychological effect of the “I’m getting out early!” syndrome and split between “lifers” and “short-timers” that the “Two-by-Sixer” message exposed and exacerbated.
Once again, we survived, our retention rate was respectable—above the Fleet average—but no longer phenomenal, nor of championship caliber.
So, we settled down for leave, upkeep, and a Stateside maintenance period, only to be shattered by the news that the ship would have only a three-month turnaround in the States before we would deploy again. Having absorbed replacements for our departed Reservists, we were subjected to another frantic shuffling of men, often for no discernible reason, almost as if the personnel types at EPDOLant had a daily quota of men to move.
One young man reported one week, and departed the next, before he had even completed unpacking his sea bag. Some of the technicians for the 1,200-lb., supercharged, pressure-fired, steam generator, who were steeped in the expertise necessary to peak, tweak, and tune our automatic combustion control, and to make flawless feed water from flash-type evaporators were transferred to old destroyers having separately fired super-heat, and replaced by BTs from the older ships who had no knowledge of our sophisticated system. The new men had the same time in rate, the same home port; sometimes they even came from the same squadron. But, in most cases, they were square pegs being pounded into round holes, and no reason could be wrung from frantic telephone calls or urgent naval messages to the detailers.
In what should have been a leave and upkeep and preparation for overseas movement period, the inspection teams came again, Batt team for the boilers, scat team for the sonar, admin/admat, nuclear weapons again, medical, dental, annual supply.
Was it the rapid turnaround, the early redeployment, the repeated inspections, the extra work load that provided the frustration factor? Hell, no! Sailors and officers and even their families can take these things in stride. It was to be a short cruise. Shopping lists were suggested to wives and families; a plethora of family-grams could keep the lines of communication open; there was a reason and a need for our extra deployment; it was explained and understood. Even young wives were resigned to the short cruise and looked ahead to a long inport period to follow.
Then the frustration factors struck. Preventive maintenance on main feed pumps had been scheduled four months before. The store rooms were canvassed for anticipated needed repair parts. Priority 5 requisitions had been submitted for gaskets and seals. When their scheduled time for overhaul came, the parts for the pumps had not arrived. Phone calls were made, supply expediters enlisted, sister ships canvassed, but to no avail. All ships of the class had exhausted their outfitting spares; all had reordered in a timely manner; none had received delivery; there were none in the system. Only a casualty summary report could force a contract to be let. The supply system was nonresponsive because their funds had also been cut. Delivery dates of several months in the future were offered and rejected.
The inevitable deterioration of a fine engineering plant had begun. With no redundancy built into these new “cost effective” ships, both pumps would have to be run. There were only two, unlike the six contained in a World War II destroyer. For the lack of a labyrinth seal, steam would leak into the lube oil; when the lube oil emulsified with water, the bearings would commence to overheat and wear; if bearings and seals could not be replaced, the impeller would sag until it impacted on the pump casing and seized. The pumps would destroy themselves; the ship would go dead in the water. It wouldn’t happen right away, but it would happen in time, and the proud, dedicated, preventive maintenance-minded engineers were frustrated to a degree which may seem unbelievable to one whose life work is not bound up in the care, maintenance, and the operation of fine machinery.
Perhaps our sense of urgency was unreal. Perhaps the reduction of a few millions in operating and maintenance funds was so important to budget-balancing and new ship acquisition that our three-year-old ship had to be allowed to age and deteriorate before her time. Certainly, intercepted traffic between one senior supply type and another indicated no sense of urgency at senior support levels: “Repeated requests for cannibalization of item (blank) Federal Stock Number (blank), leads us to believe that a review of our stock position with regard to this item might be appropriate.”
The frustration of the commanding officer and his supply officer merged with the frustration of his engineer officer and his dedicated engineers. Casrepts were modified, the suspect bearings were added to the deficiency list, lube oil was scheduled to be checked half-hourly, and changed every eight hours, and the battle to keep from destroying ourselves began.
It wouldn’t have mattered if these young men had not cared so much, but care they did, frustrated they were, and their resolve to leave the Navy when their hitch was up was born, nurtured, and hardened in the atmosphere of apathetic helplessness displayed by those whose bounden duty it was to provide the wherewithal for us to operate our ship of war. And so we sailed again, to prove our ASW effectiveness against the most sophisticated non-U. S. submarine threat we could find in the North Atlantic, and prove it we did, so well that a Meritorious Unit Commendation was awarded in record time at the end of the cruise. Still, the budgeteers had a new blow ready to strike; Project 703 struck with the impact of an avalanche. “Early Outs for Everyone!” went roaring through the ship on our homeward bound transit, and our recently stabilized crew went into its usual chaotic turnover, even before the last line had been doubled up and fires let die under the boilers. The endless stream of arrivals and departures began again, as the enlisted personnel distribution offices began their “rob Peter to pay Paul” daisy chain-gang game again.
We still worked on our re-enlistment program, now trying to hold onto career men who had experience, with at least as much effort as we had once expended only on the first-termers.
And now the officers came under the same kind of attack. My NESEP, lieutenant-type, electronics maintenance officer, after six straight years at sea, in three NTD-equipped ships, always assigned as EMO because of his unique talents and the “needs of the Navy,” was now told by his detailer that he would probably not be selected for lieutenant commander if he didn’t accept another successive two-year tour at sea in a department head billet. He was being offered $20,000 a year to leave the Navy and work for a company which had supplied some of the equipment he managed so well. Only a struggle and insistence on orders to overdue shore duty kept him in the Navy, but it was a close call.
Total war with BuPers was necessary to get my outstanding, extra cross-trained ASW officer an assignment challenging enough to keep him in the service.
And then the final blow came. My superb engineer officer—destroyer school graduate, charismatic leader, flawlessly qualified Fleet OOD, expert shiphandler, multiple language-qualified and strongly oriented toward an intelligence sub-specialty—was told that he would be reassigned for his sixth straight year at sea in his third successive engineering billet, going from main propulsion officer in his first ship, to engineer officer in my ship, to an immediately deploying squadron staff as squadron material officer. The inevitable effect in later years would be for someone in BuPers to tell him that he had “too narrow a career pattern in engineering,” to be qualified for command of a destroyer. The detailer who denies that this is frequently the case, speaks with a forked tongue.
We fought the orders to the brink of impertinence and insubordination, but they remained in effect. Then, marvelously, a reprieve was granted. The squadron staff which needed him so badly was ground up in Project 703 and was disestablished. The billet no longer existed. My engineer officer was an unexpected asset, available for reassignment. But what happened? He was ordered to another DesRon staff as material officer. If his resignation is not in the mail by this writing, it will be shortly—despite the fact that he loves the Navy, is the most effective, imaginative, competent, and promising officer with whom I have ever served—and despite the fact that his wife likes the Navy and has attempted to persuade him to stay.
No amount of money; no increase in pay; no mushrooming of four-bedroom, two-bath, modern housing units; no plethora of gleaming commissaries and free prenatal care will compensate for the frustration factor when it insidiously infiltrates itself into the soul of a man or a ship. If we don’t stop outraging our young men as a routine matter of course, regardless of the financial strictures that lead us to these regrettable actions, we will have nothing but admirals, captains, and boot seamen draftees to run the superb new ships that our multi-billion-dollar shipbuilding program is buying for us. Competent as the aging captains may be, they and the boots combined won’t make it out of the harbor entrance, much less be able to face an implacable enemy with any efficiency or expertise in the practice of war.
Whatever Draconian measures are necessary to stabilize the crews and wardrooms of ships must be taken, even if it means laying up half our Fleet until we can man it properly, operating ships with reasonable schedules, and recognizing that men and not floating hulks of iron are what stand between us and a very real and dangerous potential enemy. The clock is running out. We have strained our human resources to the breaking point, and future generations may have to pay the accounting.
With the possible exception of our nuclear deterrent ballistic missile submarine fleet, and a few deployed CVAs with their air groups, the rest of our Fleet is as unready as a paper fleet manned by statistics and as vulnerable as a congeries of soap bubbles, mostly for the lack of experienced men, and mostly because of the frustration factor.
If and when my turn comes around again, I would greatly desire to command an LHA or an LPD or a DLG, or to act as commodore for a squadron of 963-class destroyers, but not if we have to man them with nothing but boot seamen and firemen, and the discouraged remnants of a hard core few who will remain from the once-proud and dedicated crews who manned our ships of war when our fleet was a Fleet, when our men could proudly identify with their ship, and when the Navy still knew how to take care of its own.
It may not be too late, but if we don’t correct out current situation, the CNO of the future will preside over a Fleet which will rank with the Egyptian Army and the Libyan Air Force, equipped with the most modern hardware known to modern warfare, but with no one who knows how to fire the guns or get the aircraft off the ground.
The fault, of course, does not rest alone with BuPers, or with the enlisted personnel distribution offices. They must achieve the ordered savings. They must reduce force levels as directed. They must send men home and they must sometimes shuttle personnel about with little regard for individual desires. There is no slack in the system. There is no flexibility in the pipeline. There is no way to achieve even the most rudimentary beginnings of orderly detailing when there are not enough men to go around.
Perhaps our seniors have said “Can do” once too often, knowing full well that, in truth, we “cannot do,” and the responsible course of action is to admit to our Commander-in-Chief that we cannot support certain of his requirements any longer, that fiscal constraints are doing irreparable harm and are jeopardizing our ability to make a genuine contribution to the nation’s defense’
We need a modernized fleet and fleet air arm. We must continue to support combat operations in South East Asia. We must maintain a powerful force in the Mediterranean or see the rest of the Middle East go by default into the enemy camp. We have the hardware to do the job, but the matter of men is a different problem.
If we must save money, the savings must come from some source other than disproportionate personnel cuts. If we must save money, the source should not be in operating and maintenance funds. If we must reduce the size of the Navy, we should get on with it in one decisive blow, and not stretch the agony of disruption, redistribution, and all its attendant chaos over several years. If we continue to proceed on the course we are following, history will record us as the unreadiest fleet that ever pretended to dominate the oceans of the world.
We should have the personnel assets to achieve cyclical detailing and leave crew members in their ships from overhaul to overhaul.
We should strip our store rooms of unneeded repair parts and stock the ones we need to keep modern ships operating. We must learn to improve our system for predicting and stocking the items we will need when we build new classes of ships, aircraft, and weapons systems.
We should frankly tell the President what we can and cannot do with the resources that he and the Secretary of Defense and the Congress make available, and, finally, we should render the fat out of our own organization, limit the programs that we pursue, stop chasing the R&D rainbow from the sublime to the ridiculous, squelch the dedicated advocates of proliferating duplicative systems and sensors, perfect the ones we have, return some order to our training establishment, stop moving people about for the sake of moving them, establish career patterns that are not locked into the narrow paths of the past, and provide our officers and enlisted men with something akin to that orderly life which has been one of the traditional attractions of military service.
If we cannot achieve all these things at once, we should at least make a beginning. To attempt to do less is to admit that we still have not recognized the problem, that we have not considered the possible solutions, and that we are victims of forces which we are making no effort to control.
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A graduate of Fordham University, Commander Shemanski received his commission through O.C.S. He has service in ships of four major Type Commands including USS Haven (AH-12), USS Calvert (APA-32), USS Hollister (DD-788), and as commanding officer of the USS Endurance (MSO-435). He received his Master’s Degree in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1962, and served a subsequent tour as instructor at the U. S. Naval Academy. He is a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College and served as Commanding Officer USS Voge (DE-1047) before reporting for his current assignment as Executive Assistant to the Chief of Legislative Affairs.
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A Paralyzing Crisis
An old chief carpenter once fell overboard while repairing the accommodation ladder. At the last moment, he was saved, and as he stood dripping on the quarterdeck, the officer on duty asked him if he had never learned to swim?
“Yes, indeed, Sir, I am able to swim. But who on earth would think of it at such a time?”
—Contributed by Rear Admiral F. H. Kjølsen, Royal Danish Navy (Ret.)
Oh, Pardon Me, Sir
It was the first night at sea in the newly commissioned USS John S. McCain and the midwatch officer of the deck made his way to the bridge of the darkened ship. Stepping briskly into the wheelhouse, he peered into the inky blackness and exclaimed,
“Bosun, I’ve seen some darkened bridges, but this is ridiculous.” Dead silence greeted him.
“Bosun?” The room was suddenly lighted, and he found himself, not in the wheelhouse, but in the middle of the Executive Officer’s stateroom.
—Contributed by Commander Leonard T. Daley, U. S. Navy
(The U. S. Naval Institute will pay $10.00 for each anecdote published in the PROCEEDINGS.)