In bygone days of glory, the U. S. Navy believed that line officers were essential for victory at sea. Our predecessors believed—and proved—that command of the sea was won by men who in peacetime had gained the maximum of seagoing experience in as many commands as possible. If there were brushfire wars in which to gain combat experience, so much the better, for no naval officer was considered to be truly tested until he had been tried under fire.
Sea time, command at sea, and combat experience—these were the only three courses in the school of hard knocks wherein virtually all of the Navy’s greatest leaders matriculated. Yet, today, such men with such backgrounds seem to be slipping quietly into the pages of history, replaced by the specialists.
It does not matter whether they are called staff corps or limited duty officers, today’s specialists have their own traditions paralleling those of the line:
Sea time equals postgraduate experience
Command at sea equals specialty command
Combat experience equals project managership
The specialist does not often go to sea, seldom if ever does he command at sea, and in the main he has less combat experience than his line officer peers. This acknowledgment is not intended to denigrate his importance, for the line could not operate without him.
But the staff corps and restricted line have their place—and the rascals ought to stay in it—as specialty assistants, technical advisors, and administrators of complex and detailed functions. As the Navy’s administrative tail grows longer and longer in proportion to the fighting hound, so, too, does specialist importance increase, although we of the line hate to admit it.
Specialization is not new. Line officers are, and for a very long time have been, specialized. This subspecialization is at least as old as Admiral Stephen Luce and the competition between sail-haulers and the black gang. Perhaps, the first conscious sub-specialization of the line was the “Gun Club.” Few officers of note got anywhere before World War II without being ordnance specialists. Aviators fought for decades against this closed coterie of surface gunnery experts and battleship admirals.
Then came the fly-boys. They proved conclusively that control above the ocean waters was tantamount to control of the surface. In Korea, aviators did indeed destroy the bridges at Toko-Ri. They were less successful, after years of effort, in destroying the bridge at Tanh-Hoa during air strikes on North Vietnam.
Once ersatz aviators, such as Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, showed the way, the full-time “brown shoe” made his influence felt on the Navy. These leaders had long experience in both sea and command billets. From the end of World War II until 1970, they dominated the Navy. This was something which their three Brownie Points (sea time, command, and combat) dictated. Who else had given and proven so much over so many years?
Today, however, we have a hodgepodge. We live in the era of the surface ship, with all it represents emotionally and logistically. We are flown over by carrier aircraft which have proven their worth in the past three wars. And we may even be shadowed by submariners of infinite potential who certainly have two of the three traditional qualifications for high command: long sea time and command at sea. In a limited way, some may even have achieved combat experience
Submariners are justly proud of their hard-won elite status—suffocating in the S-4 while learning to operate; key fighters in spite of defective armament during World War II; they are an essential part of America’s deterrent today. Unquestionably, submariners have many of the finest officers and men found anywhere in the Navy—which is also a dangerous flaw. But, on this later.
Today, there is a new Navy standing out to sea. Hydrographers probe the sea beneath. The whole specialty fleet (from a base built by Seabees) charges into view steamed by LDOs, WOs, and EDOs, controlled through communicators and announced by public affairs officers. Aviators are catapulted by AEDOs, maintained by AMDOs, and shot at by OEDOs. Their sky is predicted by meteorologists while 2900s auger their livers, assisted by anesthetists, surgeons, and doctors of internal medicine. This entire panoply is fed by a close-knit fraternity of supply officers, prayed over by chaplains, and supported by the intelligence communities.
To traditionalists it may seem that fighting men are being replaced by career counseling experts, all-too-many assistance teams, and more and more specialized staffies on more and more staffs. To the specialists it may seem that this is precisely the way things ought to be. To middle-of-the-roaders it may seem that specialization is on the increase, while the demand for fighting men is correspondingly decreasing.
What, then, is the future of generalist line officers? If the test of survival is adaptability, must they, too, adjust to these changing, increasingly specialized times while still practicing traditions which have proven their worth upon the sea? Today the three essentials are still believed and practiced, but are likely to be modified by the more sophisticated or perhaps the more cynical. To wit:
Command at sea is essential. Yes, but perhaps this simply means getting your ticket punched by BuPers, i.e., gaining command only long enough to become qualified. Preferably this involves getting an “E” ship, since any decline in performance of such a ship is usually slow and will pass unnoticed until the next CO arrives. Also, a handpicked Exec and outstanding department heads should precede the influential ticket-punchee by several months to offset any possible professional deficiencies.
Sea time is good, and the more the better. There is little or nothing said on selection-board brief sheets about ship’s employment, so some clever devils have been known to pick ships whose operating schedule is not too demanding. Several years later, when a selection board meets, who will remember whether the ship limped out of Norfolk or gyrated in the northeast monsoon off the gunline?
Combat experience is invaluable. This is not an exaggeration. A long-standing thumb rule is that one month of combat experience is worth three of Fleet exercise and six of ISE. Today it is fashionable to get close enough to gunsmoke to know its illimitable tang, but who operates within small-arms range—the most personal sound of all?
Has anyone made a survey of ex-aides who went voluntarily to Vietnam other than to headquarters billets there? How many of what the Fleet calls “professional staffies and aides” volunteered for Vietnam until it was promotionally fashionable and the danger seemed to have passed? And how many of these go to the field for any length of time? It was noted in Navy Times that, in the last selections for admiral, only 4% of those selected had served in Vietnam, and less than 60% had even fought in the combat zone, at sea or in the air. Idealists answer that this is but a one-time thing; in the long run, the junior line officer who fights the war today will become—must become—the naval leader of tomorrow.
Alas, today there appear to be other axioms—written or unwritten—which are creeping into the line officer’s professional life. All are controversial, most are denied officially, but a careful analysis of past professional trends might indicate that they are worth considering:
► All shore duty (being less important than sea duty) is about equal, but repeated tours in Washington are more equal than others anywhere.
► The most successful tours of Washington duty are those in which the incumbent sells a program. This program may prove to be good or bad over the long-term, but it matters little in either case. The seller, like the itinerant peddler he is, will have long gone—but will have left behind him a solid reputation of having accomplished things, by God!
► Whatever you do, sponsors are necessary. No doubt some junior officers through sheer force of leadership and the three traditional line requirements, still can rise high. But the woods around Washington are pockmarked with the shallow professional graves of those who failed to combine ability with influence.
► Today, a master’s degree is the equivalent of a bachelors degree two decades ago. Advanced education is a must. It broadens the individual and impresses junior peers and seniors. To some extent, academic knowledge can be substituted for practical experience.
My point is this: for many generations we have weaned naval officers on certain official axioms and have supplemented these with some sub-rosa corollaries. We have many confused jacks-of-all-trades, but only a few masters thereof. Is it not time to realign our battery and to cut down the number of our guns to obtain a more selective broadside? We have specialists and sub-specialists and semi-specialists and non-specialists- Is it possible to learn from history?
Consider the Romans. Their training cycle of quaestor-to-praetor-to-consul to proconsul was not simply winnowing potential leadership from incapable chaff. It was designed to ensure that those who commanded legions and ruled provinces were generalists, that commanders in the field not only had an overall knowledge of almost everything, but that they also knew how to manage specialties and how to lead and how to use specialists. Any system which survived for several thousand years—if one includes the Byzantine Empire—certainly deserves careful consideration.
Consider the German General Staff. The most feared leaders of two world wars, it has been politically castigated and militarily admired. But, in criticizing its obvious political flaws, one must not lose sight of military lessons we can learn therefrom, i.e., the well-trained generalist will inevitably control the specialists.
No matter what you call them—and I call them line officers—our Navy must cultivate similar broadly-trained types among its junior officers.
Of course there is a converse. When the French Revolution abolished the elite corps of seaman gunners, they got neither seamen nor gunners in the unspecialized generalists who replaced them. Specialists have always been a necessity at sea from the days of sailing masters to today’s supply officers. Consider the latter; any officer in the Department of Defense ought to be able to methodically count beans, bullets, and black oil. But our Supply Corps exists as a specialty because it understands through personal experience in the Fleet what the Navy needs. It understands how and where what can be delivered and under a variety of sea conditions, and (if worse comes to worst), what small print to quote in order to justify a requirement not apparent to desk-bound civilians in a landlocked depot (which is perhaps the most important of all.)
As technology becomes more complex and subdivided, specialists sprout like mushrooms. In tomorrow’s Navy, a specialist in radar will be passé. There will be a variety of sub-specialists dealing with surface radars, atmospheric trapping, air search radars, side-lobe suppression, and maybe even gremlin specialists. The man who combines such individual trouble-shooting with a broad grasp of the entire system is the systems specialist. But his leader will still be the multi-systems generalist; the knowledgeable line officer who combines technical smarts with managerial leadership to produce a working team with working equipment. He is less than an expert but more than a manager. He must he the pragmatic and competent individual who develops a smooth-running system from a complex of specialists and specialties.
As the Navy organization contracts, increasingly powerful forces are launched by each separate specialty and corps to perpetuate its own. If some EDOs are good for the Navy, perhaps more would be better. Seabees have done an impressive job in three wars; thus, obviously, we need more of them for, without them, who would build the hobby shops? Everyone always needs more medical and dental attention, especially those among the more senior, prostate-gland-conscious echelons. Warrant officers bind chiefs, department heads, and enlisted men together, and God knows we need more of that—and them.
Each specialty and corps echoes the cry: “We’re doing a good job as is, but if there were more of us, we’d do a better job.”
In brief, some say that each and every officer community is becoming more and more a world unto itself. Any specialty of any kind, officer or enlisted, cries out that its specialized education must not be demeaned by other than specialized maintenance, its own training, administration of its own specialty—anything, of course, except fighting. So each labor-union specialty bellows strident and inarguable arguments. Even aviators and submariners sing siren-songs of past glories and limitless futures. Everybody, that is, except for the unorganized, amorphous surface line officers.
In today’s Navy, there are nearly an equal number of black shoes, brown shoes, and the loafers of the staff corps; about 20,000 each. The restricted line numbers about half the staff corps, and the LDO/WO community almost as much. This 2-2-2-1-1 split is a far cry from Dewey’s day. But it is a recognition of the value of the specialist and an acknowledgment of his powers as a lobbyist. For example, in the past three years, surface line billets have decreased 20%; while EDOs have increased 12%. The Medical Service Corps has increased 24%; the lawyers, making a case for themselves, have increased 23%.
Unhappily, the generalist line officer, like the football dropkicker, has a great past, but a doubtful future. In tomorrow’s war, it would seem that submariners and aviators will provide most of the long scoring plays while our support specialists will see to it that the heroes’ diet is not deficient, that their wardrobe is not too untidy, and that their teeth are kept glistening for the photographers.
Meanwhile the pore ol’ 1100 is huddled down at the end of the bench looking as though it might take only a slight nudge to ease him off the team and into oblivion.
But he ain’t dead yet! For, deep within his heaving chest, there beats a stout heart. And, as long as war at sea is fought mainly for control of the surface thereof (for, in the final analysis, that is what the Navy is all about—transportation on the water’s surface) there must be a key place in the game for the surface line officer.
Someone must understand the game plan, someone must have an overall knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of Navy specialties, someone must coordinate the experts in struggles to control the oceans. Who but the generalist line officer? He is the leader of those few men who still are happy to go to sea (whether it be State One or Six). He wants to prove himself in combat, and/or he is the kind of feisty frog who wants to rule his own small puddle rather than become a toady in somebody else’s big pond.
Consider the task group commander of tomorrow’s Navy, whether he walks into CIC or monitors it from Flag Plot. It is impossible for any one individual to take personal command of an entire surveillance area. But this generalist commander can and must do the few things which only the synthesist can do:
► He will have trained and indoctrinated his staff so thoroughly that each controlling specialist knows what he in turn must do to achieve the commander’s mission. Can intelligence and operation officers work together without frequent adjudication by the Chief of Staff? Will the communicator temporarily sacrifice a few channels to EMCON without hysteria?
► He will be prepared to make decisions involving almost instantaneous tradeoffs. How much should the ASW risk degrade the attack mission? In view of the weather forecast, is replenishment today more important than the risk of attack tomorrow?
► He is the only individual present who can put technical details into political perspective. Although naval officers no longer cruise about the world opening foreign ports, neither rules of engagement nor hot lines will allow a naval commander to disregard the political implications of any military situation. Specialists may say what ought to be done, but only the generalist can say what must be done at any given instant in the big, real world.
Inevitably some will say, “But all this all depends upon the caliber of the man; a really outstanding leader will do anything well.” Hogwash! We are all prisoners of our experience. Despite what was jokingly said earlier, submariners are probably the cream of the Navy. Still, it might be argued that they have little conception of motivational leadership since they deal with picked men in both quality and quantity. If a man does not move fast enough on board a boat, he gets stepped on or, worse, is threatened with being surfaced and losing sub pay. Submariners get more than their share of funds, equipment, and priorities. But no matter how high these specialists may rise, they will never be able to empathize with the surface lieutenant jaygee who must create in his newest fireman a pride in standing the smartest security watch in the entire amphibious squadron on a quiet Sunday evening in port. However capable and personable any officer may be, he will inevitably associate his past experiences with today’s problems and tomorrow’s decisions.
This, then, is my contention: a hard corps of surface line officers will and must continue to exist as long as the bulk of shipping moves on the surface of the ocean even while well-organized specialists may perforce grow in number and proliferate in species. Tomorrow's war at sea must still be commanded by generalists who, by the very nature of their billets and their experience, will synthesize the specialists. Joseph Conrad put it well:
“This new ship here is fitted according to the reported increase of knowledge among mankind. Namely, she is cumbered, end to end, with bells and trumpets and clocks and wires which, it has been told to me, can call voices out of the air of waters to con the ship while her crew sleep. But sleep thou lightly, O Captain! It has not yet been told to me that the Sea has ceased to be the Sea.”
In our enthusiasm for specialty accomplishments (within their specialties), in our determination to give all Navymen their long-overdue “specialty-derived” benefits (ranging from medical care to housing), in our policies designed to keep everyone ashore at least as long as they serve at sea, let us not forget that the Navy exists to win battles at sea. Specialists don’t win them, although their contribution is immense. In the final analysis, it is men who understand the sea in all her infinite caprices, the slogging 1100s (who fly not, neither do they sink beneath) who must as usual carry the burden required for victory at sea.
We have given those who follow us an honorable and hard-won heritage. Let us hope that today’s junior line officers—and tomorrow’s leaders—will be carefully picked from among those who have known the sea in all her changing moods, who have and will again command ships of different types in different places under different circumstances, and who have proven their mettle in combat—all without being a ticket punchee. Until science-fiction computers dominate man or until the oversea and undersea lanes become the shipping lanes of the future, let us place first and foremost the readiness, training, and morale of the 1100 lieutenant jaygee. As long as men go down to the sea in ships, he and his contemporaries must become the naval leaders of tomorrow.
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A 1949 graduate of the Naval Academy, Captain Nelson has served most of his career afloat in the Pacific, in destroyers during Korea, and subsequently in such varied billets as heavy cruiser duty and minesweeper command. In the Atlantic he has been Exec of a Newport-based destroyer. Ashore, has been an instructor at the NROTC Unit, Yale University; has served in BuPers; and is a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College. During the Vietnam conflict, he successively spent 19 months in-country as an advisor to the Vietnamese Navy, commanded the Far-East-based USS Blue (DD-744), and is a recent alumnus of two years with CarDiv NINE as Surface Operations Officer. He reported in November 1969 as Head, Manpower Plans Branch (OP-102) in the Office of CNO.