Human Engineering and the Navy
(See page 352, March, 1936, PROCEEDINGS)
Lieutenant W. Nyquist, U. S. Navy. —I was impressed by two things in this article. In the first paragraph Lieutenant Commander Lincoln describes how a draft was detailed on board a ship in our Navy in 1934. He states that this draft was detailed by a so-called “hunch system” with no reference to the individual records of the men. In the last paragraph he states, “There is no such record known to the writer, for enlisted personnel at least, in our service today.”
During my two years at the Naval Training Station, San Diego, California, I was very much interested in selection (not to be confused with selection for officers). I am not sure whether the O’Connor tests were investigated by any of the training stations, but I do know that we had all the data on several other elaborate tests. I am egotistical enough to believe that our present system is better than any other tests known today, considering all angles relating to the Navy.
Briefly the system in effect at our training stations, for the past four or five years at least, has been as follows:
(a) All recruits are carefully interviewed immediately upon receipt at the training station.
(b) during their course of training all are given lectures and made acquainted with the various trades and the schools the Navy maintains for these trades. An officer with no other duties, known as the selection officer, gives a series of lectures regarding the trades and schools, and drills into the recruit the fact that during his ninth week of training the recruit will be examined in the following:
(1) O’Rourke General Classification tests; (2) mechanical aptitude tests; (3) arithmetic; (4) English; (5) spelling; (6) penmanship.
The results of these tests are entered on page 4-b of the service record and are signed by an officer. From these tests, interviews, company commanders’ reports, and a host of other information on each recruit, the selection officer makes his final selection for the various class “A” schools. When a recruit attends a class “A” school, the results of his course are set forth on page 4-a of his service record.
I do not maintain that our system is perfect, but I do believe that it is the best we have ever had and, if properly used by officers afloat in detailing men to divisions, it can hardly be said that it results in a haphazard manner of trying to fit “square pegs into round holes and vice versa.” Incidentally, the Navy was so interested in this selection business and “personnel management” that the Bureau of Navigation ordered a number of junior lieutenants to the line postgraduate school to specialize in this very work. After one year at the postgraduate school, these officers were sent to the various training stations to learn the practical side of personnel management. During ’32, ’33, and ’34, there were five or six at the training station, San Diego, for this duty. On account of shortage of officers, none were ordered for 1935.
I do not criticize Lieutenant Commander Lincoln, but I do criticize the officers whom he observed detailing a draft on board a ship of our Navy in 1934 by the “hunch system.” This fact can only indicate to me that those officers knew nothing about our system of training at the training stations. It also indicates that some division officers have no knowledge of what is inside a man’s service record.
Not only do we have a very rigid system of selection at the training stations, but all recruits before being accepted at the recruiting stations are now given a junior O’Rourke General Classification test. I have always believed that this test, started in 1928, was a step up the ladder in our recruiting system. However, we should go much farther and take more time than we do now to weed out more unsatisfactory material at the source. The more complicated the machinery in our ships becomes, the more we need better and surer systems of selecting our personnel to run it.
Ensign Edward J. Fahy, U. S. Navy. —It is to be hoped that Lieutenant Commander Lincoln’s article was, and will be, widely read in the service. It points out a most timely weakness, that of the “square pegs in round holes.” The process of readjustment is not alone a costly one to the Navy, because of the wasted man-hours that occur when men change from deck force to artificer force or to clerical force, but it actually leads to battle inefficiency in the fleet.
Perhaps Lieutenant Commander Lincoln is not as familiar with present conditions in the fleet as an active officer might be or else his article might have been more insistent, more vehement, on this all-important subject of human engineering.
When the average draft comes on board in these times of man-famine in the fleet, division officers gather round like flies around the proverbial sugar bowl. Deck divisions usually have their choice because, acting as feeders for the specialist divisions, they are the most undermanned.
Ordinarily the men are asked if they have any preference for duty. They have— and it isn’t for deck work. Radio, electricity, aviation are the usual preferences. However, the deck force must go on and our recruits are assigned to deck divisions.
After a few months our recruits are pretty well shaken down and are beginning to show up as “good men” or as “problem children.” By now, too, the man who wanted to be an aviation mechanic has had his fill of planes, having been placed in a division that has the job of handling boats and planes. He now thinks he wants to be a quartermaster. Others who wanted to be radiomen or electricians now are asking to be shipfitters, or yeomen, or signalmen.
As soon as the “shooting season” is over the transfers and changes begin. When the excitement abates, the turret officer finds his plugmen and trainers gone, his crack loading crew decimated, a season’s experience wasted.
The “problem children” come in for their share of attention—negatively. Do the engineers need men? A draft to China? New construction? Send the “problem child.” The “problem child” never settles down. He is shifted because he is misplaced. Dissatisfied, he transfers from cruisers to battleships, from battleships to destroyers. Move, change, transfer. Very few officers have the time or the understanding to try to find the answer to the “problem child.”
Our interest in human engineering was intensified when we undertook the job of molding a turret crew from green material. Who would develop into pointers, trainers, plugmen? What were the qualifications for each position? How could they be spotted in men who had never been in a turret before?
A study of service records was usually of no help. Marks in general classification tests and, sometimes, the score made with a rifle in “boot camp” were all the data to be had. The next resort was a questionnaire. Why did you join the Navy? What vocation are you interested in? What kind of athletics have you engaged in? Have you any hobbies? What kind of work have you been interested in? Have your friends or family ever suggested a vocation for you?
The answers were confidential, submitted directly to the turret officer. They were startling to say the least. The quiet lad who had been assigned to the lower handling room—you thought he was a bit “dumb”—wants to go to the Naval Academy and turns out to be a first-class trainer. So it goes. What system would be followed if war were declared and large numbers of new men were almost literally dumped into each ship?
But after the gunnery year is over that crack plugman goes, the pointer goes. Some listen to reason when you tell them that they are foolish to be hospital apprentices just because an opening occurs. They want to change so strongly that you advise, though you hate to see them go, that this one try baking, that one try being a quartermaster; the conclusions are your best honest efforts. It will be interesting to watch their careers in the ship and in the Navy if they can be followed that far. The data may prove valuable for future tests and qualifications.
How much simpler would this all be if the “square pegs” and “round pegs” were sorted? How much easier would it be to fit the square peg into its proper square hole instead of the aimless transfer, change, haphazard “guidance” we have now?
This then is an appeal for the consideration, by all those who handle men in the Navy (and that means practically every officer in the Navy), of this vital question of human engineering for the Navy. It is a supplement to the excellent article by Lieutenant Commander Lincoln and adds only this thought: that vocational tests of the O’Connor type should be supplemented by an “adaptability test” to determine whether the individual, even if he had the proper vocational qualifications, would be able to live in the confinement of shipboard life and adapt himself to living with the Navy.
Annapolis, Mother of Men
(See page 1499, October, 1935, Proceedings)
Lieutenant (J.G.) E. W. Lamons, U. S. Navy.—In this article Lieutenant Ageton undertook to give a picture of life at the Naval Academy. Doubtless this article, appearing as it did in the Anniversary number of the PROCEEDINGS, was intended especially for the families of midshipmen, past, present, and future. It seems, therefore, all the more astonishing that he should have included such a paragraph as this:
I like to think that the Naval Academy is a stamp mill. We lads were the raw material of youth laid upon the machine and pounded into shape until the product at the end of four years was a recognizable reproduction of the die. Not that the process was brutal, but it was unbelievably strict. Always around us was an inexorable routine which never relaxed, a power of authority which was ever present in our consciousness.
To me it seems a very great misfortune that this statement should have been made in such an article or, for that matter, in any article. It is not difficult to imagine the impression a thoughtful parent would receive from the designation of the Naval Academy as a “stamp mill” in a publication especially intended to advertise it. I have waited and hoped in vain for someone to refute this article. It would be most unfortunate if the Naval Academy were left without an advocate against such an accusation.
It is not necessary to look far for evidence that Lieutenant Ageton’s view is now outmoded. The policy of those in authority at the Academy for a number of years indicates that the pounding process is no longer in favor. It may be true that the words “unbelievably strict” and “inexorable routine which never relaxed” are accurately descriptive of the Naval Academy of some years since. But times change, and the Naval Academy changes with them. Gradually more and more opportunities have been extended to the midshipmen to mingle with, enjoy, and learn from the great world outside the yard. Gradually the curriculum has been changed to include courses that reach out beyond the strictly professional interests of the naval officer. The entire spirit of the Academy shows a departure from the technic of the “stamp mill.”
I have talked with a number of junior officers on this subject, and I believe I am correctly quoting the opinion of the great majority when I write that, in their opinions, these changes are beneficial. A great criticism of naval officers in the past has been that they were too narrow, too limited in their outlooks, too circumscribed in their thinking. We in the service have a unique opportunity to become educated in the true sense of the word, but how many of us are? How could we be if we are products of a “stamp mill?” By the time most men have passed through their college years the patterns of their lives are fairly definitely indicated. Is this true of our Academy graduates?
We are all familiar with the fact that many of our classmates seemed to be entirely different men within a few years after graduation. Why should this be so? Might it not be because the patterns of their lives had not been given an opportunity to develop? Might it not be due in some measure to this “inexorable routine which never relaxed” sufficiently for them to find any interests aside from that routine? These are questions which cannot be passed over lightly.
And what of those graduates who are still very much the same five or ten years after they left that “inexorable routine” behind? With few exceptions, these are the ones who have been most effectively stamped. These are the ones who see life only as a part of the Navy, who have little use for civilians and still less for the interests of civilians. But this thought, inviting as is the sidetrack to which it points, leads us too far away from the main line.
The many extracurricular activities of the midshipmen are additional proofs that the Naval Academy is far from a “stamp mill.” These activities are constantly increasing, both in number and in importance. One may see here an endeavor to broaden the lives of our future officers. That the midshipmen themselves feel this need may be seen from the energy devoted to these interests. These activities are non- athletic ones—the Masqueraders, Musical Clubs, etc. The subject of athletics at the Naval Academy is too broad and controversial to find a place in this discussion.
We all remember going to lectures first class year, but I venture to say that few remember much about those lectures except that the chairs in Mahan Hall are very uncomfortable sleeping benches. During the past two years, it has been my privilege to hear several distinguished men speak in that same auditorium. I did not see anyone asleep. The attention during the lectures and the enthusiastic applause when the speakers had finished gave proof more eloquent than words of the eagerness with which midshipmen receive someone who really has something to tell them instead of someone who repeats things they hear almost daily in their classrooms.
If one turns from Lieutenant Ageton’s article to Professor Alden’s “Officers and Gentlemen in the Making” in the same issue of the PROCEEDINGS he may read this significant passage:
. . . the Academy shows the need of outside interests with their quickening influence. This has been repeatedly voiced by some of the more mature midshipmen, who have realized that because of the same studies, the same athletic sports, the same dormitory, and the same movies, it is only logical that the same ideas, same convictions, and same prejudices are likely to follow. They need at times to step outside their circle to estimate rightly the value both of what is outside and of what is within.
An appreciation of the thought so well expressed here causes the majority of the young officers I have consulted to applaud the recently inaugurated practice of granting a certain number of week-end leaves to midshipmen of the first and second classes. They feel that it is in the interest of the service as a whole and its members individually that midshipmen be given every opportunity consistent with the primary mission of the Academy to develop themselves along many lines outside of their profession. The first point in that mission, as enunciated by a former Superintendent, Admiral Wilson, is “to mold the material received into educated gentlemen.”
We are living in an age of many contradictory tendencies. In some ways it is an age of standardization. Nowhere do we find this tendency emphasized more than in the Navy, with its standard materials, its standard operating and training methods, its standard systems of marking. It is also an age of specialization. Here, too, we find the Navy in step with the times; but more significant is the fact that this is an age of liberalization. We are trying to free ourselves from the shackles of the past. The best minds of our day in almost every field no longer adhere to the intellectual closed shop. We can see this tendency toward liberalism in thought all around us. Only a few Sundays ago a great religious educator expounded from the pulpit of our own chapel doctrines that were open heresies within the memory of men who still consider themselves young. Learned judges demolish the sham of protecting our innocent youth from the dangers of literature which invites attention to certain social problems which have hitherto been “solved” by being ignored. Not long ago we were taught that little remained to be learned about matter, the earth, the universe. Now our leading scientists tell us that the knowledge they have accumulated through many centuries is only a beginning. We constantly receive proofs that the day of the strait- jacket mind is gone.
Let us therefore not think of the Naval Academy as a “stamp mill.” Bolts and nuts must be standardized, men cannot be. Let us rather think of the Academy as a starting point. Stamp mills turn out finished products which are altered only by wear, that is, by deterioration. The Naval Academy starts men on a life which is altered by growth and development. It undertakes to mold men’s lives after a certain pattern, but we do not expect that pattern to be rigid or finished. Rather let the Academy point the way to a life that shall be full of intellectual curiosity. Let it point to far horizons of thought and achievement, beyond which lie ever farther and greater horizons. Only in this way can we expect officers to be “educated gentlemen.”
Commander W. M. Quigley, U. S. Navy.—In his comment on Lieutenant Ageton’s article, “Annapolis, Mother of Men,” Lieutenant Lamons takes umbrage at the use of the expression “stamp mill” in referring to the processes by which instruction is imparted at the Naval Academy. In averring that its graduates of the present decade are not molded to a certain likeness, Lieutenant Lamons extols the benefits of liberalization and inveighs against the restrictive errors of the past. In that dark age, it would appear that graduates of the Academy were indoctrinated only in certain essential virtues and in a groundwork of educational fundamentals, conforming to the accepted mission of the Naval Academy.
The Naval Academy is a “stamp mill” in the sense that an effort is made to impress upon the midshipmen, by precept and practice, certain of the virtues necessary to that “complete living” mentioned by Herbert Spencer as the end to be sought in education.
The Naval Academy is a “stamp mill” if by such is meant that its graduates are equipped there to perform, in a proper manner, all the duties which may devolve upon them as junior officers in the fleet.
The Naval Academy is a “stamp mill” if, in forming the minds and characters of the young men subjected to its efforts, it portrays to them those characteristics which led to the success of that thin line of leaders in the profession of arms.
The Naval Academy is not a “stamp mill” if by that is meant that it limits individual thought, work, or study. In fact, the Naval Academy and the Navy use every consistent means to foster the pursuit of knowledge. Can the responsibility be placed upon either if the popular publications to be found in messrooms and on the bunks of staterooms are more worn than those in the ship’s library? Education is for the individual who seeks it and cannot be rationed to all hands like grog. It is a fact that some do achieve improvement and do progress toward being educated, in their spare time and as a result of individual search. A glance at the Navy Register will show the many officers specially qualified in subjects which are not required of all naval officers. The individual search for knowledge has always been evident in the Navy, the present cry for the fuller, more liberal education notwithstanding.
All yearning for the liberal arts to the contrary, the fact has yet to be refuted that the major and almost sole purpose for which the Naval Academy is intended is to produce young naval officers who are well grounded in the arts of war. In the unhappy event that they may be called upon to do so, they will be expected and must be prepared to fight their ships in a better manner than those men who obtained this fundamental education elsewhere. And, as any thoughtful taxpayer will affirm, this is as it should be.
Liberalization appears to be the current catchword. In its history, the Navy has always been liberal. This liberalization has been effected with caution, for the reason that liberality, and its ever-present companion license, must not be permitted to interfere with the work to be done.
Sailing Vessels of the Eighteenth Century
(See page 9, January, 1936, Proceedings)
Dr. Ing. Wladimir V. Mendl, A.M.I.N.A.—May the present writer be allowed to add a few lines to this very timely article?
Early Mediterranean Galley (see page 8). —The illustration shows a stocked anchor although it seems not yet proven that this device had been invented at that date. As a matter of fact China claims the honor of its invention and communication between Europe and the Far East was taken up much later.
The bucklers hung over the gunwale are decidedly Viking fashion (see page 5) and most unusual for a Roman vessel. Moreover, the sailing vessels of Rome were merchantmen whereas the men-of-war were rowing craft.
Likewise the rig of the vessel as shown seems rather unusual with its spritsail, e.g., a sail spread by a diagonal spar. The sails of Roman sailing vessels were square sails and bent to a yard. It is quite true that besides the mainsail these craft were equipped with a “spritsail,” but this was a square sail too and bent to a yard hung under the bowsprit, just as was the fashion in northern European men-of-war down to the eighteenth century.
If, however, the sail with the diagonal spreader is to be retained it ought to be close-hauled, otherwise it would be likely to flutter.
Finally the picture shows blocks in the running rigging. It is quite true that the Romans used a device for multiplying the pull on a rope, but we are not sure that these were provided with sheaves instead of being mere deadeyes.
Snow (see pages 9-10).—The snow rig was much used for vessels of a certain size and was otherwise the same as the brig. That is to say the vessels were square- rigged on both masts, the only difference and important point being that they had a special “snow mast” or trysail mast abaft the mainmast to which the trysail (additional to the square mainsail) was bent. These snow masts had the thickness of about a studding sail boom. Earlier in the eighteenth century they had been mere “horses” extended abaft the lower main mast from the deck to its top. During the early years of the nineteenth century another difference between the brig and the snow was that in the former the gaff mainsail was extended by a boom whereas in the latter it was not. However, about the beginning of the thirties of the past century the snow rig too had adopted the boom and thus became even more similar to that of a brig.
Lugger (see pages 11-12).—Indeed the illustration on page 11 shows a rather peculiar sail at the stern of a lugger. However, about the year 1800 the ringtail, not ring sail, used to be a kind of studding sail added in fair weather to the driver or spanker. It was a fore-and-aft sail, rhombical in shape, “hung from the gaff and sheeted to a sliding boom attached to the driver boom.” Its setting athwartships was unusual.
Koff (see page 19).—As a rule Dutch vessels have been and still are equipped with two leeboards, one on each side, not a single one, which would have to be fitted in the middle of the hull, protruding down through the bottom.
The main characteristics of a koff are not only her rig but her hull as well, because of the very bluff bow and rounded stern. Thanks to this build, koffs are very steady and dry in a seaway. The type is still met very frequently in the North Sea and its harbors. Today the vessels are sometimes built of steel but have the same rounded form.
Since the middle of the nineteenth century Dutch vessels have been rigged with gaffsails instead of the spritsails mentioned in Steele’s publication. A peculiarity of these gaffsails is their very narrow head in comparison with the long foot. Furthermore the gaff has a characteristic curved form.
Another special feature of Dutch vessels is the wind vane in the form of a long conical bag as shown in the illustration (see page 18). These vanes are fixed to an upright iron staff at the mast and not to an inclined one as shown.
Lo! The Poor Janitor Thinks
(See page 31, January, 1936, Proceedings)
Lieutenant A. L. Warburton, U. S. Navy.—I agree with the author that the present damage control party is a rather doubtful collection of ratings that can be spared from the primary battle stations.
A remedy advanced in a previous observer’s report was an increase in rated complements to supply the necessary higher ratings for these damage control parties.
I cannot subscribe to the suggestion for a damage-controlman rating. In the case of electrical repairs, for instance, considerable familiarity and knowledge are required of anyone attempting to repair any but the simplest circuits. The number of circuits involved in even a “comparatively easy compartment” of a battleship fill two or three typewritten pages. His plan presupposes the procurement of a superman for sixty or so dollars a month. After reading his requirements for damage controlman I recall the Nav. prof’s reply to a classmate of mine who stated that the compensating spheres corrected the compass for variation: “Young man, the only man who could do that died 2,000 years ago.”