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System of Rating Officers
(See page 1263, September, 1941, Proceedings)
Commander R. B. Henry (M.C.), U. S. Navy (Retired).—In view of the almost impossible task imposed on selection boards by war conditions, it would be well to study the “System for Rating Officers” devised and described by Captain G. T. Rude, U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, and now in partial use in that service. The fitness reports accumulated under the plan constitute the raw material upon which promotions are to be based when the system comes into full operation; these reports being put through a process of averaging, and certain adjustments or corrections made; until a single mark emerges for each officer, representing his qualifications relative to others of the same grade. The names are then listed in the order of these marks and, eventually, as the system comes into full effect, promotions will be made from the top of the list, as many as required.
Examining this article in detail, we find that it presents an analysis of the operation of the plan described during a period of about three years, during which time each officer is marked under 27 different headings on each fitness report. After the receipt of a report at headquarters, the contained marks are adjusted for the weight assigned each subject (thus, a higher weight is given to a mark in intelligence than to one in tact) and another adjustment is made where it is found that an officer has been marked by an “out of line” marker; one who habitually assigns marks higher or lower than those usually given, as determined by a comparison of the average of all grades he has previously given with the service average of assigned marks. All marking superiors are checked in this way against the service average and marks assigned by those found to be out of line markers are raised or lowered to the degree necessary to compensate for tendency in the particular superior. All marks on the report are then averaged, and this summation is then averaged with the summations, similarly arrived at, of all earlier reports of the individual, this final average becoming the mark determining the subject’s place on the promotion list. Full adoption of the plan is postponed until sufficient marks of superiors have accumulated to permit the establishment of a representative mark, called the “master mark,” for each. Under the Rude plan all marking superiors become the “selection board” determining which officers are promoted and in what order.
The application of this system to the Navy would present no special difficulty for, while marks on naval fitness reports are not given in numerical form, the numerical equivalents are readily ascertained from the position of each mark on its respective scale on the printed form. As every officer is marked at least twice a year under 15 different heads, not less than 21,000 separate marks enter into the records to be considered by the members of a selection board before whom come the names of 100 officers having an average of seven years’ service in their current grade. If each mark is to have its due effect as a component of the whole, some process of averaging must be resorted to, and the relative standing of the officers concerned determined by such averaging.
The procedure of using as a criterion of fitness for promotion the average of marks assigned by a succession of superiors would seem less vulnerable to criticism than that of depending upon the hurried judgment of a board which, though using every effort to come to a right conclusion, must evaluate the services of those on whom they pass (many being personally unknown to the board members) on the basis of hundreds or thousands of undigested and unaveraged marks.
The Wings of Sea Power
(See page 505, April, 1942, Proceedings)
Alfred C. Lane.—The conclusions of Mr. Kendall’s article “The Wings of Sea Power” are correct. There is, however, a statement on page 509 that may be questioned. He says, “Even the most vehement extremist makes no pretense that the heavy goods of the world are to be shipped otherwise than by water.”
That they are to be shipped by water I would not deny, but that they are to be shipped “otherwise” I would suggest. One of our most forcsighted publicists, recently my guest, suggested that at the close of this war our great bombers would find use in the freighting business to the Amazon valley. He has flown some 15,000 miles around South America recently, and more than once some passengers were kept waiting because the airplanes were so full of freight, and he would hardly have had a seat without his priority.
One must also consider what has recently been done in Canada. It is briefly summarized in the March, 1942, PreCambrian, Vol. 15, No. 7. I cannot pick out too many items. It is picturesque that one of the smaller lines, the Independent Airways Ltd. (page 9), had their first sizable contract in freighting frozen fish and during their first four years handled about a million pounds of that freight; but it is also true that equipment and mining supplies which may be fairly called heavy freight have been shipped in to the Red Lake, Great Bear Lake, and numerous other points for the last ten or fifteen years and we can hardly expect that we have reached the limit. Much will depend, of course, upon the possibility of other methods of transportation. In the Amazon valley the conditions for other forms of transit are not particularly good.
Mr. Kendall rightly says that every innovation in warfare is cumulative. The improvements in airplanes have accumulated effect upon the use of airplanes. The use of the cutting instruments was one of the early instruments of war and still has its place, but is not so important in grand strategy as the later implements. A ship still carries marines but they are now generally subsidiary strategic factors. This is not always true. The growth of importance of airplanes and control of the air strategically in the last 30 years is beyond question. My personal belief is that at the end of this war there will be a unified power which will dominate the air and will dominate the terms of the armistice and the arrangements for peace. If we are to have a relatively stable peace I am inclined to believe that this unified power should continue to dominate the air, not merely military planes but commercial planes and private planes of all kinds. It should, however, have a regard for international common law, for fairness, for those principles which are sometimes called noblesse oblige, and for Christian principles and divine justice.