Year after year some four hundred good petty officers get moved upstairs into commissioned status through Integration and Limited Duty Officer selection. Another six hundred, on the average, become warrant officers. A goodly portion of these men, nearly all chief petty officers, have applied themselves diligently through study, application, examination, and cramming to reach this goal of Gold. The remainder are nominated to commissioned status as a result of some outstanding act or achievement as a chief or first class petty officer.
On the surface, this looks meet and right— the good American tradition whereby effort is rewarded and accomplishment is appreciated. It looks as American as apple pie and as democratic as a Horatio Alger success story. But to look at it more closely, what is this system doing to the Navy? Is the result satisfactory? Is justice done for the masses?
My purpose is simply to challenge this system and to offer one solution. Although not educated in the intricate mechanics of personnel administration, I have been a conscientious chief petty officer for the past eleven years and have been trained to observe what happens around me. It is reasonable to assume that I think like any other chief petty officer who is not an aspirant for commissioned status, yet who bears no grudge against those who are. My conclusions represent the views of the highest caliber chief petty officers that I have been fortunate enough to serve with over the years.
Let us take a look at three specific and applicable incidents that I observed during the past year:
1. The bridge messenger knocked and entered the CPO mess room of a ship under-way and asked for Chief Blank. A fellow chief went into the bunkroom and roused Blank from his mid-afternoon siesta. Bleary- eyed, Blank asked the messenger what he wanted.
“Nothing, Chief, your division officer just sent me to see if you’re still aboard. He says he hasn’t seen you since we left port seven days ago!”
2. Another chief had spent long hours on a project which proved of great value to the mission of his unit. He had worked nights and had sacrificed precious shore duty hours with his family to see the project through to its successful conclusion. When the project was finished, an officer looked at it in high respect. He turned to the chief and asked, “Did you do this? By yourself?”
When assured that such was the case, the officer said with conviction:
“You ought to have a commission.”
The Chief was deeply offended but kept quiet, for inwardly he realized that the spontaneous remark had been intended as a sincere compliment—the highest compliment the speaker could pay for superior accomplishment.
3. In the third instance a chief petty officer had lent great prestige to the naval service and to the uniform he wore during a series of nationally televised shows. Through his demeanor, his sincerity, and his after- hours work, several millions of Americans had become acquainted with this “Chief with a heart” who, while busily engaged in the placing of an aircraft carrier into commission, could take time out to spearhead a drive to help orphans.
Soon the hubbub of national publicity subsided and the chief was in Washington. A senior officer said, “I’d like to see this man promoted to lieutenant commander and assigned to the Navy Recruiting Service!” That chief, too, was deeply offended, but he didn’t remain silent. “That,” he .said, “is what’s wrong with the Navy today. Too many good chiefs are lieutenant commanders!”
These three cases were isolated geographically, but they are typical of day-by-day incidents in the Navy. Perhaps the cases chosen are extreme, but collectively they point up the problem at hand. They have one common denominator which is that all three men, going downhill on twenty, rate the same privileges, draw the same pay, and passed the same basic qualifications for their hard hat. There endeth all similarity because each is an individual human being, and human beings are different even though their predicament is common.
Looking at each man individually, at the same time we can multiply each by 16,000 to account for the 48,000 who form the masses of chief petty officers in today’s Navy. In the first instance, what sort of lethargy pills had Chief Blank been taking that he could willfully absent himself from his division for a week at sea? Was he sick? Was he a foul ball? Had he no pride? Amid the guffaws that greeted the messenger’s statement that Blank’s division officer hadn’t seen him for a week, Blank’s ears reddened, which proved he had some pride. His weight attested to his health. Soon the guffaws turned to serious discourse. Finally a fellow chief, a candidate for Limited Duty Officer, said:
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself . . . duty shirker!”
Blank replied, “Now take a strain, Junior. Why should I exert myself? I’m a chief and as far as I want to go. I’m no eager-beaver for LDO like you are.
“For the first few years after I made chief I was with my division regularly. But half a dozen mustang officers in a row moved in and beat me out of my job. They were ex-chiefs who couldn’t forget they were chiefs. They apparently felt the need to justify their raise in pay by keeping busy, and they chose my job to busy themselves on. This way I’m happy, and they have the satisfaction of working as hard as they ever did.
“Besides,” he concluded, “what would it get me to knock myself out? I’m secure. I’ve got permanent chief in my record. I return to the ship on time, and I don’t drink on the job, and I’m not likely to get busted for incompetence because my division officer runs my job fine for me.”
In the second instance, what made Chief Number Two flinch with dismay when the officer said he had done such a good job on his CPO project that the officer felt he should be commissioned?
Since his recruit days, this chief had been taught that officers are trained as leaders and men are trained as followers. Without feeling subservient, he had molded his career toward becoming a good follower, and by doing his job to the hilt, he had learned to make his leader’s job easier, which would be appreciated, and this appreciation would take substance in mutual respect. Incidentally, he had developed strong leadership traits of his own because reliability and service are the first steps of both followership and leadership.
As he advanced toward and achieved his CPO cap, he had also picked up a lot of savvy in his specialty. This savvy, matured through practice over the years, was responsible for the success of his project which provoked the short-sighted officer to consider the end result of his work a miraculous achievement by an enlisted man.
But the Chief knew something his would- be benefactor did not know—that there can be pride and contentment at the CPO level as well as at the officer level. He felt also that the good job he had done was the result of what the Navy had taught him to do.
Now take Chief Number Three. Hadn’t our public figure proven himself adroit in welding public opinion and converting public interest into public respect for the Navy? Didn’t his personality, his appearance, and his exuberance before a network camera prove that he was sold on the Navy? Shouldn’t be he rewarded for his conspicuous achievement by being elevated to the plane of lieutenant commander where his opinions, his actions, and his remarks would have weight in planning sessions? Not on your life!
As he explained it to the author, “Why take a good, sincere chief of eighteen years’ training and make him a miserable officer overnight? Do you take the skin off a leopard, drape it over a lamb, and expect growls to come forth?”
“As it stands now,” he continued, “I can exert a good influence on my new ship. From my level in the chiefs’ quarters I can plant seeds that grow both up and down. I can sell the chiefs on the idea that this ship, like the Enterprise, is going to be the best carrier in the fleet. When the chiefs are convinced, the other petty officers sense their attitude and mimic their example. When the petty officers begin to feel and act proud, the contagion envelops the entire crew.
“Matter of fact,” he said, “that has already happened during the pre-commissioning period. It has worked down to the point that a nucleus crew detail hears boots at the training center stand defiantly against fellow boots and say, ‘We’re going to be sailors on the USS Cracker jack.'”
“It works upward just as well,” he mused. “How can a junior officer look on a sharp division at quarters or at work without getting the idea that he, too, must look sharp and be sharp? And the contagion spreads onward, ever upward and ever downward until we, like the Enterprise, are the best carrier in the Navy.”
And for emphasis he added, “I’ve been chief for so long it’s part of my thinking. I’m afraid if I got a commission I’d surely be a gold-braided specialist and make some chief’s life miserable by taking his job.” This man’s pride in being a good chief proved that the chief is that vital link in chain of command so often referred to as the backbone of the Navy.
Chiefs Two and Three shared a treasured heritage that Chief Blank did not and could not feel. Both were imbued with that intangible spirit of service. Now Service is a word like Patriotism, or Christianity, or Character. Something in our society has led us to believe it’s a bit corny to mention these words aloud, but nevertheless they are the cornerstone of a firm foundation. Without this conviction of service both Chiefs Two and Three would have left the naval service years ago because each has been offered substantially more pay in a civilian job than he gets in the Navy. Yet each stuck by his guns.
Naturally, all chiefs can’t be specifically categorized exactly into one of these three types, but, with certain variations, they represent the masses. We are agreed that the motivations and philosophies of these three are divergent but they have some mutual ties. They have that one common denominator which unfortunately applies even to the top and bottom exceptions. That denominator is financial.
Since each draws roughly the same amount of pay, even though the effort expended varies greatly, what’s wrong with the system? None of these men can remember the day when top chief’s pay was just over a hundred dollars a month but when chiefs were on a financial parity with semi-professional civilians. Today each chief feels the financial pinch. The problem is widespread, but an across-the-board pay raise is not the answer.
How does each one of these three chiefs solve his problem at present?
Our portly Chief Blank carries his tranquil attitude ashore when he salutes the quarterdeck. He gets home, opens a can of beans or a quick-frozen TV dinner, turns on the stove and waits for his wife to get home from her job. When he completes his twenty, he’ll settle for a position as a prison guard so he can retain his complacency.
Chief Number Two does a considerable amount of free-lance writing in his spare time. When stories are not moving, he works at assorted jobs. He is a crackerjack bartender because he has worked nights in this profession at the officers’ club during periods of shore duty. He knows seeds, plants, and fertilizers because he has worked Friday nights and Saturdays in a garden shop to supplement his CPO paycheck. But he is too proud to let his wife work.
Chief Number Three is a practical compromise between the two. He has a legitimate sideline business which he runs at home day and night during his leave and on nights when he has shore duty. When he goes to sea, his wife runs the business, as well as the house.
At this point you will admit that the system isn’t fair. It isn’t democratic. It isn’t the American way to reward great and puny effort with the same rate of pay. So, what’s the solution?.
We have normal advancement paths for officers, with relative increases in pay. We have normal advancement for enlisted men, up to the point of CPO, which actually is becoming the point of stagnancy. We have normal advancement paths for warrant officers with corresponding raises in pay. We call it W-l, W-2, W-3, and W-4 as the Warrant Officer proceeds in stature, responsibility, and rate of pay. Why not haveC-l,C-2, and C-3 categories for chiefs who prove themselves worthy of advancement beyond the point of donning the hard hat?
Above all, we should make this system competitive! An ALNAV promotion after two years in grade is no better solution than a blanket pay raise. And it wouldn’t solve the problem because time passes just as quickly for the lazy, the lackadaisical, and the insincere as it does for the conscientious chief.
Quarterly marks and CPO evaluation sheets might be a satisfactory criterion for competition, but too many lethargic, even lazy chiefs today can boast of 4.0 marks across the board for the past ten years. The same chiefs, by virtue of their years, pose a problem for accurate grading by evaluation sheet. Over-sympathetic grading officers, not wanting to sell any chief down the river, especially a senior chief, still give feet- draggers exaggerated marks on their annual evaluation merely because they are senior.
A more realistic approach to quarterly marks and evaluation sheet grading is recommended plus either a written examination or some other device designed by someone competent in that field to insure the “producing” chief a better chance of promotion than his coffee-mess counterpart. There must be practical considerations as well as academic qualifications.
As to pay within the various CPO grades, who is the more valuable to the actual combat-readiness of the ship—the seasoned chief who has mastered his specialty and who actually leads his men, or the junior officer who is still learning leadership? Just what is the Navy buying with its present or its future pay scale? Isn’t the answer combat readiness?
On the surface proposing higher pay for an enlisted man than for an officer might appear revolutionary, but it’s practical, and it is being practiced in industry every day. Take a newspaper for example—the typesetter, the press man, the stereotype man, and several other craftsmen earn considerably more money than the cub reporter fresh out of college, even though that cub reporter is much more likely to succeed to an executive position over the years while the craftsmen remain fairly static in prestige. Isn’t the craftsmanship of the chief of more value than the potential of the ensign?
Without going into a general discourse on the specific rates of pay for various officer, warrant, and enlisted grades, we can allow qualified statisticians to work out the details while we approach the solution from an inducement standpoint. Whom do we want to reward? The examples already cited prove that while all men might be created equal, each man has a variable saturation point just as each has variable worths and horizons. The man most likely to become and remain a good chief petty officer is the one who has the native intelligence and the developed pride and application required to make chief in eight to ten years in today’s competitive promotion system. (This is not intended to be disrespectful to the unusual man who can make chief in less than eight years, nor to the good, sincere first-class in other rates which on occasion can be considered literally frozen as far as promotion goes.)
Assume that this most desirable man makes chief (C-l) in eight to ten years. Say he is 28 years old. He is one of several thousand who might be considered for warrant or LDO or integration by the time he is thirty or 32 under the present system. But let’s be more realistic and admit that he is going to be pretty well grooved as a chief. Four years pass and except for two $7.50 per month foggies, he’s right where he was four years ago. He waits four more years and finds himself more solidly grooved because not only is he pushing the age limit for warrant or integration or LDO selection, but he is also beginning to realize that his reasoning is CPO reasoning from habit and that it would be difficult to begin reasoning like an officer even if he were selected. So he shrugs off any such aspirations. By now he has sixteen years in the Navy, half of it as chief, and he looks only for the day when he will reach the end of the road. He knows for all practical purposes that he is going downhill in a well- defined groove, so he elects to coast.
The problem is, how do we keep him sharp, alert, proud, and interested, no matter how long he has been in the Navy or how long he has been Chief?
How about consideration for promotion two years after he makes Chief—not automatic promotion, mind you, just eligibility to compete? Two years after he makes chief he is thirty and has ten years’ outstanding service behind him. He still has drive; he has been mastering his specialty and developing leadership traits; he is approaching his maximum value two years after he makes chief, even though there may be a lot of gas still unburned in the tanks. So why not induce him to stay sharp by letting him compete for C-2 at the pay rate of a current W-l, or maybe even a lieutenant junior grade?
Then, two years later, when he has proven himself further, why not let him qualify for promotion and compete for C-3 at current lieutenant’s pay? Finally, after two more years, let him shoot for C-4 and earn lieutenant commander’s pay, for by then he has almost reached his peak capacity at approximately 34 years of age. Also at this age the chances are that he has a growing family and a real need for maximum income. In case he has missed a chance or two for promotion, there is still time to reach C-4 before he completes twenty, but the biggest advantage to him and to the Navy is that he is staying competitive. In staying competitive, he’s staying sharp!
Meanwhile we could increase his prestige as we increase his pay! A collar device or a sleeve chevron might properly impress a recruit with the fact that “here stands a top chief,” but more than that, we should consider the chief’s own self esteem and the Navy’s investment in his added pay.
Besides raising his pay and making him compete for these raises, we ought to set up a practical path of advancement. Take a chief quartermaster or a chief boatswain’s mate—we should require him to qualify for underway OOD for C-4. Take a journalist—we should require him to write an all-encompassing treatise on the mission of his force and its war-earned heritage—not just ten thousand words on destroyers, for example, but ten thousand words that would be comprehensive, educational, morale-building—something that would be desired by a publishing house so that high school students could better be informed on the national defense role played by destroyers. The same would apply to any force, whether it be air, anti-submarine, shore establishment, or what have you. Take aviation chief machinist mates—maybe the present job they do, preparing a plane for flight, is sufficient because there is no greater accomplishment than the saving of human life by a job well done. Many rates could stand to have their General Training Courses improved. This might be one of the criteria for advancement.
In the Navy there are many “fringe area’’ jobs—that area between CPO and officer levels. By simple arithmetic it figures that the more of these fringe jobs that can be handled by chiefs, the less will be the Navy’s need for hard-to-get junior officers.
To return to promotion for our most desirable chief petty officer, if he made ever promotion in minimum time, at the age of 34 he has just begun his peak years and can grow in productivity for several more years. So after he has gone through the four CPO grades, then let’s consider him for the warrant grades.
There is something about the warrant officer who was jump-promoted to warrant from first class petty officer that only a chief can understand. Most men say it is a feeling of fear that the individual possesses because he thinks he didn’t mature completely in petty officer status before reaching warrant. Others say the warrant officer acts that way because some dour chief abused him as a first- class, and he’s still “taking it out” on all chiefs. Whatever the psychology, it is fairly common to find such a warrant officer, and you will usually find him as “tough as a Tin Can exec!” By requiring the complete path of advancement, through the four CPO categories, the Navy would have solved one more problem, that of insuring top-notch warrants.
But perhaps the biggest problem that could be solved by such a change would be the elimination of the mass exodus of good chief petty officers who compete for and enter commissioned status merely for the financial reward involved. One such officer, now a commander, told the writer he would have much preferred to remain chief, “If I could have afforded it.” Some such officers, and they are gentlemen of the first magnitude for their admissions, even come up with such candid remarks as, “I’m the best paid chief you ever saw, but I don’t have any delusions about succeeding to command.”
This essay is not intended as an attack against the LDO or the Integration programs or an attack against those good chiefs who have chosen LDO for financial reasons. The LDO program has provided the Navy with junior officers in a most critical period of hot and cold wars. To criticize a chief for taking a commission with its attendant pay raise in today’s inflated economy would be to object to the individual’s caliber as a breadwinner. But it is certainly not in the best interests of the naval service to promote a good chief into a third rate officer who feels insecure in that position.
There has been in the past, there is at present, and there will be in the future that type of individual in the naval service who, though enlisted, has all the attributes of leadership and greatness, and who should by all that is just and proper be promoted to commissioned status where he can rise to the command of fleets. Such men are born to be leaders, and the Navy would be derelict in its duty not to recognize their native traits and give them the education and polish required to become an officer. But they should be spotted before the years have imbued them with the “Yes, sir” habit.
Such a program as outlined herein would have a lasting value because it would provide inducements for dedicated and competitive service over the years, and it would insure financial reward commensurate with effort expended.
Good chiefs should stay good chiefs, for that is how they can best serve the interests of the Navy. Give them a real goal—not gold braid.