This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
The USS Virginia (BB-13) was launched not bng after the turn of the century. That was r*ght around the midpoint of the 74-year Period when U. S. naval ship design and instruction were in the capable hands of a Separate Construction Corps, the best-known Member of which was probably Rear Admiral T^avid W. Taylor. Considering the state of ettgineering duty officers today, perhaps it is lndeed time to bring back something akin to that Construction Corps of years past. | l “The contribution of EDs in the ship design process has varied widely since World War II. At that time BUSHIPS designed Navy ships; in the early 1960s, the direct participation of BUSHIPS and EDs in ship design declined. Concurrently, the assignment and utilization of junior EDs in the design process declined. ^ “The ED community does not now have enough high quality officers to meet its responsibilities. ^ There is no overall Navy effort to motivate highly qualified officers to seek ED careers.”1 For more than a century, the Navy’s shipbuilding |
In 1940, the Bureau of Construction and Repair *as merged with the Bureau of Engineering to form a single Bureau of Ships. As a corollary, the Navy’s hv0 groups of technical officer specialists directly in- v°lved in ship design, construction, and maintenance ^ere also amalgamated. These were the naval contractors comprising the Construction Corps and the restricted duty line officers designated for (marine) engineering duty only. The choice was not easy, but *he engineering duty officer was designated as the Category to survive. Although but dimly perceived at time, the decision was unfortunate, clearly con- hibuting in a major way to the well-publicized cur- rer>t problems in the Navy’s shipbuilding programs. , Since the foundation for success in naval shipbuild- lng is indubitably tight Navy control of the basic ship designs used, the following statements from a recent study on the proper roles and organizational Status of engineering officer specialists are particu- *ady dismaying: ^ ‘‘EDs [engineering duty officers (ship engineer- ,ng)] have turned away from their role as technical | Aperts and as a result, their capability and effective- I ness have declined; . . . | programs have been adversely affected by organizational changes involving its engineering officer specialists. Consequently, a review of past experience does not seem out of place before considering action that could appreciably improve the situation. The histories of many specialist officers of the Navy, including the technically oriented ones, are long, convoluted, and reveal at times controversial relationships with the unrestricted line. Naval constructors began serving the Navy with the inauguration of its first shipbuilding program—the six frigates authorized by Congress in 1794. Six civilian constructors were then employed, one to supervise the construction of each ship. The naval constructor at Philadelphia was designated “Principal Constructor of the Navy.” The Navy’s first marine engineer was appointed in 1836, likewise in a civilian capacity. Requirements for marine engineers increased rapidly. It soon became desirable to regularize their status, particularly in view of their predominantly seagoing employment and resulting close shipboard relationships with their line brethren. Accordingly, in 1842 Congress authorized the establishment of an 'Engineering Duty Officer Study Group Report, “To Determine Navy Requirements for Engineering Duty Officers and the Actions to Satisfy Those Requirements”, OpNav Ser 04/710028, 27 August 1976. |
* hocpArUnwo / ITAhmarr 1070 | 49 |
Engineer Corps comprised of chief and assistant engineers headed by an Engineer-in-Chief.
The entry of the snake of technology represented by engineers on board ship seriously disrupted that Garden of Eden occupied by commanding officers of warships for centuries—their complete personal control of all aspects of fighting their ships. They disliked their ever-increasing dependency on the skills and advice of subordinates who were versed in matters in which the commanding officers had but little comprehension and no sympathy whatsoever. Junior line officers took their cues from their seniors. As a result, friction and dissension grew exponentially to the grave detriment of morale and operating efficiency.
In the same year the Engineer Corps was established, the first five bureaus of the Navy Department were formed as well. Included was a Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repair with responsibilities for designing, building, fitting out, and equipping naval ships. Basic ship design and naval architectural matters were taken care of by naval constructors. Marine engineering functions were assigned to a separate division of the new bureau manned by officers of the Engineer Corps. This organizational structure lasted 20 years until the beginning of the Civil War. The growing importance of steam propulsion in the shipbuilding programs of that time permitted officers of the Engineer Corps to mount a successful push for independent control of their own work. This resulted in another reorganization of the Navy Department in 1862; eight bureaus replaced the existing five. Three of the new bureaus, the Bureau of Construction and Repair, the Bureau of Steam Engineering, and the Bureau of Equipment, were created by the dismemberment of the existing Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repair.
The fragmentation of this latter bureau constitutes an early instance of organizational change that adversely affected the Navy’s shipbuilding capabilities. These deleterious effects were soon recognized but did not become critical until the renaissance of naval shipbuilding in the 1880s after the lapse that occurred at the end of the Civil War. Shipbuilding troubles arising from this renaissance generated a string of bureau consolidation proposals that continued until the remarriage of the Bureaus of Construction and Repair and of Engineering was finally consummated in 1940, essentially to solve the very problems generated by the 1862 reorganization.
The Engineer Corps initiated professional education for the Navy’s technical officer specialists. At the corps’s urging, Congress in 1864 authorized the Naval Academy to educate ”... as naval construct
ors and steam engineers, such naval cadets and others as may show a peculiar aptitude therefor.”2 After a rather hesitant start, the new curriculum settled down as a separate four-year course for cadet-engineers; it ran in parallel to the courses taken by their line contemporaries, the cadet-midshipmen. By 1882, however, there was a realization of the necessity for line naval cadets to acquire some engineering background. Congress also sought to eliminate line- engineer friction which, unfortunately, had spread from the operating forces into the Naval Academy- As a result, it passed a law that year abolishing professional distinctions at the academy and requiring all cadets to take the same courses. While the intent of the law was laudable, it had markedly unfavorable effects on the retention of cadet-engineers, causing a severe deterioration in the quality of naval engineering. This became so evident that, in 1890, the la«’ was modified to provide for an “Engineer Division” for first-class midshipmen, offering specialized study for those planning to join the Engineer Corps upon graduation.
As a result of these actions, the bulk of the officer5 joining the Engineer Corps after 1874 were graduates of the Naval Academy. Friction between the unrestricted line and the engineers continued to be extremely troublesome. In 1899, the Engineer Corps was merged into the unrestricted line—a forceful [ and eventually successful amelioration of this long" standing conflict. The rationale was that the constantly increasing technical complexity of the Navy j required every line officer to be, in the words of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, 3 “fighting engineer.”
Upon their entry into the unrestricted line, the more junior engineers were permitted to qualify f°r general line duties. The senior officers were restricted to shore assignments in their specialties. Some continued as shipboard chief engineers until their senior' ity made shore details more appropriate. As time went on, many junior former engineers sought dutie5 in other than engineering billets in order to enhan£e their promotion prospects in their new line-oriented careers. Consequently, as the senior former engineer5 retired, no orderly program was developed for re' placement of their skills and experience in more technical marine engineering aspects. By 1916, ‘c became apparent that the specialized talent bequeathed by the Engineer Corps was nearly exhausted. To remedy this situation, made acute by the
2Quoted in William P. Robert, History of the Construction Corps of United States Navy (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing & fice, July, 1937), p. 38.
burgeoning shipbuilding programs prompted by the threat of World War I, the ‘ ‘engineering duty only” (EDO) restricted line officer concept was conceived. This permitted the assignment of line lieutenants and lieutenant commanders to specialized marine engineering duties. After they reached the rank of commander, they were to serve ashore in appropriate billets, except for assignment as fleet or squadron engineers. Only spasmodic advantage was taken of rhis new authority until 1930, when appointments to £E>0 status were systematized. This lack of positive actl°n has been attributed to various efforts in the i920s to amalgamate some staff corps and restricted hne specialists with the unrestricted line or, more drastically, to abolish all specialization. There is also ev*dence of a desire to avoid any encouragement of a Possible revival of the Engineer Corps with its still- remembered personnel troubles.
Returning to the history of naval constructors, a eneficial status change occurred in 1866 when Con- 8ress authorized the establishment of the Constructor Corps, providing permanent naval status for these personnel who formerly had been employed in a Clv*lian capacity on an as-needed basis. This authori- *at‘°n permitted naval constructors the same relative ratlk and recognition that had been gained over the ^ceding 20 years by the doctors, pursers, and engineers, not without considerable difficulty and controversy.
Francis T. Bowles and Richard Gatewood, two Cadet-engineer graduates of the Naval Academy class
of 1879, deserve credit for shifting Construction Corps personnel from their prior civilian background of practical training to the basic education of their line and engineering contemporaries. They arranged for this education to be capped by formal postgraduate courses in England in the just-blossoming science of naval architecture. Upon the completion of their studies, these two officers were commissioned in the Construction Corps, setting a precedent followed with but few exceptions for the remainder of this corps’s existence. The site of postgraduate training shifted in 1901 from Europe to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The capsule history just related brings the situation up to the 1940 formation of the Bureau of Ships. It points out trends in both organizational and personnel aspects of Navy ship technical endeavors, with major changes often taking place immediately prior to, or during, periods of hostilities and their attendant pressures on shipbuilding efforts. The 1862 splitting up of a combined shipbuilding bureau into three independent bureaus resulted in problems that dogged the Navy’s shipbuilding efforts until 1940. Both naval constructors and EDOs changed from having practical-background civilian status to being commissioned graduates, largely from the Naval Academy, with professional postgraduate training. This training was backed by two years of unrestricted line sea service for naval constructors and considerably more (up to 15 years) for EDOs. An important difference is the very stable status of naval constructors since 1882 as contrasted to the tumultuous 90-some year passage of EDOs to an orderly career pattern in 1930.
A concatenation of problems with the vital shipbuilding programs of the pre-World War II era occurred in 1939 and provided the impetus that finally achieved the logical recombination of the Bureaus of Construction and Repair and of Engineering to form the Bureau of Ships in 1940. Serious shipbuilding delays had inevitably come about because of two recurring factors: inter-bureau disputes concerning technical cognizance and minimal cooperation between the two bureaus in areas actually demanding the most understanding balancing of design, production, and material delivery considerations. The final straw, evidence of loss of technical control, came with a most unpleasant surprise uncovered shortly before the delivery in mid-1939 of the USS Anderson (DD-411), the first ship of the Sims (DD-409) class to be completed. Improperly controlled weight growth during the construction of this new class of destroyers resulted in stability characteristics far less favorable than possessed by ships of the immediately
preceding class. From the standpoints of knowledge, experience, and tradition, the Bureau of Construction and Repair’s involvement in attaining a satisfactory overall ship design, including proper ship stability, was clear, although the existing organization of the Navy Department did not give the bureau full authority to meet these responsibilities.
In planning the formation of the new Bureau of Ships, it was easily agreed that a prerequisite to its success was coalescing the two rather disparate groups of technical officer specialists who had been the motivating cores of the two predecessor bureaus. Agreement was also reached on the essentiality of preserving the successful prior fundamental operating principle of engendering the closest possible relationships afloat and ashore among the officers who commanded and operated the Navy’s ships and those officers charged with their design, construction, and maintenance. How best to ensure continuation this commonality of purpose and understanding bC' came a vexing and time consuming problem. Both the naval constructors and the EDOs believed theit existing status best served the purpose and wanted the other group to shift. Planners of the bureaus amalgamation took no definite stand and referred the problem to higher levels. By happenstance, a board making one of the perennial studies of specialist off"1' cers of the Navy was in session. When asked for 3 recommendation, the board produced a split ded' sion. The majority proposed a staff corps to be called the “Line Specialist Corps” with the minority opting for retention of the EDO concept.3 Before actio11 could be taken on either of these recommendation5’ the dilemma was solved by the Chief Constructor’5 acceding to restricted line status for the naval coO' structors. He considered this action imperative to ensure prompt settlement of the status of the techn1' cal officers of the new bureau.
‘Staff Corps Personnel (King) Board Report to the Secretary of the N'avf' “Distribution, Promotion, Retirement, etc., of Staff Corps and OfficerS Designated for Engineering Duty Only and for Aeronautical Engineeri”? Duty Only," 9 December 1939.
Despite some wary looks between both parties to merger, and expected amounts of administrative ^fusion inherent in consolidating two extremely busy and rapidly expanding organizations, the crea- tlon of the Bureau of Ships produced substantial reSults from the beginning.- Swept along by the J^omentum of World War II, the joining of the two Ufeaus continued to show sizable benefits as, in- ^eed, it does to this day in the work of the current Accessor, the Naval Sea Systems Command.
Unhappily, the benefits accruing organizationally r°m the formation of the Bureau of Ships did not Produce equally beneficial effects on the status and ^ell-being of the key officer specialists responsible 0r overall basic ship design—the birthright and Principal raison d’etre of the ED community. It is Uonic that, after a lapse of approximately 80 years, a.n organizational change restoring the essential ^‘ngle control of the major elements of ship design r°ught in its wake loss of identity, cohesiveness, and performance to the very group of officers charged lt:h making this control effective. In order to under- sta°d how this could have occurred, it is first necesSary to consider ED involvement in warship design, a truly fascinating occupation well characterized by the
present Navy recruiting slogan, "It’s not just a job. It’s an adventure.”
Warship design can be divided into three distinct phases: determining what is wanted in a new ship; preparing specific technical directives to shipbuilders to assure achievement of desired ship characteristics; and, finally, supervising shipbuilders in their preparation of the detailed working plans and supporting data from which the ships are actually built. The first two phases comprise basic ship design and are the areas where the unique naval/technical background of EDs permits them to play their most important role.
The first design phase demands of EDs an astute and cooperative liaison task. The unrestricted line must, of course, make the final decisions as to what is needed. ED liaison provides clear interpretation of the technical capabilities of the moment to give the line officers sound bases for their vital decisions. If all desired characteristics cannot be met from technical considerations, EDs must suggest the best compromise for obtaining sound and harmonious ships.
In the second phase, the focus of the EDs’ liaison task shifts. Now they work between the permanent design personnel in the Navy Department who prepare the detailed technical directives and the shipbuilders who follow these directives to produce the ships. Given proper performance of this liaison task, the ships can be built within contractual restraints of time and cost with only expected and relatively minor changes, often proposed by the shipbuilders themselves.
ED involvement in the third design stage, the supervision of the shipbuilder’s translation of Navy Department requirements into actuality, while of equal importance in the chain of total ship design, does not by its nature have a major opportunity to affect basic ship characteristics since the first two design stages have cast the die and molded the ship’s future.
Even in the heyday of the Construction Corps, not all its members were directly involved in basic ship design. Care was taken, however, always to maintain a sufficient number of naval constructors, properly trained and experienced, to ensure that all managerial levels had complete understanding of, and concentration on overall ship design needs and quality. With the Construction Corps’s demise in 1940, the necessity of nuturing basic ship design capabilities in EDs slowly became lost in the reorganization. Former naval constructors with overall ship design experience gradually found they had left a stable and comprehending haven for an untried organizational position without an anchor to windward.
U. S. NAVY (CHARLES R. PECK
Since 1940, supervision of construction and repair has been one of the principal tasks of engineering duty officers (EDOs), a decreasing number of whom have Naval Academy training.
At first, the exigencies of World War II kept all hands concentrated on their current tasks until the war ended. Starting in the early 1950s, however, EDs began to be diverted from practice of their professional specialties toward more purely administrative assignments. This elevation of managerial proficiency over technical expertise had deleterious effects on the aims of junior EDs then planning their own career paths. The advent of nuclear ship propulsion and the rise of a remarkable and ubiquitous organization for handling its naval aspects had manifest consequences on ED training, assignments, and retention and—as a result—on ship design capabilities. Decisions fostering the use of “total package procurement” in the 1960s strongly emphasized career desirability for EDs as project managers and further downgraded professional experience. Finally, a 1966 decision carved out of the Naval Ship Systems Command (then the successor of the Bureau of Ships) its technical heart and placed it as a separate command, the Naval Ship Engineering Center, in Maryland, 10 miles away from main headquarters. This action struck two more heavy blows at the Navy’s faltering ship design capabilities. First, it brought back some of the problems created a century before by the dismemberment
of the Bureau of Construction, Equipment and Repair—problems complicated by that most awkward and cooperation-deadening 10-mile separation.4 At the same time, an internal reorganization of the Naval Ship Engineering Center emasculated what had been the ship design division of the Bureau of Ships, the repository of two essentials of basic ship design. One was a group of dedicated and experienced ship design personnel, both ED and civil service. The other was an extensive recorded, up-to-date, and readily retrievable information data bank concerning performance of ships in service as well as data on the continuing developments in engineering specialties used in warship design and construction.
Concurrently, and possibly because of the diminution of ED prestige in professional challenges such as ship design, the number and individual capabilities of Naval Academy graduates transferring to the ED category suffered a precipitous decline, as did the percentage of total accessions represented by such graduates. Data contained in the study cited at the beginning of the article are based on active duty EDS as of mid-1976. They show the extent of the ED losses. Year group 1955 had 73% in the top 20% ^ the class and none in the bottom 50%, while for ye&r group 1963, the corresponding figures were 24% and 40%. In these same year groups, the percental of Naval Academy graduates dropped from 56% t0 i 37%. In year groups 1976 through 1978 inclusive! j only 18% of the officers entering the ED community were academy graduates. When these data are corn' pared with the 91% Naval Academy graduates in the combined naval constructor and EDO groups at the time of the formation of the Bureau of Ships and the current 29% of the total number of male line officefS who are from the Naval Academy, it is evident that ED losses of such magnitude in background, train' ing, and capabilities cannot be safely ignored.
The lack of an overall Navy effort to motivate highly qualified officers to seek ED careers has already been noted. While remedial measures are under study, there are no indications of formal considers' tion of the strong possibilities of improvement inhet' l ent in the reestablishment of a staff corps for ED5' From an administrative point of view, distinction5
4At the beginning of 1977, the Naval Ship Engineering Center SEC) was relocated to the complex of buildings housing the headquarter of the Naval Sea Systems Command (NavSea). Action started in the ^ of 1978 aimed at the complete reabsorption of NavSEC into NavSe^’ concurrently with other planned major organizational changes in the lat' ter command. All of these administrative steps have a scheduled comp^' tion date of 1 October 1979.
so
adh,
di
erence to an outmoded designation demonstrably °ln8 the Navy a disservice.
The excellent chances of returning EDs to their ^r°Per preeminence by the reestablishment of an ED > rest both on past history and present condi- k°ns- A solid and proven historical record is given ^ the 74-year performance of the Construction E0rPs. Two current examples of success are the Civil jTSineer and Supply Corps. By providing a common > for their officer specialists, a distinctive iden- y> and intense concentration on the main areas of e’r responsibilities, these two corps have gained
between staff corps and unrestricted line officers re- eently seem to have become more and more blurred, federating a trend started more than 100 years ago. As staff corps have gained many of the aspects of the unrestricted line, so has the latter begun to assume some of the characteristics normally associated with staff corps. Staff corps officers have come from ill- defined positions in the Navy’s hierarchy to definite rank, titles, uniforms, and prerogatives of the line—save for the obviously incompatible one of c°rnrnand at sea. Meanwhile, the unrestricted line has felt the need for, and the desirability of, maintaining well-identified specialties within the corpus the unrestricted line community. This is attested to by aviators, submariners, and surface warfare offiCers, each group wearing “corps insignia” of its own. tl addition, separate “bureaus,” the Deputy Chiefs of ^aval Operations for Air, Submarine, and Surface Warfare, manage each of these groups’ affairs. The torrent administrative structure of the entire line of- ICer complex shows an almost bewildering array of Separate entities. The 1976 Navy Register, in addition to a single listing of 12 varieties of unrestricted line ^ficers, fists four types of EDs, six types of special Uty officers, 26 types of limited duty officers, two tyPes of unrestricted women line officers, to say *j°thing of a warrant officer compilation that includes j. specialities. The register also carries 14 separate stings for the eight existing staff corps.
^ith such a situation, the significance of a re- str'cted line designation as a rallying point for a key Stoup 0f officer specialists loses much of whatever v*tality it might have had. Consequently, in view of failure of the ED designation to maintain the elan competence of the core of ship designers the °nstruction Corps brought to the 1940 formation of e Bureau of Ships, continued reliance on the ED c°ncept for the Navy’s ship-oriented technical officers n.eeds prompt and serious reconsideration. Preserva- tl0n °f the commonality of purpose and interests betWeen the unrestricted line and the EDs that has been Successful in the past must not suffer from blind
enviable reputations during and since World War II. Another contemporary and pertinent guidepost for EDs is the 1968 formation of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. After 20 years of experience with a special duty officer (SDO) category for the Navy’s legal officer specialists, it was determined highly desirable to move to a corps status. Among the reasons for this shift was the elimination of the law specialists’ dissatisfaction with their lessened professional identity as SE)Os, and the desire to develop in these officers the cohesiveness and pride that flow from the stimulation of esprit de corps and the company of able colleagues. These reasons recognize the importance of that normal human instinct for common bonds and interests so long and profitably employed for elite personnel of military forces throughout the world.
It is this very human instinct which offers so much promise for reaching in a reasonable time a vital but difficult goal, raising the Navy’s ship design capabilities to levels assuring delivery to the Navy of the ships it needs. Obtaining these ships depends on a clear and definitive statement to our country’s shipyards of what is wanted. Proper expression of these desires is based on sound Navy-controlled basic ship designs. Preparation of these designs requires high standards of competence and performance from EDs. Maintenance of these standards is a function of the morale and development of the officers involved, and the key to this morale and training is a technical staff corps, possibly called the Ship Technical Corps. No matter what the name, it’s time to get under way!
Bom in family quarters in the Naval Academy, Rear Admiral Snyder was graduated from that institution in 1927. After serving two years at sea in the USS Maryland (BB-46), he started postgraduate studies in naval construction preparatory to his transfer to the Construction Corps, in which he served until its demise in 1940. At this point, he rejoined the line as an ED. During his career as a technical officer, he specialized in warship design and in naval shipyard management, serving at various times as Head, Hull Design Section, Design Branch, and as Director, Ship Design Division, BuShips, and as Commander of the Boston and Puget Sound naval shipyards. Admiral Snyder was also graduated from the Naval War College and from the Advanced Management Program, Harvard Business School. Overseas tours of duty included service at the Cavite Navy Yard; teak inspection in Rangoon, Burma; as Deputy Head, Naval Technical Mission to Japan immediately after World War II; and, in the mid- 1950s, as U. S. Navy Shipbuilding Representative, Europe. Since his retirement from the Navy in 1961, he has been associated with a major U. S. shipping line as Technical Director and, subsequently, with a manufacturer of marine controllable pitch propellers and lateral thrusters. Re-retiring in 1977, Admiral Snyder remains a consultant for the propeller company and is currently a volunteer information specialist at the Smithsonian Institution. He is a Golden Life Member of the Naval Institute.