Special: Command

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By Captain Gerald G. O’Rourke, U.S. Navy (Retired)

Every sailor since Noah has served under a captain. I suspect that many more of these skippers actually failed as commanding officers than is commonly believed.

The most obvious evidence of a fail­ure of command is poor mission per­formance; much harder to assess is the overall attitude within the ship or the squadron. Even with a record of ac­ceptable mission performances, if the atmosphere is one of mistrust, with subordinates constantly checking their days until rotation and their personal “sixes,” that command is failing.

Aside from those rare failures that culminate in a mutiny or a well-publi­cized disaster, failures of command are rarely evident outside the immediate society of those who served. Successful commands, moreover, are not always reflected in official accolades or even in the actions of promotion boards.

Most often the decision is publicly dis­cernible only in what the U.S. Navy calls the “service reputation” of those who commanded, whose primary input is the opinions of former shipmates. Ironically, then, those who serve be­come the ultimate judges of the perfor­mance of those who command.

Humans have an innate need for per­sonal security, which tends to dominate their thinking in a hostile environment. For those constantly reminded of human fragility during the furies of a storm at sea, not to mention during combat at sea, personal security be­comes a tremendous motivator of indi­vidual behavior. Every sailor immedi­ately looks to his shipmates for survival support. If he finds it, .fear recedes; if he doesn’t, insecurity sets in, spreads quickly, and the command spirals to­ward failure.

In any ship, and even more so in an aircraft squadron, a failing command causes pervasive insecurity and frequent mistrust of the motivations of ship­mates; in this atmosphere, hesitant self-assessment precedes the execution of most orders. On board a ship or squadron in which command is suc­ceeding, the fear is suffused by com­munal self-confidence. Orders seem to be anticipated as welcome events, in­terpersonal sniping is eschewed, a spirit of teamwork prevails, and both individ­ual and group professionalism grow dramatically. To the casual observer, this sometimes comes across as juve­nile cockiness; more likely it’s simply evidence of a solid sense of individual security and self-worth within a close, rapidly maturing society.

Every sailor and officer on board understands that he must be “loyal” (that is, he must consciously subjugate many of his own desires to the com­mon purpose of his society). If the cap­tain has a reasonable level of native intelligence, professional education, and prior experience, and assuming he doesn’t run the ship aground too often or entertain dancing dollies in drunken brawls in his cabin, he will probably get along just fine. If he has some technical, tactical, or even personality shortcomings, his crew will cover for them and do their best to make him look good. They all understand that every ship has to have a captain, and that a captain has to make decisions quickly, courageously, and without benefit of referendum. And, of course, they know full well that their own per­sonal security may be at stake in any one of a thousand of those daily com­mand decisions.

One of the more common failings in command occurs when a captain griev­ously misreads the loyalty of his subor­dinates in personal, as opposed to soci­etal terms. Egos are the culprits here. You have to have a fair-size ego to even be interested in command, and the military profession has a proclivity for overfeeding egos; worst of all egos and charisma seem to go hand in hand, and almost any subordinate (or voter) likes to see a little chutzpah in his boss.

Any man or woman who aspires to command at sea assumes a veritable world of personal challenges. Increas­ingly nowadays, many of these lie in technical and scientific areas. Others are tactical, calling for a good mix of common sense and imagination; and some are purely physical, of which stamina is paramount. The toughest of all, however, are purely mental. Be­cause these are frequently more emo­tional than rational, they can’t be over­come by either a high I.Q. or a Ph.D. in psychology. The ultimate key to sur­mounting the unpredictable combination of simultaneous and interdependent challenges posed by command seems to be desire.

The captain must want to be the cap­tain, at all times and in any situation. The crew can’t elect him, nor can they impeach him. They don’t even have to like him. But for his command to be successful, they must respect his innate desire to be their captain. They con­stantly measure this desire in terms of how hard he’s willing to work at being their captain of their ship. They want that ship to succeed, and it probably won’t unless the captain is ready and willing to give it his best shot.

That’s the way it has been done at sea ever since Noah, and that’s the way it will be done as long as man goes to sea. Someone has to be in command, and everyone else has to accept this fully.

Despite all the years of preparation, once a person has actually assumed command, he or she invariably goes through a period best described as “bone-marrow shock,” when the full extent of the awesome responsibilities for people, principles, and performance are fully comprehended. The captain’s reactions thereafter pretty well deter­mine success or failure.

This period of shocking realization can be quite brief, a matter of seconds brought on by an isolated incident and quickly committed to indelible mem­ory. Or it can last for a long time. I knew some who walked on eggs through entire command tours. It’s a good bet that every new skipper goes through the experience, is deeply sur­prised by it, but actually welcomes its reappearance with a successive com­mand as a comfortable reminder to get up on the step and stay there.

From the retrospective of 16 years of retirement and almost half a century of swapping sea stories, I often muse with colleagues about why one of my peers did so well while another did so poorly on some seagoing command tour of the past. The results are still pertinent today:

• Some talented officers came com­pletely unglued, turned into Queegs or Blighs and, of course, failed miserably.
• Some widely acknowledged morons were fantastically successful.
• The worst failures were those who concentrated on “looking good around the ship.” They rarely fooled anyone, senior or junior.
• Personal charisma, within limits, helps a lot. Oversize egos don’t.
• Three senses are mandatory: common sense, a sense of humor, and a sense of fairness.
• Smarts in some specialty don’t seem to contribute much one way or another.
• A parental attitude works well for

senior flag officers, but it only rarely suits a captain and is patently incredi­ble for a commander CO. You have to act your age as well as be yourself.

• Neither a salesman personality nor workaholic dedication nor even friends in higher places do any good at all.

The judges are shipmates, not bosses, so such talents are more harbingers of failure than success.

• A curious consistency is that honest- to-God disasters only strike the fail­ures. The successful COs magically transformed every looming disaster into a challenge, and treated it heroically.
• A captain’s strong, persistent desire for the command to do well was a pretty good guarantor of success.

The bottom line for all you young tigers now being tested out there seems to be ridiculously simple: No matter who you are, if you do the very best that you can, you’re almost sure to succeed and avoid any disaster. But if you allow that innate desire to cool, you’re almost sure to fail—and you risk a real catastrophe in the fallout.

Captain O’Rourke enjoyed two officer-in-charge assignments (VC-4 Det 44N and VF-101A), and four commands (VF-102, VF-121, the USS Wran­gell [AE-12], and the USS Independence [CV-62]).