Smoke from distant wildfires dims the summer sun over Newport News. The shipyard air reverberates with the thump of hammers and the clatter of machinery. But even as a new ship takes shape, many wonder where the U.S. Navy will find sailors to animate it. Across the nation, recruiters scour unfamiliar territory for new sources of recruits. Retention ebbs and cultural currents shift, threatening time-honored military traditions and eroding the public’s positive perception of service. The Navy is forced to lower its personnel standards despite its need to build crews with the acumen to employ advanced technology. Some leaders lament a new generation of sailors they call “babied, pampered, dumb.”
As the United States and its rivals battle for influence in a changing world, many fear competition will give way to combat. That threat does not deter partisans from treating military personnel issues as battlegrounds in a struggle for the nation’s moral culture. In Congress, an aging senator rails against a Pentagon equal opportunity initiative, calling it “an assault on constitutional principles” that fractures military tradition, discipline, and morale. Scowling through horn-rimmed glasses, he accuses the executive branch of degrading combat readiness to transform the military into “an instrument for social reform.”1
This might sound like a dire summary of the present, but it describes anxiety over military manpower during the Cold War—especially in the 1960s and 1970s. Similar woes befell the Navy generations earlier, in the 1890s and 1900s, and all these past struggles share common threads with current problems.2 Shifting cultural norms lowered the appeal of military service, exacerbating shortages of volunteers and lowering retention rates. Demand for technical expertise intensified concern over the aptitude of recruits. Political, social, and institutional forces doggedly opposed essential policy changes.
The Navy rose to meet its past challenges with pragmatism and grit. It cultivated recruits from new sources, adapting its training and policies to meet their evolving needs. Service leaders plowed through resistance and inertia to remodel the Navy's crews and achieve its mission. Their methods and fortitude offer valuable lessons for tackling present-day personnel challenges.
The All-Volunteer Force
The Navy garnered enough patriotic hands to fight two World Wars, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The selective-service draft augmented recruiting in each of these conflicts. Across all four military services, the United States inducted more than 16 million draftees from 1917 to 1973. Some entered the Navy directly, and many more volunteered for the Navy instead of risking induction into the Army. At times, the Navy unabashedly exploited this deliberate avoidance. As the Army drafted millions of soldiers in 1942, a Navy recruiting pamphlet advertised, “Even though you have received your orders to report for induction under Selective Service, you may still volunteer for the Navy right up to the moment of your induction.” The Sea Service continued to benefit from draft pressure in later wars. A government survey in 1964 found that only 63.4 percent of first-term sailors would have enlisted without the threat of the draft.3
On 27 January 1973, the United States and the governments of Vietnam signed the Paris Peace Accords—and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announced the end of the draft. Laird’s announcement culminated the work of the Gates Commission, an executive panel chaired by former Secretary of Defense Thomas S. Gates and convened to study the implications of an all-volunteer military. The commission determined that ending the draft would lower the total cost of the military to U.S. society while increasing professionalism and retention.
The end of the draft challenged all the services, but the Navy had a deeper issue to address: It was deploying an exhausted fleet under an anachronistic leadership model. In the late 1960s, the Navy transferred, mothballed, or scrapped many ships that had served since World War II. New ships and submarines boasted advanced radars and datalinks, ran on nuclear power, and carried ballistic and cruise missiles. These ships concentrated unprecedented firepower on individual platforms, but they came at a cost. There were fewer warships available to fill global presence requirements, and operating and maintaining these vessels required new technical skills.
Vietnam and the Cold War created an insatiable demand for naval power and personnel. At any point in the year, more than half the surface fleet was at sea. Ships and sailors had operated at a wartime pace since 1964, and in 1972, a typical aircraft carrier battle group deployed for 10 months. Most crews worked 14 to 16 hours per day. When they could rest at all, sailors had little privacy, personal space, or contact with the world outside the hull. As Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo Zumwalt told Congress in 1972, “Their hours of work have been extreme, their separation from home and family long, and time with loved ones short.”4 The grind of operations mixed with a culture of micromanagement on ship and ashore. Zumwalt railed against the growth of pedantic leadership and demeaning regulations out of step with the shifting societal norms of the time.5
These conditions dramatically depressed retention and recruiting. Zumwalt became CNO at a time when only 10 percent of first-term sailors reenlisted. As the draft tapered toward its promised end, the Navy’s sources of volunteers dried up. By the end of 1971, recruiters were only filling half their quotas. Zumwalt lamented, “The lines of would-be sailors outside the post office or in the basement of city hall were gone with the draft.” To make up the shortfall, the Navy netted 20 percent of its recruits from the lowest tier of acceptable mental aptitude—far above the 5 percent Zumwalt deemed sustainable. The CNO believed low-aptitude recruits would never learn to operate and maintain the Navy’s sensors, weapons systems, communication equipment, and nuclear reactors.6 The Cold War continued unabated, and the service needed new solutions to keep the fleet in the fight.
Modernize and Humanize
Zumwalt ascended to CNO in July 1970 with a mandate to “modernize and humanize” the Navy.7 Laird and Secretary of the Navy John Chafee accepted the risk of promoting Zumwalt over 33 admirals his senior. Zumwalt believed he owed their endorsement to his “advocacy of rapid and drastic changes in the way the Navy treated its uniformed men and women.”8 He worked to augment legislative and policy changes proposed by the Gates Commission. Their combined initiatives boosted recruiting and retention by improving accession strategies, compensation, and quality of life.
The first change was geographic. The Gates Commission recommended focusing less on suburbs for recruiting, and more on major cities. Urban population density promised a greater return on advertising investment. This geographic shift carried demographic consequences. For many reasons, young people in cities were more likely to score poorly on military aptitude tests. The services perceived these students as less able to perform in technical military specialties.
Urban recruits were also more racially diverse than their suburban and rural counterparts. Adapting to an influx of urban sailors demanded revised recruiting standards and training, as well as more inclusive policies. All military branches eventually adopted an expansion of the armed forces qualification test (AFQT) known as the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). The new test identified skills beyond math and reading. It included knowledge of electronics, automotive and shop practices, mechanical comprehension, and coding speed. (The AFQT would endure as a subset of the ASVAB.) The new test helped place recruits of varying cognitive abilities into career fields that gave them the best opportunity for success.9 Navy schoolhouses adapted training by rewriting technical manuals for clarity, emphasizing hands-on instruction, and training instructors to manage low-aptitude students. New syllabi emphasized self-paced, individualized instruction to accommodate a broader range of learning speeds. Training centers even adopted a four-week remedial literacy training program for struggling students.10 Rather than focusing on civilian education or IQ scores, new accession policies matched recruit aptitude and training to the knowledge, skills, and abilities required for specific specialties.
Even as the Department of Defense made plans to accommodate low-aptitude applicants, it identified changes in compensation as a way to recruit and retain capable service members. The Gates Commission believed increasing basic pay was critical. To entice volunteers, Congress authorized more than doubling the basic pay for privates and seaman apprentices with less than two years of service.11
The Gates Commission also advocated for special monetary incentives. It sought to increase hostile fire pay and cover the costs of first-term enlistees moving their families between duty stations. The commission’s report recommended offering bonuses, pay increases, and early promotions to attract, compensate, and retain service members with valuable skills and advanced training. In 1971, Congress authorized the services to offer the first enlistment bonuses since the Civil War.12
The Gates Commission believed cash was a better retention tool than other benefits. The report also recommended modernizing retirement benefits. Instead of a pension plan that began after 20 years of service, commissioners endorsed subsidizing service members’ retirement account investments. Accounts would pay benefits to members who served as few as five years—an attempt to make retirement more influential in the choice to reenlist after three or four years. Restructuring retirement, however, was one of the few Gates Report recommendations Congress and the services rejected. Not until 2018 did the military partially implement the commission’s model in its blended retirement system.
The Gates Report focused on recruiting, public relations, training, and compensation. Zumwalt went further, concentrating on sailors’ quality of life. His efforts addressed time ashore, job satisfaction, and eliminating discriminatory practices. Despite a shortage of sailors in sea-duty billets, Zumwalt increased opportunities for sailors to serve ashore. The Navy converted civilian jobs to uniformed billets. It used experienced sailors to fill technical support roles ashore. Zumwalt and Vice Admiral James Holloway believed retaining specialists with a balance of sea and shore duty saved the expense of recruiting and training replacements. They also believed that using experienced sailors to overhaul the gear they employed at sea increased efficiency in maintenance. In their estimate, these benefits fiscally and qualitatively outweighed the merits of employing civilian contractors.13
The Navy also worked to improve conditions for sailors on sea duty. Zumwalt mandated improvements to housing, services, and recreation opportunities on bases. Zumwalt solicited complaints and ideas directly from the fleet, right down to the lowest-ranking enlisted sailors. He often broadcast policy decisions to all hands in missives Zumwalt called “Z-Grams.” These messages sped the psychological effects of decisions and pushed subordinates to implement them quickly.
Zumwalt famously used Z-Grams to affirm the right of sailors to grow beards, and he eased restrictions on motorcycles, working uniforms, and civilian clothes. He refused to restrict all sailors in response to the imprudence of a few, arguing that pedantic regulations had “done almost as much to cause dissatisfaction among our personnel as have extended family separation and low pay scales.”14 The Navy also worked to ease family separation by adjusting training schedules and encouraging sailors to use their leave.
Zumwalt urged leaders to involve sailors in tactical evolutions. Some officers took time to explain why a unit’s mission was important, but Zumwalt wanted each sailor to “understand enough about how it all fitted together that he could begin to experience some of the fun and challenge that those of us in the top spots were having.”15 To refocus time and attention, the Navy eliminated onerous collateral duties and instituted programs to reward warfighting competence. Outstanding performers earned accelerated advancement.
The Navy also tackled discriminatory practices. As Zumwalt wrote, its goal was “to throw overboard once and for all the Navy’s silent but real and persistent discrimination against minorities.”16 In a message broadcast to all hands, Zumwalt set down procedures to express grievances and provide feedback to the new Minority Affairs Office. He mandated short timelines for investigations of housing discrimination and considered the needs of diverse groups at commissaries, exchanges, barber shops, and social clubs. The service worked to integrate women, including opening more ratings to women and admitting them into the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC).17
After succeeding Zumwalt as CNO, Holloway oversaw the integration of women into the U.S. Naval Academy. His other initiatives expanded opportunities for people of color by offering preparatory education programs, allowing ASVAB test score waivers for technical training, and increasing NROTC representation.18
The Navy’s new strategies yielded positive but uneven results. Despite tapering down after the Vietnam War and transitioning to an all-volunteer force, the service employed more active-duty sailors in 1984 than in 1974.19 It owed a large share of its growth to urban recruits and people of color. Over 10 years, the Navy expanded its share of Black sailors by 59.1 percent—far more than the Gates Commission predicted, and more than any other service. The mean ASVAB score for new sailors remained steady, second to the Air Force but significantly above the Army and Marine Corps. These results showed the Navy maintained standards while diversifying its accessions, but the effort did not produce a surge of highly qualified applicants.
Retention was an unqualified success. While all four services improved retention rates from 1974 to 1984, the Navy remained ahead of the Army and Marine Corps. Statistical analysis showed that national unemployment rates explained 48 percent of the variance in retention rates. Military pay did not show a statistically significant effect on junior enlisted retention. Approximately half of the variance in retention, then, is explained by other factors, including job satisfaction and the Navy’s quality-of-life efforts. Zumwalt and Holloway made positive changes, but they faced inertia and opposition. Job assignments showed enduring racial segregation. Black sailors were less likely to be promoted than their White counterparts with identical ASVAB scores, and the Navy lagged behind the other services in diversifying its officer corps. Congress barred women from serving onboard warships until 1993.
Racial divisions persisted on Navy ships, sometimes leading to violence. Amid these conditions, a sit-down strike on board the aircraft carrier Constellation (CV-64) led to howls of criticism. At the height of the furor, while President Richard Nixon and national security advisor Henry Kissinger fulminated over media coverage of the Constellation strike, Zumwalt publicly cajoled flag officers to accelerate equal opportunity initiatives.20 Congress convened an investigation bent on derailing the effort. A dubious subcommittee report found no evidence of institutional discrimination in the Navy against any group and asserted that the service’s principal issue was a breakdown in discipline encouraged by Zumwalt’s leadership.21
Zumwalt’s perseverance, and the continued support from a miffed but committed executive branch, allowed him to retain his job and cement his most vital changes. His efforts showed urgency and resolve but created enemies among reactionary politicians and recalcitrant service members. Given that inevitable resistance, it is an open question whether Zumwalt could have done more to encourage neutral officers and chiefs to embrace his policies.
Modern Applications
The manpower crisis of the 1970s testifies to the Navy’s resilience. The service found ways to attract a diverse cohort of recruits. Those recruits lacked some desirable skills, but the service adapted its training methods to accommodate them.
Retaining a new generation of sailors required revisiting stale personnel policies and finding new ways to connect sailors to the mission. The diverse force recruited, trained, and retained under the new system was the lifeblood of a new generation of ships and naval aircraft. Together, they played a vital role in ending the Cold War.
This history has a number of direct lessons for the modern force:
1. Remove barriers to enlistment. Strip requirements down to the specific aptitudes and abilities each specialty requires. The Navy recently took steps in this direction by admitting recruits with high ASVAB scores but no high school diploma. The increased risk of attrition is worth the reward of filling billets at sea.
2. Cast a wide net. Pursue talent in unconventional people and places. Insist on inclusion as a tool to attract people with diverse skills and perspectives. The Navy’s new Women’s Initiatives Team and transgender transition policy demonstrate the right intent.
3. Invest in training. Adapt training to transform recruits into what the Navy needs. Schoolhouses must invest in immersive hands-on training to teach unfamiliar skills.
4. Eliminate unnecessary hardship. Do not restrict all sailors for the poor choices of a few. Focus on meaningful quality-of-life improvements such as child care, housing, and choice of duty station. Maintain a balance of sea and shore duty in career paths, even if that means replacing contractors with active-duty sailors.
5. Measure results. Every program costs effort, money, or both. Programs must prove their worth with measured outcomes.
6. Connect sailors to the mission. Do not place sailors ahead of the mission—ensure they know they are integral to it. The Navy must make a compelling case that deployments and training ensure the United States’ place in the world and prosperity at home. Leaders must mentally engage sailors in the mission, and sailors should have opportunities to enjoy accomplishing it.
The Navy’s recent progress signals a desire for transformative change, but there are still generations of policy and inertia to overcome. History shows the service has been here before. Admirals Zumwalt and Holloway offer an example of vision, courage, and resolve that overcame a dire manpower crisis. Their methods also apply to the current crisis. As the Navy looks to modernize, it must benefit from the lessons of its past.
1. John C. Stennis, speaking on “The Gesell Report and the Perversion of the Military,” on 31 July 1963, 88th Congress, 1st Session, Congressional Record 109, part 10:13778.
2. J. Trevor DiMarco, “A More American Navy” (Fort Belvoir, VA: Defense Technical Information Center, 2023).
3. The President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force (Gates Commission), The Report of the President’s Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1970), 179.
4. ADM Elmo Zumwalt, USN, testimony to House Armed Services, Special Subcommittee on Disciplinary Problems in the Navy, 21 November 1972.
5. ADM Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., USN, Z-Gram 57: “Elimination of Demeaning or Abrasive Regulations.” 10 November 1970.
6. ADM Elmo Zumwalt, USN (Ret.), On Watch: A Memoir (New York: The New York Times, January 1977), 210, 212.
7. Zumwalt, On Watch, dedication.
8. Zumwalt, 167.
9. The services still rely on ASVAB composite scores for job placement and continuously evaluate correlation to training performance. Historical examples of validating the ASVAB include: Donald H. McLaughlin et al., Validation of Current and Alternative Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) Area Composites, Based on Training and Skill Qualification Test (SQT): Information on Fiscal Year 1981 and 1982 Enlisted Accessions (Alexandria, Virginia: U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, 1984); and Paul W. Mayberry, “Validation of ASVAB Against Infantry Job Performance” (Arlington, Virginia: Center for Naval Analyses, 1990).
10. Janice H. Laurence and Peter F. Ramsberger, Low-Aptitude Men in the Military: Who Profits, Who Pays? (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1991), 18, 22, 36.
11. “1971 Military Pay Chart” and “1972 Military Pay Chart,” Defense Finance and Accounting Service.
12. David W. Grissmer et al.,, An Evaluation of Army Manpower Accession Programs (McLean, Virginia: General Research Corporation, 1974), 281, 329.
13. Zumwalt, On Watch, 176–78.
14. Zumwalt., Z-Gram 57: “Demeaning or Abrasive Regulations, Elimination of.”
15. Zumwalt, On Watch, 186.
16. Zumwalt, 168.
17. ADM Elmo Zumwalt, USN, Z-Gram 116: “Equal Rights and Opportunities for Women,” 7 August 1972; “Twenty-Five Years of Women Aboard Combatant Vessels,” Naval History and Heritage Command.
18. John Darrell Sherwood, Black Sailor, White Navy (New York: NYU Press, 2007), 261.
19. DiMarco, “A More American Navy,” 32-38.
20. Zumwalt, On Watch, 234–60.
21. U.S. Congress, Committee on Armed Forces, “Report by the Special Subcommittee on Disciplinary Problems in the US Navy,” 92nd Cong., 2d sess., 1973, H.A.S.C. 92-81 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1973). See also Marv Truhe, Against All Tides: The Untold Story of the USS Kitty Hawk Race Riot (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2023); and Sherwood, Black Sailor, White Navy.
