From: Borepatch
Subject: CO, U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt
Dear Acting SECNAV:
An old story from the world of professional football may clarify the current situation of you vis a vis CAPT Crozier, CO of the aircraft carrier USS TR who you are about to s***can for acting in the interest of keeping his crew functional in the face of the Red Chinese Virus Plague from Hell (RCVPfH™).
A losing team fired their coach and brought in a new one, to get the team back on a winning track. As he was moving into his office he found two sealed envelopes in the desk. One was labeled "Open in the first crisis" and the second was labeled "Open in the second crisis". He thought this was a little weird but tossed them in the back of the desk drawer and forgot about them.
The new season opened, and it did not open well. The team was losing, and losing badly. The fans and the home town press started questioning what he was doing, and whether replacing the old coach had been a good idea or not. He was putting in 18 hour days trying to turn things around, and in the wee hours of the night, he found the envelopes in his desk. Figuring that this was a crisis, he opened the first one. It read, in its entirety:
Blame everything on me.He called a press conference and talked about how he had inherited a completely messed up team. He went on about how the previous coach had let a thousand flowers of failure bloom, and that he was working on weeding out the old, bad regime and laying the seeds of success.
And it worked. The boos weren't as loud, and the press backed off.
But late in the season it came back. His respite was gone, and the boo-birds and scathing media were back in full swing. He figured that this was the second crisis, and so went to his office and opened the second envelope. It read, in its entirety:
Make two new envelopes.POTUS Donald Trump is really good at firing people who he puts in a management position in order to fix particular problems. Your predecessor did not support the people under his command, and is now enjoying more time with his family. Observing how you choose to deal with people under your command - particularly CPT Crozier who looks like he is doing his best to suppress the virus outbreak on one of our capital ships so it can get back into action - suggests this as your next career step:
Make up two new envelopes.
Love, Borepatch
P.S. I had higher hopes that you might raise my estimate of the caliber of the inhabitants of the E-Ring. It appears that I was misinformed.
P.P.S. Don't let it hit you in the derriere on the way out, bucko.
UPDATE 3 April 2020 10:49: I'm not the only one steamed about this - the House Armed Forces Committee is pretty blunt that SECNAV screwed up here.
Well said, sir.
ReplyDeleteSorry, no. He went public with a problem that made clear to the Chinese that a carrier battle group was not operational and therefore not a threat to them should they choose to take action. I'd have fired his ass, too.
ReplyDelete+1 RevPaul
ReplyDeleteI'm of two opinions on this, and am not in a position to judge.
ReplyDeleteHe acted in a manner he should have known would get him canned.
He got canned.
Maybe he took one for the team.
He knew the job was dangerous when he took it.
I see it all the time. An underling tries to use the media to put the pressure on his boss's boss's boss's boss's boss and thinks he's like a media star and can get away with it. Wrong.
ReplyDeleteHe told the embarked strike group commander he worked for that there was a problem pointing out to a man who already knew he had a problem and then he decided something must be done. OK, ask yourself, what can be done self?
Where do you find a Shangra La out there in mid-Pacific that would warmly welcome and embrace possibly as many as 5000 infected people? Is there some island we own out there stuffed with the milk of human kindness and in a position to step up? Sure, Guam which is already pretty full and then there's Okinawa or Hawaii but then the conditions there are not such that you can just dump 5000 people on them overnight.
Only a complete fool would try to poke Trump in the eye with the stick of public opprobrium because logistics has made something not a full blown emergency a little difficult to bring to a simple and early conclusion.
The demographics of the people that make up the crew almost dictate that a few will die but I've heard that the average age of an aircraft carrier crew is 22. You know the most likely guy to fall into the highest mortality? Yep, the Admiral. They tend to be the oldest guys at sea on carriers along with some petrified 06 and E9s.
I hope your son makes it out as I hope that all of them do but I expect they will. The numbers on the various infected cruise ships tend to show that this will be the case.
Ed B., think you nailed it. +1
ReplyDeleteCourage is both physical and moral.
ReplyDeleteThis Captain has moral courage. And he must pay the price for being both courageous and correct, when most (all?) of his superiors are cowardly political lickspittles.
Sean -
ReplyDeleteDo you really think the Chinese will act stupidly now?
Do you really think they will risk nuclear war during a pandemic that they caused, when most of the world already hates them?
"Do you really think the Chinese will act stupidly now?"
ReplyDeleteDo you really need to ask?
He did wrong. He will pay the price for his error in judgement.
HMS Defiant, above, is exactly correct. He tried an end run around his chain of command by going public. The price for that is his career.
There's a great public scandal over senators selling stock coincidentally/on purpose after the SSCI was briefed about this virus in late January while the WHO was breifing the world on how great China was and the virus wasn't a problem. What briefing did the CIC Pacific Fleet recieve, believe, and pass down to subordinate commanders including the carrier commander? Who decided that visiting Danang on March 5 was a good idea? Captain Crozier who bravely sailed into Guam with a combat incapable ship and launched his 'whistleblower' letter into the either over unsecure networks knowing it would get made public. What was he adised to do what in March, what did he chose to do?
ReplyDeletePossibly. But something isn't right about this and doesn't pass the smell test.
ReplyDeleteI am a big fan of the milbloggers, and the swabbies that I read all say that the USN has been severely pozzed by democrat/liberal flunkies and fart catchers. They've started political turf wars that rage up and down the command chain, and that could be what's going on here. Ordinarily a captain does not have to go to the press and media to shame the brass. Ordinarily, the brass would not punish a captain acting in the legitimate defense or the interests of his men. Keep in mind that at least 80% of what you read in the mass media is BS too.
We are far too quick to assume the bad guys are the brass, and the good guys are further down the totem pole. Consider: you are a brass hat. In order for you and your service to justify yourselves and function, your subordinates must trust you to have their backs in situations just like this. If you start firing good men for no reason - that sends shockwaves up and down the chain and everything falls apart. If I recall, the USN suffered some serious fallout just recently for that and the President himself stepped in to intervene. He sent a clear message to the USN brass that that kind of thing would be called out and punished.
We live in interesting time, boys.
I'm having a hard time accepting the scenario of CINCPAC either reads in the media or gets word from ABOVE to delete one of his carriers and its air wing from the electronic board's mission capable collum. No, he didn't get word of his critical mission asset from below, he got it from...
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell?
You might be interested in this interview with the Acting NavSec I heard this morning:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.dropbox.com/s/m7u6rc1vn45p8g4/Interview%20with%20acting%20NavSec.mp3?dl=0
You can ignore the Dropbox "create an account" nag box.
ReplyDelete#repost
ReplyDelete