Posted on 06/19/2018 3:34:19 PM PDT by Rummyfan
An anonymous email came in over the transom this morning:
Hi, Stacy.
During the early weeks after the USS Fitzgerald was speared by a lumbering Philippine container ship, it was noteworthy that the captain and a couple of admirals were publically named, but not the actual officer in charge, the officer of the deck. (OOD) The other person who should have kept the Fitz out of trouble is the person in charge of the combat information center, the Tactical Action Officer. That individual is supposed to be monitoring the combat radar, which can detect a swimmer at a distance of two miles. Not until a year later, when the final reports are made public and the guilty parties have been court-martialed, does the truth come out. The OOD was named Sarah, and the Tactical Action Officer was named Natalie, and they weren’t speaking to each other!!! The Tactical Action Officer would normally be in near constant communication with the OOD, but there is no record of any communication between them that entire shift!
Another fun fact: In the Navy that won WWII, the damage control officers were usually some of the biggest and strongest men aboard, able to close hatches, shore up damaged areas with timbers, etc. The Fitz’s damage control officer was also a woman, and she never left the bridge. She handled the aftermath of the accident remotely, without lifting a finger herself!
Look it up: The OOD was Sarah Coppock, Tactical Action Officer was Natalie Combs. . . .
When I noticed last year that they were doing all they could to keep the OOD’s name out of the headlines, I speculated to my son that it was a she. Turns out all the key people (except one officer in the CIC) were female!
Indeed, I did some searching, and Lt. Coppock pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty. Lt. Combs faced a hearing last month:
In an 11-hour hearing, prosecutors painted a picture of Lt. Irian Woodley, the ship’s surface warfare coordinator, and Lt. Natalie Combs, the tactical action officer, as failing at their jobs, not using the tools at their disposal properly and not communicating adequately. They became complacent with faulty equipment and did not seek to get it fixed, and they failed to communicate with the bridge, the prosecution argued. Had they done those things, the government contended, they would have been able to avert the collision. That two of the officers — Coppock and Combs — involved in this fatal incident were female suggests that discipline and training standards have been lowered for the sake of “gender integration,” which was a major policy push at the Pentagon during the Obama administration. It could be that senior officers, knowing their promotions may hinge on enthusiastic support for “gender integration,” are reluctant to enforce standards for the women under their command.
This was the story of Kara Hultgreen, the Navy pilot who died in a 1994 F-14 crash. Investigation showed that Hultgreen had been allowed to proceed in her training after errors that would have meant a washout for any male pilot. But the Clinton administration was pushing for female fighter pilots, which resulted in a competition between the Navy and Air Force to put women into these combat roles. It is not necessary to believe that (a) women shouldn’t be fighter pilots, in order to believe (b) lowering standards for the sake of quotas is a bad idea. Of course, you may believe both (a) and (b), but it is (b) that gets people killed.
It seems obvious that the Pentagon (and the liberal media) sought to suppress full knowledge of what happened to the Fitzgerald in the immediate aftermath of the June 2017 incident that killed seven sailors, in the same way the details of Kara Hultgreen’s death were suppressed. It took investigative reporters like Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times a lot of hard work to find out what actually happened to Hultgreen. Let’s hope other reporters will dig into what’s happening in our military with the “gender intergration” agenda at the Pentagon now.
I should correct myself: in PEACETIME, being able to read a computer screen and push buttons is fine.
But like the old saying about a ship in a harbor is a safe ship, but that is not what ships are for, a warship during peacetime may indeed be a push button endeavor for many (though surely, not all) but that will change as soon as an adversary is shooting back.
Police, military,fireman,rescue. Is that enough?
” Have you ever served on a combat vessel in war where the crew is fighting to say afloat and save their own lives and the lives of their shipmates?”
I’ve been to the Persian Gulf during the hostage crisis and the Iran-Iraq War but never saw combat. Have you served on a combat ship that was fighting to save it’s life?
“It is the logistical aspects including things like segregated berthing spaces and heads to things women need that men don’t ranging from feminine hygiene products to birth control pills, “
The ships I served on had segregated quarters. One for the officers, another for the chiefs and the rest for the junior enlisted. Any member of the crew could get condoms from the ship’s corpsman. And now with gays being allowed to serve, sex will be an issue on combat ships even if their are no women on board.
damage control officers were usually some of the biggest and strongest men aboard, able to close hatches, shore up damaged areas with timbers, etc. The Fitz’s damage control officer was also a woman, and she never left the bridge.
Uhhh, no! The damage control officer sits in DC central and directs damage control efforts. It requires knowledge, brains and the ability to direct others to action. If the DCA is out closing hatches and shoring bulkheads, he/she is not doing zir job, acting as the nerve center for bringing the ships resources to bear. I am not taking a position on whether a female damage control assistant (an officer) can do the job.
There were three idiots who allowed this accident to happen. The CO who qualified her as the OOD, the XO who didn't train her, and she herself. The TAO might or might not have been doing her job, and if the ship was standing into danger had an independent duty to call the CO. But the only reason anything bad happened here is because the OOD was incompetent. All the rest is backup to the OOD and that failed too.
Jude Eden, a female US Marine who served in the Middle East wrote this article which bears reading:
Women in Combat - The Question of Standards
This is a key passage if you don't want to read the whole article:
“Then I’m surprised that you underrate the stamina required.”
I don’t think I underestimated the stamina required but then I was a twidget and not a deck ape or snipe.
As I said, open homosexuality and women in combat and on combat ships is a large net negative. There is no redeeming value in having either of them in that situation.
Sure, as long as there have been ships, there has been homosexuality. But it has never been open and encouraged as it is now. That alone is a disaster IMO.
I have never been on a warship that had to fight for her life, thank God. But I boarded a warship several months after a refit to repair damage caused by a collision that killed eight men and nearly sunk one ship, burning nearly her entire superstructure to the deck.
It was clear to me from the seriousness of the lessons we were taught in that direct aftermath, the way they were taught, and discussions with the young men I served with who were there, that damage control in a burning warship most definitely is not a push-button endeavor.
All that said, I do agree some of the comments in that article were a bit silly, and I didn’t like the inference about the women not talking to each other implying more than just incompetence.
I thought it both slanderous and unnecessary.
I generally agree with you. I had back then and still have today the opinion that combat ships and submarines ought to be male only. The next time the shit really hits the fan, mixed gender ships and subs may be done away with as with mixed gender ground combat units. But in peacetime, the issues with mixed gender combat units aren’t grave enough where President Trump can get away with ordering such a thing.
I think that is the nut of the problem...a peacetime Navy is a very different thing than a wartime Navy. And unfortunately, that truth won’t become evident until after bad things happen. Sadly.
Right now, it is a combination of social experimentation and job program with actual war fighting a distant third.
But if I am honest, that isn’t that unique...probably that way between all wars, and all lessons will have to be learned again the hard way.
I suppose it will always be that way.
“But like the old saying about a ship in a harbor is a safe ship, but that is not what ships are for, a warship during peacetime may indeed be a push button endeavor for many”
Even in peacetime, stuff happens.
For instance, a ship could suffer an oil-spray fire in one of its boiler rooms while engaged in loading SAMs with nuclear warheads.
“I don’t think I underestimated the stamina required but then I was a twidget and not a deck ape or snipe.”
Well, there you go.
Some divisions work 24 hours a day and sleep on their own time.
Very true.
Even truer is, that open hostilities often break out without warning. It was amazing it didn’t happen more during the Cold War, and it isn’t hard to imagine something like that happening with the Chinese navy in one of these contested areas.
One never knows when you will find yourself inside a flooding compartment in a sinking ship where just a few hours before, you were thinking of your next port of call.
...and that’s across all branches not just the Navy. The burning question is when the big hammer comes down from a major hostile state, will our military be able to fight and win?
What will we be fighting for at that point? Transsexual equality? Homosexual pride? Equal opportunity for the physical weaker female sex to play infantry so they can feel special?
All this gender bending training and throwing combat training standards out the window is going to bite us back big time.
“I suppose it will always be that way.”
When I was going through Travis on my way to my first ship, there was a Master Chief heading into retirement. He was a veteran of WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam.
He said that every time peace breaks out, the back-stabbing office politicians weasel their way into power and drive the warriors out. Then, inevitably, when war comes they had to get rid of those guys and bring the warriors back.
I wonder the same thing, TADSLOS. The same thing.
if there was lack of training, lack of achievement, lack of ability, that is on the Officers who placed them in that position....
it goes directly to the poor quality of officer recrutiment under the 16 yrs of the Toon and barry bathhouse...
just look at that pipsqueak communist that just got booted out...but it took 4 yrs of free education and a yr on duty to get the stupid leadership to do it....
there were two ships that collided recently and do we know who was in charge of the second collision?...
incompetence is absolutely at fault...
Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times
Good times create weak men
And, weak men create hard times.
No.
They got their letters out in the fleet, but the ladies in our class had no problem with it for the most part.
Has not changed much except half the cast or more is dead. Cheech and Chong are still kickin.
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