His crew as totally unprepared for an emergency and Bucher ran a loose ship and he himself claimed to be unaware as to how much classified documents they had on board.
They failed to destroy a large amount of classified documents and equipment due to their unfitness
Many think he should have gone down with his ship and the classified materials..
while there was sufficient blame to go around, Bucher IMO should take the brunt of it. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB278/03.PDF
According to many sources, including the crew, there was so much classified material onboard the ship that some of it was stored in passageway overheads.
When the ship came under fire, they tried to burn piles of the documentation on the deck, but were driven back by hostile fire from the NORKS and cold, freezing weather that prevented them from being able to uncap their 5” gun and return fire.
Finally, if “while there was sufficient blame to go around, Bucher IMO should take the brunt of it”, why did a Navy court-martial board acquit him? Given the circumstances, the court-martial board would not have acquitted him unless there were extensive and material extenuating circumstances. You might want to do a little more research. Shortly after the crew was repatriated, 3 books were written by the crew and 1 by an admiral; all are worth spending some time reading so you have a better grasp of a situation that you clearly do not comprehend.