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.
Forgot to add this about my sons tours of duty. He absolutely loves A-10 and Apache Pilots. They would rain down hell on the bad guys. Those guys saved many good guys lives.
The only thing wrong with the A-10 is it does not have United States Army painted on its side.
> “Is this true or are you just spreading gossip because it sounds good?”
The original proposal for the bridge design said they were going to use an all-woman design team to meet diversity quotas. There are several bits of articles out there (before the bridge collapsed) that interviewed the women on the team. One woman cited was at the bridge moving and was interviewed less than a week before it fell down.
After the collapse, the woman who was interviewed said she had nothing to do with it. The company who designed it also backed away from claiming it was an all-woman team. Because of that, the “fact checkers” have said it did not happen.
So we are left with two possibilities. Either it was designed by an all-woman team and collapsed because of incompetence, OR, the people involved deliberately lied about women being involved so they could meet diversity standards even though they never intended to use them.
It was released a week or two after the collapse. It was an all woman engineering company. As I recall the story it was not their first failure
And seven sailors died.
Neck strength alone should disqualify any woman.
Well... yeah.
The best astronaut to land on another planet or moon would be a female. Because female drivers can hit any object in their way.
or Chinese.
Alpha females, gay or straight, spat. I was in the Corps. The women Marines use to fight,not physically, over petty stuff.
Nothing surprises me about female integration in the workplace. Thanks to Affirmative Action a quota on all jobs funded by the government must be met. I’ve been on several jobs where a female was hired to hang out in the office leaving the job site one man short. Many times it either takes two women to do the job of one man or a woman must have the help of a man because the physical ability requires the strength of an ordinary guy. That isn’t to say there aren’t some women who are physically strong enough but they also need the agility and reflexes that are generally common in men who gravitate to those kinds of work.
I think in the case of the McCain collision, it was poor training combined with what sounds to me like poorly designed software.
I lay it squarely at the feet of the Captain of the McCain...I laud him for wanting to give his crew a bit of a break, but that isn’t the time for it, entering the busiest sea lane in the world without his experienced Sea and Anchor detail manning the stations.
A key component of leadership means compelling people to do things they would rather not do due to fatigue or laziness.
That said...I feel some sympathy for that young sailor. Sure, he should have spoken up if he didn’t know the job well enough. And the military does heap responsibility on young people often at the cusp of when they are ready for it. Most of the time they rise to the occasion, and no young man worth his salt wants to be seen as the “weak sister”. Not a good thing, but that is how a lot of young guys are.
I fault his superiors for putting him into that situation. Now he has to live with it.
Thanks
Thanks for the ping TXnMA....much appreciated.
When I heard this earlier, it reminded me of the Kara Hultgreen fiasco right off the bat.
No, it’s the fault of the broads. Chauvinism was a global policy for centuries, for a reason.
Thank you. Tried to search for the Snopes article but the site have removed all mention of it. Or I’m just bad at research
Hmmmmmmmm.....
Thank you again.
Somebody once said:
“Incredible claims need incredible evidence.”
Or something like that(I probably mangled this interpretation )
I disagree that the sex of the officers in question has no relevance. I think it is extremely relevant.
And it doesn’t mean women can’t do some of these jobs like manning a watch station or being an OOD. (I am not going to bring up the physical, logistical, or unit cohesion issues since they don’t necessarily have a DIRECT bearing on THIS.)
When you look at it through the light of affirmative action, what it does mean is that in the pursuit of ‘diversity’ being an OOD ceases to be a military function on a naval vessel and becomes the focus of how many people in your command have qualified as an OOD.
Don’t you think for a second that this Navy does not monitor those things...how many of your female officers have qualified as an OOD? I will bet money there is pressure on the Captains to produce results that the Navy can tout.
I have to disagree with you. It isn’t because a given woman can’t do that job which is not strictly a physical but a mental job, it is because the focus is not on the QUALITY of the process the produces an OOD, but how many females meet the OOD qualifications in a deployment.
That is what killed Kara Hultgreen. I find it offensive, and it makes me angry.
The Army did it right. They made it so females can go to “Ranger School” and make a new soldier with a male candidate. That’s bang for the buck by replication of soldiers. So with a female, you get one now and one later....I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work.
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