>>> Yeah, IIRC Chester Nimitz lead a four ship squadron of destroyers aground in heavy fog at high speed while attempting to enter San Francisco Bay.
The DESCRON running on the beach was a separate incident years afterward. Previously Lt Nimitz did run his destroyer aground in the Philippines. He was punished but after several years in purgatory was allowed the opportunity to redeem himself. No “one mistake and out”.
Not referring to any one incident but it generally appears to me the Navy will someday pay a price for 1) devouring it’s seed corn, and 2) rewarding with Admirals stars those officers who never take a risk while making it suicidal for any aggressive captain.
Pictures of the Hondo Point disaster at the link. It’s quite a story. 8 September 1923, when seven nearly new U.S. Navy destroyers and twenty-three lives were lost.
http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/ev-1920s/ev-1923/hondapt.htm
You beat me to it.
Actually, there is not much different in this case. The Navy has ALWAYS had this attitude towards groundings and such. Always.
There have always been some skippers who found a way not to get relieved, and others who didn’t have a prayer. I know when I was on the Kennedy, we collided with the USS Bordelon, mangling her badly enough to get her decommissioned, but the skipper got another command.
It has always been nearly uniformly “one mistake and out” with groundings. My dad was a thirty year naval officer, and I have had this conversation with him about this very subject. He had served on a lot of boards of inquiry over his career, and he told me that was always it. You might not be found culpable, but those people never went as high as fast, and rarely got command again.
You can apparently run a crappy ship and get promoted, but running that crappy ship aground gets the attention of the promotion boards.