I doubt that any naval officer could summarize the problem better.
This rebuttal by the former Captain is a new phenomenon: in all previous times, a Captain would own up to his culpability when his ship was involved in a disaster. This is a prime example of the weakness of this generation of leaders - and the navy’s command selection process.
It’s exactly as you said - if the equipment, or the training, or the competence of the ship’s personnel failed, it is the Captain’s fault.
Period.
There is a difference between ‘fault’ and ‘responsibility’. What ‘responsibility’ did the General who ordered him to take his ship out on a mission while the ship was still UNDER REPAIR ?
Exactly. Attempting to defer blame for a collision at sea that was the USN fault is unforgivable. He should be dismissed if he hasn’t been already. He refuses to accept any responsibility whatsoever.
Well maybe. The rebuttal seemed to reference this guy named Risk and a lot of his relatives. Clearly no one in the Navy is responsible for this mess. I hope congress soon holds a closed door hearing to appoint a committee to investigate the infiltration of (nmn) Risk into maritime operations and our elections. Findings should be promptly referred to a very special counsel to probe precisely just what the Heck here goins on.
It’s exactly as you said - if the equipment, or the training, or the competence of the ship’s personnel failed, it is the Captain’s fault.
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Used to be that a CO was ‘God’ in respect to his command.
He could be on leave, 1000 miles away and ANY incident involving his ship and/or crew eventually landed on his shoulders, if nothing more than a bad remark in his fitness report.
Changes started to be made along those lines when the Navy had the audacity to bring the CO of a Japanese Submarine to the CourtsMartial of the CO USS Indianapolis to testify against him...
Fast forward to LCDR Bucher, USS Pueblo who eventually got exonorated because he was not allowed into certain spaces because of clearances yet it was LCDR Bucher that was being tried for derelection of duty for not destroying sensitive material.
His defense was ‘how can you charge me with something that I had absolutely NO control over— BY YOUR ORDERS’?
When the ‘rubber hits the road’, the Government has no qualms or problem abandoning men in the field..
Two great examples are the USS Pueblo & USS Liberty who were left on their own with the President & SECDEF personally stopping any and all ‘rescue attempts’.