“The submarine’s commanding officer was relieved of duty, and the costly mistake also led to changes in the way the submarine force trains, plans for, and executes complex maneuvers.”
It bothers me that they so frequently punish the Captain and often the Captain had nothing to do with it. I remember writing reports and a standard element that was always required was, “The technicians were retrained to ensure this would not happen again.” Firing the Captain is reminiscent of (oh, and we fired the Captain so this will never happen again.)
I can’t remember the name of the WWII admiral, maybe Nimitz. He badly damaged a ship in his pre-war career and it was his fault. Had he been sacked for it he’d not have been available for the war.
There is so much invested in an officer we should really think hard before relieving them from command even if they did make a mistake. It’s reminiscent of those ludicrous zero tolerance debacles carried out by schools where they expel a kid for nibbling a pop tart into a gun.
OTOH, the big-kahuna of grounding incidents was when, in 1950, the battleship Missouri ran into a sandbar, and was stuck for TWO WEEKS
I remember doing something slightly dangerous back in my Navy days. My chief asked me what was going to happen if things went wrong. I told him that someone would come up with some policy or program to prevent it from happening again. He wasn't amused, but also had no response to what I said.