DRESS BLUES & BLEEDING MOHAWKSL SCENES FROM THE MODERN NAVY
Shuger, Scott
DRESS BLUES & BLEEDING MOHAWKS: SCENES FROM THE MODERN NAVY BY SCOTT SHUGER Before the disappearance of the draft and the disillusionment that came in the wake of Vietnam, most Americans had at...
...Likewise, after a week at sea, fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole milk are generally unavailable...
...This is good advice, not just for those of us in uniform, but everybody else as well...
...Movies are a very big pastime...
...One such yawning chasm is a program called Aviation Officers Continuation Pay...
...After taking special precautions and relying on the standard practice of staggered crew liberties, only a handful of crew members ran afoul of the local authorities...
...Many officers and chiefs work with and around aircraft and ship hardware...
...For example, I have put in a lot of time editing squadron documents, collecting money for the Combined Federal Campaign, and administering the squadron’s physical training program...
...The Navy provides leather flight jackets to all aviation personnel, but then makes it practically impossible to wear them...
...Later, I learned what had happened...
...But the success of that mission depends mostly on things like fuel and supply planning, communications, electronic warfare, security, management, and political analysis...
...One of the first things a junior officer notices about enlisted men is how important their performance and continuing education are to their promotion prospects...
...Because they wanted to be chief of naval operations someday...
...But, as things are presently structured, as long as an officer shows minimal competence in his specialty, he will probably continue to move in step with his peers for a long time, even if his general development is totally arrested...
...A US...
...These are the middle level officers-the lieutenants, the lieutenant commanders, and the commanders-who now fly the planes and have to think about leading squadrons of them into combat...
...troops under fire in Lebanon and conducting maneuvers in Central America, most civilians view the military as they regard household plumbing...
...Navy warship is an enclave of absolutes-all gray, all male, and all business...
...This piece was written while he served on active duty in the Navy from 1978 to 1983...
...But they don’t want to be bothered with details...
...Along with other squadron intelligence officers, I man the aircraft carrier’s intelligence center, keeping abreast of ships’ positions, possible unknown aircraft activity, and all technical and political message traffic relating to the task group...
...This is a handling officer’s nightmare and a real blow to a carrier’s air warfare readiness...
...There is ordinarily no authorized use of drugs or alcohol, though the Navy’s increasingly longer stays at sea recently led it to allow a total of two cans of beer per man after 45 days...
...This McDonnell-Douglas plane, based on a Mach 2 design by Northrop, was originally touted in the early 1970s as a low-cost complement for the Navy’s F-14 fighter as well as a hightech replacement for the aging A-7 bomber...
...Important decisions hinge on how the public perceives the military, and these details also play a critical role in how well the military does its job...
...Today, even with U.S...
...This is good news for narrow and average officers, but it is bad news for those who have a real thirst for knowledge and are quick studies...
...frequently a carrier’s commanding officer works on the bridge 20 hours a day...
...The plane currently cannot carry as many bombs, or as far, as an A-7 can without refueling...
...Hence, at sea, the missile stations on the F-18 will usually be out of easy reach for repair and reloading...
...Imagine somewhat worse conditions and you get a pretty good picture of what life is like for enlisted men...
...So while it was supposedly developed to retain junior officer pilots, the AOCP was mostly paid to others who were staying anyway-like the NFO commander with six months left on his last flying tour who collected $16,000...
...As you might expect, these films are not generally first-run...
...And in peace, it’s forgetting about the little things that can start wars...
...At first blush, the F-18 sounds like an impressive aircraft...
...These are four- or eight- or 24-hour periods of being the man on the spot in various places...
...Moreover, most of the personnel affected by the regulation had only one, or at most two, sets of dress blues...
...the fraternal feelings of senio...
...Since military people love sports analogies, here’s one that’s apt: our present Navy is like a football team composed mostly of interior linemen coached by guys who only know trick plays...
...And so the Navy decided to buy this plane for its own carrier squadrons and the Marine Corps...
...Scott Shuger now lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan...
...They’ll leave to suceed elsewhere...
...Here at least is one place where you can legitimately escape from your work (keeping your hair within “regs” is a military obligation) and probably your boss as well (there are only one or two chairs...
...Navy, serving with a carrier-based aviation squadron...
...One of the second things he notices is how irrelevant performance and continuing education are to his own promotion prospects...
...Get a copy of one of these issues and go through it looking at warfare specialties...
...For these and other reasons, the Navy has balked at certifying the F-18 in its attack role, emphasizing instead its capabilities as a fighter...
...Unfortunately, the Navy has a habit of exhibiting the same kind of bureaucratic behavior when it comes to matters of far more consequence...
...One reason becomes clear if you indulge in a little exercise...
...This tale brings to mind another baroque Navy regulation regarding uniforms...
...After all, in war it’s the little things that can kill you...
...Others can be used to verify that the projector works...
...But they were deemed equally eligible for AOCP and took full advantage of it...
...They may want to be CNO, too, but somewhat less than they want to survive the next war...
...Some movies are released to great success around the world and some are sold to television...
...So far, so good...
...the improvement is due largely to the foundering commercial airline industry...
...as well as pilots...
...If the reporters and editors involved had merely checked with local and Navy authorities, this story ‘never would have appeared...
...Another erroneous story appeared in August 1980...
...Why is it that flag officers for a decade have kept quiet about these shortcomings, or (worse still) touted the F-18 as the best thing since ejection seats...
...If an officer is dangerous in the airplane or rams the pier every time he brings the ship in, this will definitely affect his career...
...As a member of the squadron, besides mission planning I also fall prey to the usual collateral duties assigned to junior officers...
...But my personal favorite was the ruling that allowed base-wide wear of the jacket, but only by a person in a flight suit possessing a copy of that day’s flight schedule showing that the wearer was about to go, or had just been, flying...
...Several weeks before, the chief of naval operations had suggested in a message that to heighten the public’s awareness and appreciation of the Navy’s mission, personnel should consider wearing a dress uniform more frequently, even in circumstances when one might otherwise have worn civilian clothes...
...These guys could be devastating working on ejection seats...
...To remedy this, the Navy should hold promotion examinations for early advancement covering material inside and outside the officer’s specialty...
...Defenders of the AOCP will point to recently improved pilot retention figures, but don’t be misled...
...How is it that the Navy has gotten taken like this...
...Too often, civilian ignorance combines with service shortsightedness to give us a military that lacks public confidence and internal efficiency...
...Because he wanted to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff-and you don’t get there by bad-mouthing your own service’s weapons...
...Within days, dress-blue paraphernalia were as hard to find as common sense...
...But if reporters often miss the hard work, sacrifice, and generally exemplary behavior of those in uniform, they also often overlook examples of rather baffling military behavior...
...On top of all this, there are always watches to stand...
...As a junior officer living in a steel closet, your periods of sleep are constantly interrupted by the comings and goings of your five (or eight or 12) roommates, or the phone calls that they, invariably, are never there to receive...
...The folly of the AOCP program is underscored by the fact that studies have consistently shown that money alone cannot keep people in the Navy...
...Or will you get Airman Manson, who hates his work, hates officers, and has the criminal record to prove it...
...Eighteen months-over a third of my stint-have been spent on a warship at sea, away from my family and home...
...Since Navy warships don’t have trained barbers, they use a random rotation of junior enlisted men from the supply division...
...Because some higher-up apparently believes the customary practice of affixing personal and squadron patches to the jackets somehow reflects badly on the Navy, they are not permitted to be worn off-base...
...You will see a lot of dolphins (submarines) and a lot of wings (aviation), especially in the three- and four-star ranks...
...reporters, seek them out for stories...
...That’s why those who want to find out how these weapons really work should listen a lot more to the military men who know the most about them...
...This circumstance prompted a sudden purchasing run on a totally unprepared exchange supply system...
...One day in early 1981 when I arrived for work at my hangar in San Diego I was surprised to see many people wearing dress blues instead of khakis, the usual working uniform...
...Our squadron flies the E-2C, the Navy’s carrier-based radar surveillance plane, which includes among its missions airborne early warning, surface surveillance, fighter and strike aircraft control, antisubmarine warfare, and search and rescue operations...
...I’d like to bother you with some of those details...
...The ensuing complications were considerable...
...The new regulation immediately cost me an extra $150-particularly aggravating in light of the fact that the regulations were completely rescinded five weeks later...
...And this is bad news for the Navy, because most of them won’t wait...
...So why didn’t the CNO say something...
...This lack of diversity seems a prime culprit in the F-18 and AOCP decisions...
...After all, as experienced and wellintentioned as these men are, they won’t be flying the F-18 some night, trying to put too few bombs on a too-far target...
...Since there were plenty of 24-hour clocks set to Greenwich Mean Time lurking about, that didn’t always help, either...
...As for on-base, at various times during my tenure at Naval Air Station Miramar, they were banished from the exchange, the commissary, and the officers’ club...
...The jackets are usually not worn in aircraft because they do not fit well with the survival equipment...
...But because the program was based on aviation service rather than an officer’s total time in service, the bonus was made available primarily to those officers who already were inclined to make the military their career...
...All he has to do is come to work and get more senior...
...All you have to do afterwards is write a comment in the shop logbook...
...For example, take the case of the Navy’s problem-plagued fightedattack plane, the F-18...
...At Aviation Officers’ Candidate School in Pensacola, the constant byword of the drill instructors as they prepared us for military life was, “Attention to detail...
...Printed annually in the Proceedings of the Naval Institute are the pictures, in lineal order, of all Navy flag officers...
...Several years ago, the top brass looked at the poor retention figures for pilots and decided that some sort of program was required to avert an aviation manning crisis...
...I am an intelligence officer in the U.S...
...Congressmen, invite them to your hearings...
...I have been on active duty for four and a half years...
...Twice I have spent more than 100 consecutive days between ports...
...They came up with the AOCP, whereby officers received a number of months’ worth of additional base pay in return for obligating themselves to additional service...
...I was among more than 5,000 sailors who arrived in Singapore on the Constellation following 110 consecutive days at sea...
...Playing this form of tonsorial roulette is always exciting and the results are sometimes spectacular...
...But there are other problems besides cost...
...Of these, three were senior lieutenants...
...On carriers, wardrooms run a picture nightly, as do the squadron ready rooms...
...Thus it was that, in San Diego, with absolutely no prior warning, dress blues became an obligatory daily uniform for officers and chief petty officers...
...The plane has a single seat, a departure from two decades of Navy doctrine that in air-to-air combat, four eyes are better than two...
...While the large number of senior aviators at the top of the Navy’s organizational pyramid is enamored of the F-18’s flying capabilities, they’ve given short shrift to the serious logistical problems that those junior and middle-level officers familiar with the plane realize will plague it under wartime conditions...
...But anyone who’s worked on a carrier knows that the wings on carrier planes are designed to fold when the plane is out of the landing area...
...Aircraft carriers do not have portholes (at least not for the great unwashed), and often the only way you could tell day from night was by looking at the clock...
...It’s these that we usually have to rely on to help us forget that we are killing another summer off Oman...
...Tangled up in blue Civilian ignorance of military life is aggravated by the false impressions frequently left by the media...
...Unfortunately, while you’re here you also have to get your hair cut...
...the rest were lieutenant commanders and commanders already well entrenched in their career patterns...
...For example, the F-18 has wing-tip missile stations that it inherited from its land-based Northrop ancestor...
...For them, the bonus was not an incentive so much as it was a windfall...
...Likewise for AOCP...
...Although the TFX disaster under Robert McNamara shduld have made experienced Navy hands gun-shy about another multimission aircraft, the allure of a “twofer” is hard to resist...
...Hot water and water pressure also become elusive, making shaving and showering high adventure...
...Unlike pilots, who are subject to the lure of the commercial airlines, NFO’s have rather healthy retention figures...
...We were now to report to work everyday dressed like Pug Henry set to dine with FDR...
...aviators have caused them to push through bonuses that most pilots and NFOs will candidly admit are costly and ineffectual...
...How do such dubious programs as the F-18 and AOCP happen...
...Except for those infrequent occasions when I flew off the carrier or snuck in some jogging on the flight deck (a never-ending battle waged against oil slicks, jet noise, high winds, pitching decks, and speeding trucks), my shipboard duty virtually could have been on a submarine...
...For years, nuclear power officers have been eligible for a huge bonus upon their acceptance of a second set of orders, and yet their retention figures remain low...
...I speak from some first-hand experience...
...Considerations of space allocation for maintenance and launch planning require this...
...Imagine my surprise, then, when I later read a wire service story describing how 5,000 sailors had rioted in Singapore’s streets...
...I have seen commanders with bleeding, asymmetrical mohawks write “outstanding” in the logbook...
...Qpical meals feature soyburgers that look like Nairobi trail markers and water with enough jet fuel mixed in to make lighter fluid taste like Perrier...
...They’re glad it’s there, and they’ll even spend a fair amount to keep it working...
...Will you be worked on by Airman Recruit Schmucatelli, who likes his work but nonetheless did try to trim your nasal hair with a straight razor...
...DRESS BLUES & BLEEDING MOHAWKS: SCENES FROM THE MODERN NAVY BY SCOTT SHUGER Before the disappearance of the draft and the disillusionment that came in the wake of Vietnam, most Americans had at least a passing familiarity with the armed services...
...Moreover, in the Navy there are two primary types of aviation officers-naval flight officers (navigators, bombardiers, etc...
...Besiaes the F-18, there are other large holes down which the Navy has poured our money...
...And such a military benefits no one...
...I don’t have 50 suggestions for bringing about this added dimension to the Navy, but I do have one...
...At least the haircuts are free...
...Even on the largest warships, you are never more than 1,000 feet from your work...
...And until they reach the highest commands, senior officers don’t have it much better than me...
...They will have to wait a long time-usually 20 years-to break out of the pack...
...And the F-18 uses considerably more fuel in the landing configuration than the A-7 or the F-14, a crucial fact when conducting “blue water” carrier operations beyond the range of l a d and emergency airfields...
...One might dismiss these incidents as bureaucratic peccadilloes that ultimately have no bearing on what really matters: our ability to fight and win a war...
...Still, it amazes me how timid otherwise gruff and authoritative officers can be in making these evaluations...
...The crash two years ago of a Marine EA-6B on the aircraft carrier Nimitz is remembered by many as “the crash where everyone was on drugs...
...My suspicion is that they are worried about where someone goes when he gets fired from the barbershop...
...Airplanes and submarines represent a critical and glamorous aspect of a modern Navy mission...
...Daily shipboard life is mostly a blur of routines, though there are a few diversions besides contemplating the possibility of war...
...To an Air Force pilot, this is no big deal...
...Needless to say, in the presence of grease and jet fuel, it is difficult to keep a double-breasted blazer immaculately clean...
...I did not realize that overnight the uniform of the day had been changed...
...In my squadron, 12 officers signed up for AOCP...
...You will see surprisingly few surface officers, supply officers, intelligence officers, or any other sorts of officers you might have expected to find...
...Unfortunately, when the CNO makes a suggestion, lesser admirals climb all over each other trying to make rules...
...The Navy’s investigating board did find that some flight deck personnel had used marijuana within 30 days of the crash, which killed 14 men...
...This was so unusual that my first reaction was that someone had died and everyone had dressed for a memorial service...
...Carrier crews thus face the prospect of moving squadrons of airplanes to a large, free area in order to have their missiles loaded, removed, or checked...
...The harried naval officer looking for a break in the daily routine can also seek refuge in the officers’ barbershop...
...These guys could be devastating working on ejection seats...
...But sensational press coverage obscured the board’s determination that the plane’s crew and the on-deck signal officer were drug-free and that the accident was caused by the misjudgments of a tired, inexperienced pilot...
...Just how many F-18s will be bought is uncertain, since its price seems to rise more often than the national debt ceiling...
...But even here there are problems that those intimately familiar with the plane have recognized...
Vol. 15 • November 1983 • No. 8
