Course Corrections

A story of growing pains, by Ian.

By the end of our final exercise before deployment, I had not slept more than two hours uninterrupted on any night over the previous three weeks. 

One morning as I lingered too long in the shower trying to wash away the fatigue, the ship rolled to starboard a little harder than usual and the whine of the main engines several decks below increased pitch, indicating higher speed.  The hull shuddered as Johnston plowed harder into the waves.

The Officer of the Deck, or OOD, called while I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair. I grabbed the phone just outside the shower, water spraying my back and suds dripping from my arms. “Captain, go ahead.”

“Sir, this is Ensign Farwell, the OOD. We received a tactical signal from the DESRON to come to port and we executed that order, but then, as we steadied up, we saw that Yorktown had not turned. We were on a course to cross her bow at close range. I came hard right and increased speed, and we’re opening range.” He spoke fast, winded. 

“Alright,” I said, trying to calm him down. “What’s the range to the carrier now?”

“Five thousand yards and opening, sir.”

“Okay, good. Thanks for the call.”

Carriers often ignored or took their time executing tactical signals from the Destroyer Squadron, or DESRON. By extension, destroyers – weighing in at roughly ten times less than a carrier – often ran like hell to get out of the way when the carrier screwed up. In my exhausted mind this all seemed perfectly reasonable.

A few hours later, the Tactical Action Officer called me from the Combat Information Center, or CIC.

“Good morning, Captain. We got a chat message from the DESRON watch officer. The Commodore wants you to call him immediately.”

I already had a lot on my mind when he made his report. A case folder from the legal officer lay open on my desk as I slumped over it, the phone clenched in my right hand and my head propped in the left. A cold coffee loitered just out of reach. 

“Immediately?” I whined.

“Yes, sir. And,” he paused, “that last part was in all caps.”

My head slid deeper into my hand as I grabbed my hair to stop it from hitting the desk. “Copy. Thanks.”

For eight months I had been the captain of USS Johnston. And for the year and a half prior, I had served as her Executive Officer, the second-in-command. The ship was a train wreck when I first arrived, and for over two years I and the entire leadership team gave the ship and crew every bit of energy we had. We had come so far since then and I truly believed we could become the best ship in the squadron. But I began to have doubts.

I felt sure everything would be fine when I called the Commodore.

“Do you know what you did this morning, Captain?” 

Captain Duke Conrad, the Commodore for Destroyer Squadron Twenty-Nine, was a good, reasonable man with high standards who demanded only the best from his ships’ captains. He chewed me out before, but he carried himself like a tough coach, always finding a way to turn my mistake into a teachable moment. 

In this moment, he did not sound like a coach. He sounded like caged fury.

“Yes, sir. The Officer of the Deck called me immediately when we nearly crossed Yorktown’s bow because of a poorly executed tactical signal…”

“How close did you get, Captain,” he interrupted. The fury now shook the cage.

“About five thousand yards, sir.”

“Bull. Shit! Your ship was two thousand yards – one nautical mile! – off the carrier’s bow while she was in the middle of flight operations! She was heading 25 knots into the wind, launching fighters off the bow when Johnston decided to turn left, directly in front of her! The carrier had to stop launching planes, order a backing bell to reduce speed, and put the rudder over hard right. We had people running all over the flight deck trying to chain down the planes that we had in line to launch. We almost lost two of them over the side! Did you hear me? We almost lost two aircraft and their pilots over the side!”

Time slowed and my vision narrowed. I heard my own pulsing blood through the ringing in my ears.

“Sounds like your OOD didn’t tell you the whole story,” he continued.

“Yes, sir.” I swallowed hard. “I thought we only got as close as five thousand yards.”

“What is the minimum distance you should ever be from an aircraft carrier?” he demanded.

“Three miles from the bow, two miles from the beam, and one mile from the stern, sir,” I answered.

“That’s right. So, you can see, even if you actually were the two and a half miles you thought you were from the carrier’s bow, you’re still fucked up.”

I winced. “Yes, sir.” 

He took a deep breath. “Captain, you will send me a detailed note no later than eighteen hundred tonight explaining exactly how you are going to correct this issue and how, for the rest of your time in command of that ship, you will prevent it from becoming a hazard to navigation. Do you understand me?” He paused, then continued, “This is serious, Ian.”

“Yes, sir. I understand,” I replied. He hung up.

Eighteen hundred. It was noon. I had six hours.

Three knocks on the open the door brought me back from a dark place.

“We’re ready for you, sir.” I looked up from my desk and saw Madee, Johnston’s Command Master Chief, standing in the doorway with a look of resigned disappointment. She had no idea I just got off the phone with the Commodore. She was thinking about the senior petty officer we were about to take to Captain’s Mast. I nodded, closed the open folder on the desk, and took it with me as I followed her through the door on my way to end someone’s career. 

Before I took command, officers commonly delayed action until the captain told them what to do. They had been excoriated enough times to learn not to take chances. 

They desperately needed a change in leadership. I had to teach them how to make decisions, and I believed the best way to do that was to simply allow them to make decisions. I told them over and over again, “If I were to be killed by the first shot in the first battle of the next war, are you just going to pack up and go home? No! You’re going to keep fighting! So, for God’s sake, don’t let that be the first time you ever make a decision.” 

After eight months they got it half right. 

Just a week prior to this incident, we took part in an air defense exercise in which my TAO decided to fire simulated missiles at multiple inbound aircraft to defend the ship. Probably the right call. However, I didn’t find out about it until two hours later, after the exercise ended, when I just happened to overhear a conversation in CIC. A Navy warship had just fought a (simulated) battle her captain knew nothing about.

Two months prior to that, a problem with a fuel system lineup put about 100 gallons of flammable liquid into a passageway just below two crew berthing compartments. The Chief Engineer decided to take action to clean it up (right) but did not man a damage control team for the unlikely event the fuel flashed into a fire (wrong). I only found out when I walked through the main deck and saw a bucket brigade moving fuel from the passageway into the forward engine room waste oil tank.

I made it clear to my officers in the first sentence of my standing orders: 

"I expect you to keep me informed of any event or occurrence that affects the safety of Johnston."

In the next sentence, following L. David Marquet’s advice in Turn the Ship Around, I gave them the authority to develop a plan on their own: 

"In executing your duties and when making reports, I expect you to practice command by negation: state your intention rather than ask permission – my permission will come as concurrence with your intended action."

I expected them to assess the situation and come up with the plan. If I agreed with the plan, they did it. If I didn’t agree, I’d give them some pointers and then they’d do it. Either way, my thinking went, they would get practice every day in making their own decisions and carrying them out.

But eight months later it seemed my theory did not work. 

I needed to be swift and fierce. I needed to be crystal clear. And I needed to make sure that in doing so, I did not crush their initiative and make them fear risk, making myself a bottleneck and completely contradicting everything I put in my standing orders.

I stood on the port bridge wing looking out to the horizon as all the off-watch officers gathered. Anger surged in my gut. 

I turned to face them and just told the story. 

“This morning, we got a bad tactical signal and made a series of decisions that put us one nautical mile off the bow of a 95,000 ton ship launching aircraft at 25 knots. One. Mile. A nautical stone’s throw from being sliced in half.”

I took a breath and turned up the volume one notch. 

“We decided to execute the order immediately even with the carrier in the middle of a launch cycle, knowing they could not move. We didn’t use our eyes to look at the carrier to see how close she was. And we decided at that inconvenient moment to traverse the helicopter out of the hangar, locking us in a position where we could not make a needed course change without the risk of losing the helo over the side.”

One more notch.

“We just moseyed closer and closer to a ship that could cut through ours like a knife through hot butter – and it’s not all the fault of the bridge team. CIC gets the same tactical signals. You monitor the same circuits. You look at the same radar indications. And you also saw the carrier did not change course – and you didn’t tell the bridge! You provided no backup!”

A fire burned in my eyes.

“You all have one big job you need to do when you are on watch: Keep this ship and her crew safe. And by the sheer grace of God, we’re still here and not drifting in the ocean or sinking toward the bottom of it. The Commodore told me we caused panic on Yorktown’s bridge and, because of their evasive maneuvers, they almost lost pilots over the side. Our actions could have killed more than just us!” 

The fire raged.

“And do you know where I was when this happened? In the goddam shower! The combined actions and inactions of the watch teams on the bridge and in CIC could have put us all at risk when I was in no position to help!”

Slow burn.

“Worst of all, I had to hear the truth from the Commodore. The initial report I received made it sound like we got a little close but immediately corrected. That. Is not. What happened.”

I doused the fire, closed my eyes, crossed my arms, lowered my head, and paused for a moment.

“You have to make the right decisions and get help if you can’t,” I told them as I opened my eyes. “I will not always be there to help you.” 

That moment on the bridge wing started a few weeks of over-reporting, which was fine. It helped me teach them about what kind of reports I needed right away and which they could delay. It also gave me the opportunity to coach them, helping them learn to trust me and become less hesitant about making reports.

This meant I got even less sleep for the next couple of weeks. But it helped the team get much better at confidently making good decisions, so it was worth it in the end.

I sent my note with my detailed plan to the Commodore before the deadline. And I am happy to report that Johnston never again became a hazard to navigation.

This is a work of fiction based on actual events.

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