The Pipeline: Switch
Pressure from above may crush you, but it cannot move you. Get used to telling senior officers to stuff it.
Continued from The Pipeline: Crash.
A realization, from Ian.
Of course, there is always more to the story.
The safety report on that helo crash noted the procedures did not set limits on sea state and direction given a destroyer flight deck’s low freeboard. So, the captain faithfully followed flawed instructions to the letter, and no one who wrote those procedures was held accountable.
Someone in my class heard more detail from a friend who was aboard the ship at the time of the accident. The helicopter landed. The crew chained it. And yes, the captain ordered a course change just before the wave hit. But the captain made that decision under pressure which existed only because the commodore spawned it.
The commodore, the destroyer squadron commander and the captain's immediate superior in command, created a climate of fear through impossible expectations and abusive talk, including commonplace public shaming of his captains. In this particular moment, the Commodore expressed his displeasure that this ship left its assigned place in formation to land the helicopter. Never mind that they chose the only safe course for winds and seas. The Commodore demanded that the captain land the helo and stay on station, two simultaneous and contradictory actions.
I can only assume the captain tried to balance the options and accommodate the commodore’s demands, making a decision based on the venom spewing from the radio at that moment.
The safety report included none of this.
Following the incident, the commodore completed his tour believing himself blameless, received his award, and moved up in the chain of command to share his leadership with hundreds more unlucky sailors. Somewhere in a brutalist government office building, a contractor performed additional analysis and updated a procedure. And the captain will forever carry the weight of three families whose loved ones found their final resting place at the bottom of the Red Sea.
What would I have done? What could I have done when the chain of command and the very system itself set conditions for your failure?
The pressure from above may crush you, but it cannot move you no matter its source. As a captain, you’d better get used to telling senior officers to stuff it. Because when things go wrong, they will blame no one else.
Absolute authority. Absolute accountability. And absolutely alone.
Somewhere inside – deep down and dark – a switch flipped.
...To be continued.
This is a work of fiction based on actual events.
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