Admiral Rat Willard holds forth on the late fire aboard USS George Washington. Elements of which are relevant to my former interests.
Of interest to professional readers keen to know how things could have gone south so quickly aboard one of our capital warships. Potentially of interest to others interested in witnessing a four star wire brushing of pretty much everybody.
Other potential causal factors not enumerated: Eviscerate two three-star flag staffs, proclaim them “re-aligned” as one coherent whole by fiat (in two, widely disparate places), yet – and this is critical – leave the flag officer flagpoles and front office staff in place at each site just to keep the unity of command lines suitable blurred.
Extra credit: Pat yourself on the back for the “efficiencies” thus garnered. Load the CO up with a crew that hadn’t been to sea in 18 months, a training track that took him south for critically important “international engagment” exercises chiefly of interest to Southern Command staff officers habitually starved of assets, mix in a cultural attitude of “can do” no matter what, leaven with with an unalterable deployment timeline regardless of performance and add HAZMAT in unsecure spaces to taste.
Don’t get me wrong: There was plenty of blame to go around here, and the ship’s leadership owned the vast majority of it. But we increasingly push our folks to do more with less, look for efficiencies and “knuckles in the curve”, load people up with more than anyone could possible bear and then cut them off at the knees when they stumble.
What’s the hurt? We can always make more captains.
HAZMAT in uptakes??????????? WTF?????? My guess is that for starters, follow-up on findings during inspections of spaces is non-existent. Fire spread to that many spaces with the available fire crews aboard a carrier is inexcusable. Boundaries boundaries boundaries. My mantra when I was a FTG REFTRA Instructor, and still so when we morphed into ATG and adopted that whole “train the trainer” Tactical Training Strategy. Also seems that the DCTT may be lacking in the fundamentals. Big turd sandwich this’ll be for sure. Glad I’m retired now… I’d hate to be anywhere near this mess.
NOW they want more oversight from TYCOMs? In my experience, all the way up from #1 Nozzle, through on-scene leader, DCTT member and finally Repair Locker 7A DCTT Lead, senior leadership did not get involved in the nuts and bolts of our training. DC training always seemed to be the Big XO’s game. If the carrier strike group commander had any inkling about the efficacy of our fire teams, I’d be surprised to hear it. And I’d be especially surprised to hear of any senior officers outside the skin of the ship who did, either. Except for the ones, of course, who read, and signed off on, the reports from the ATG experts who trained the trainers.
As I said when this first happened: whoever signed off on those ZIDLs should be horsewhipped. Add to that the poor suckers who gave the CHENG lip service and didn’t get rid of that stuff when told to.
Lex,
Completely, totally agree with you but it has always been thus. Deployment dates are deployment dates and in my younger years a FTS was the kiss of death for a CO/CHENG. Nowadays we average 5-7 a week and the ISIC’s can’t really hold the officers they’ve shorted with the required, time, money, manpower accountable can they?
Willard wirebrushed CUSFFC! but he used the word “witting” in his endorsement so he loses points.
I read both the JAGMAN and the endorsements and find it interesting that the typical NAVSEA puke response is that 6-189-1-Q should NOT be inspected by ship’s force. Here’s a space that goes from the 6th deck to the 02 level and they think it should remain off-limits to ship’s company.
All those ISIC and TYCOM inspections failed but what failed the most was the failure of the leadership to execute a simple zone inspection scheme. Unless you’re an ISIC or TYCOM, you get what you inspect.
3 GQ’s in how many months? Isn’t that the rule? GQ is always something you do after you’ve done everything else to satisfy the airwing, the unrep schedule, the mandatory diversity training and it should be scheduled sometime after working hours if at all possible.
Interesting how the MM2’s burns were repeatedly found to be in the line of duty. I wonder what congressman was breathing down their necks when they kept writing those words.
Thanks again for offering an always interesting and informative online oasis.
Lex, I read the whole report, unclassified version, on the Geo. Washington fire. It was strange, I had the same root questions on Air Force tanker issue. Are we just treating the symptoms or are we actually treating the disease? If we are actually treating the disease, are we talking of an isolated case? Could it be a small cluster of cases, or even a small group of clusters? The thing I dread is we may be talking of an epidemic, or even worse, a pandemic. The really FUBAR aspect to this whole issue is that it was PREVENTABLE. Learn from history!
Sounds like special forces or seals or ranger school. Give the students more than anyone can handle, fail the worst students and what you have left is the best you can get. It seems unfair but there’s lots of precedents. If you can’t take a joke get out of the service.
Uh, “uptakes” on a nuke CV? I was just sitting here trying to figure out why the ship wasn’t allowed in the uptakes when I realized there ain’t no GTBN and no boiler. Are you sure this space isn’t an exhaust space for ventilation? Or does it lead from a emer. diesel genset?
Byron, I’ve been told they are vestigial spaces from the early Nimitzes which apparently had extra reboilers for hotel steam? In any case many of these spaces aren’t necessary any more but they never changed the design. I’m not sure I got that right but that’s the gist of it.
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As to that whole “combined staff” and look at the efficiences BS, we in Europe squeezed 1400 billets down to 499 (why 499? Because, said ADM Ulrich, it’s one less than 500) and became a combined Naval component command and a numbered fleet. Five days ago, the same number of bodies became NAVEUR/NAVAFRICOM/C6F. We got more holes than swiss cheese.
Willard criticizing this is the pot calling the kettle black. Particularly since he was involved in most of the “efficiencies” and realignments you cite.
The realignment of CNAF is a subject that probably deserves it’s own post. I was witness to a lot of what went on then-and Willard was not above skewing a postion to help out a fellow flag officer he liked. He fostered a flag realignment in Japan that did not work from the gitgo and now after 6 years, and finally watching the current incumbent screw the proverbial pooch-they are changing things back to the way it was-and always should have been.
“vestigal spaces”? That’s just dumb. Supercarriers might just be the largest ships afloat, but they are always short of space to work in.
I recall the vestigal space on 1st ship… a 2 cell brig below A-gang berthing side by side with the forward EDG.
An uptake that runs from the sixth deck up to the 0-8? is not a “vestigal” space. I’ve crawled uptakes on Sara and Fid, and they take a pretty fair size amount of space. Donkey or auxillary boiler, on the other hand, wouldn’t be as large, maybe 4′ diameter, vice twice that for a steam powered CV. And I truly hate uptakes
[...] Lex has the report and fallout of the fire on the Aircraft Carrier GEORGE [...]
Lucky those four guys in the pump room were saved, especially when two cutting torch kits didn’t work. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, and try some more.
I know RADM Drennan. Smart guy, very calm demeanor. He seems to have done a good job with this investigation. Your observations about loading up the force with work and making them do more with less is correct. We’re going to have more accidents if we don’t quit trying to do literally EVERYTHING on the scheap.
And the fact that a space with bulkheads from the 6th deck to the O-2 level isn’t at least on a watchstanders inspection log is a crime.
The EA-03 folks obviously didn’t have good leadership, and the fact that DC equipment wasn’t in good shape or was imperfectly utilized is a pretty hefty ding, but it appears the crew did a reasonable job, given all the reports you typically hear over the sound powered phones in these cases, fighting a bad fire. They didn’t shine.
But they didn’t let anyone get killed either. This could have been a helluva lot worse.
Subsunk
Process:
1. Pillory the people responsible (the ones with their names redacted) in front of the Navy Exchange so that passersby can pelt them with rotten fruit and vegetables.
2. Bring back public flogging. Yardarm hangings, too.
3. Put their pictures in every schoolhouse, every boot camp, and every damage control locker with a statement of why those things are there.
4. Learn and never let this happen again.