Sub CO relieved for cause:
The commanding officer of the Pearl Harbor-based fast-attack submarine USS Chicago was stripped of command Monday after he was found guilty of drunkenness and conduct unbecoming an officer during an ROTC visit last week, the Navy said.
An interesting contrast from previous reports of relief for cause: Not only is the CO identified by name, but also his dereliction identified.
Usually the cause is not released for “privacy reasons,” and a generalized “loss of confidence” in one’s ability to command cited.
Apparently a bottle problem is less private than whipping it out inappropriately.
…I’ve got harassment training at work this afternoon. I’ll be interesting to find out how inappropriate the above line is…
Wow! We’re training folks how to harass properly now? Kewl!
Is there anything wrong with that….
Joel’s got not much more than speculation at the moment; the commenters have identified what was in the SITREP, which wasn’t much.
This was the first one that hit near home. Year ahead of me; I’ve got two SOAC classmates now commanding. Sorry to hear of the firing.
Musta been one hell of a bender.
Completely OT, but the F-35 just got its first vertical landing.
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/defense/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&newspaperUserId=27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7&plckPostId=Blog%3a27ec4a53-dcc8-42d0-bd3a-01329aef79a7Post%3acc6f2187-278f-4c7c-843e-411c38d386cd&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest
Navy Times weighs in. Must have been a heck of a session.
Man, I knew the nucs were wound a little tight, but really.
Lemonade and iced tea at the next Tailhook Convention?
It has also made CNN…
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/03/17/sub-commander-fired-for-partying-with-college-students/
Dang. Another one to a bean counting logistics post until his career time expires. This is getting to be a trend these days….. or are we just hearing more about it these days than we used to? (dangling participle be dang…led a bit longer).
Drunk over pitchers of beer at a pizza place? And these fine young future officers couldn’t figure out what to do with the visiting poohbah who was three sheets to the wind?
There are a LOT of leadership issues involved in all that mess.
Hmmm, according to the report he was stateside, did beer and pizzas with the mids. Mids didn’t know how to get him and a JG back to their hotel, called a ROTC unit LT who did the honors and the next day the LT felt compelled to call his Commodore? Uh, something smells here. I’m not saying the CO was justified or anything, but just where and when does an O-3 get the idea to start tattling on an O-5 CO? There’s much more to this story than meets the eye is all I’m saying. I’m guessing John Barleycorn may have let to other, er, indiscretions. Just sayin’
I have that same suspicion. Old Tanglefoot gets it’s name honorably. However, I find it interesting that we seem to have exploded more Command Pin Retention Bolts this past 12 months than JDAMS.
Are we really having that many problems with commanders and actionable offenses, or is their perhaps an undercurrent of backstabbing amongst the understudies?
Could it possibly be that reducing the number of actual command spots while NOT reducing the number of Flags and upper-echelon ranks might be leading to a round of Byzantine Court amongst those NOT in command?
Respects,
If he was _that_ ‘faced, they could have gone through his pockets for his room key. I smell Gurlz.
Gosh, I guess behavior like John Wayne’s in the “Wings of Eagles,” hard drinking, hard fighting is going by the wayside. Now too much beer in a Pizza Parlor is enough to can you?
Or in the “Great Santini” one of my all time favorite books/movies. It accurately portrais Naval/USMC avation back in the day when I was a ENS/JG/LT. It was truly fun to fly in those days.
maybe we got a bit frisky with one of the ROTC’s, and someone got mad/jealous?
Booze, bucks, and broads are all as dangerous as rocks and shoals.
But I agree that I would not any of those mids serving in my unit.
Perhaps some creative visitor around these parts can fashion up Lex’s “command pins should come with explosive bolts” graphic??
There but for the grace of God go I. Many, many times over including today. VX and I would be mere pimples on an elephan’s ass were it not for libations of many kinds.
Well said boss, well said!
Boy, exactly what I said to a guy in my office this PM. I think we all understand you can be removed at any time, for almost any reason. But what line did this guy cross? Don’t get drunk during your command tour? I certainly got the “you can’t do the things you got away with before, even as a DH” speech. But I don’t remember that codicil saying “if you get drunk you get relieved”.
What’s really irking the devil out of me is the lack of explosive bolts firing in other services. Or is it just me? I’ve yet to read or hear of a Battalion/Regimental/Squadron/Wing CO from another Service getting any scorch marks on their shirt/blouse.
Is this just a thing against Navy, or are all the other Services just so damned saintly these days? One has to wonder…I thought we were the kind of folks who had one another’s back.
As for this little flailex, I’m with the rest of you. There has to be more than hootch involved here. Still, they shoulda covered his six.
Fewer ships, more Captains, these days.
I think there is a different blaming culture in the several services. I talked with the ex-brother’s wife’s brother one time about his experiences in the AF. I told him about the Marine Aviator’s complaining that I heard, about the bias toward pilot error in explaining accidents. He said he wished that were so in the AF, being an enlisted maintenance guy. According to him, actual pilot error, more often than not, was blamed on maintenance faults, with some amazing stretches of truth and logic to justify that.
Happens in the Navy, too, though. The case of Kara Hultgren springs to mind.
I’ve yet to read or hear of a Battalion/Regimental/Squadron/Wing CO from another Service getting any scorch marks on their shirt/blouse.
Don’t remember the wholesale canning of cadre and commanders in some Army basic training units a few years back? That lesson stuck so well I know male Army ossifers who won’t even sit at the same table in the DFAC with a female subordinate unless there are witnesses for his possible defense present.
And Army aviation has always been real big on “pilot error” — even when it was obvious that an aircraft part failed. I almost got burned for an emergency landing (no damage to the aircraft, btw) necessitated by a ruptured hydraulic line to the control servos.
Simple. Visiting supermen are not authorized to be in their cups with their aspirant candidates.
Go. Smile a little. Display gravitas. Do not display any sense of humor off script.
Tell the lambies to work, study, strive, and some day you too can have this great job. Hint of tippy top secret daring-do. Mingle just a little at the command performance service dress blue mixer.
Leave.
Royalty does not mix with the pages.
Stuffy. Stuck up. Humorless. The brightly lighted center of the path leading up.
Command at sea is an intelligence test.
Get stupid…lose command.
Cope.
I wish this had happened when *I* was a mid — I’d have taken the Skipper back to my dorm, set him in any available rack, called nobody, and when he awoke the next morning I’d have half a career worth of chits to cash in had I chosen subs.
The “conduct unbecoming” is too vague. If there’s one thing alcohol and rich food in the company of youngsters do to older men it’s make them remember when they were younger. Could have been girls, could have been something classified slipped by while telling sea stories, we’ll probably never know. Still, I’m sort of discounting the girls idea — not something people in command tend to partake in with witnesses around, no matter how polluted.
– Max
Sure sounds chickenshit to me.
ROTC, huh? Another reason I didn’t sign up for the second, or serious, two years of AFROTC was a comment from a guy invited to a dining-in to persuade him to sign up. IIRC, he said that a very senior and very drunk AF Officer asked him, “So, kid, ya wanna join the Air Force? (hic)” The kid answered, of course, “Yessir!” V.s and v.d. officer said, lemme give you some advice: You just play ball with the Air Force,
and the Air Force will shove the bat up yer ass! (hic)” In Vinas Veritas.
Maybe the Captain of that boat was being excessively candid, and telling people EXACTLY what he thought, a known and very dangerous effect of excessive alcohol consumption. Hell, y’all have seen me do that here!
I once had a boss of mine become inebriated while we were TAD somewhere. Guided him back to my room and set him up on my couch, after making sure that he hydrated somewhat. Shrugged off his apologies the next day. He’s now a full-bird Colonel and is writing one of my recommendations for the Chaplain board.
Ding ding, ding ding: USS CHicaga – now hiring. At this rate the promo boards are gonna select and train thru the pipeline an additional 40% to take up the vacancy rate.
Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
Agree there is more here than meets the eye. And now some public utility will get a well trained engineer and the former CO will make $160,000 a year with a lot fewer headaches.
Almost makes you wonder, doesn’t it, if he wasn’t sub-consciously falling on his sword to get to that public utility/$160K job.
The beat goes on, the beat goes on…
If those Middies lacked the leadership ability and creativity to return two inebriated officers to their hotel rooms… that should be a class that isn’t commissioned.
Heck, another NCO and I partially _carried_ our 1SG out of Oktoberfest one year.
Words of advice I was given a long time ago “if it is a work function act like you are at work”. Now this was from an old engineer to me, a mere pup at the time, during the company x-mas party. We where discussing the stumbling department head as he was guided out of the function with his sobing wife trailing. But the rule is simple to remember and should apply in all work related functions, official or not. That way you should not find yourself having to explain something to someone who can make your life less enjoyable.
I tend to take that rule a little farther and not have social relations with my co-workers so my private life is always separate from my employment, a lesson I learned the hard way.
Oh, yeah, Dave. I remember when I was a co-op at Marshall, and making cow-eyes tongue-lolling and bird dog behavior at a much older secretary. I thought I was being perectly discreet until a grumpy old astronomer pulled me aside and said, in so many words, “Don’t get your meat where you get your bread and butter.”
That’s it? At Dining In during fall of 1984 ……
Umm, that’s “perfectly” discreet. Phib, sounds like you owe us a story.