CG CO relieved

[Spekkio]

No, it doesn't.

A better explanation is that the Navy failed to move on Graf earlier not in spite of her gender but because of it. Following the Tailhook scandal — in which Navy aviators assaulted dozens of women at a 1991 convention — the service rushed women to sea to show it was no longer locked in the Dark Ages. The service was under political pressure to diversify its leadership, and Graf was part of the answer: the first woman to command both a destroyer and a cruiser. Some veterans believe Graf needed more time to prepare for those commands. "I have some sympathy for her," says Nicole Waybright, a young female officer who served with Graf on the Wilbur Curtis. "The Navy felt under pressure to take a woman and put her on the best and most complicated tactical platform," Waybright says. "But she didn't have much experience on it." Some rookies could have stepped up to that challenge, she adds, but not Graf. "She was," Waybright says, "a terrible ship handler."

The article insinuates that Graf is a victim of the Navy pushing undeserving women into positions of command in an overzealous effort to diversify itself.

I don't buy it...it was Graf who chose to make the Navy a career. She accepted the command assignments instead of retiring. Clearly she thought she had the ability to have command at sea.

 

[Cabbage]

Ah, how could we have missed it? The good Captain was merely a victim of sexism in the Navy, that's all.

CAPT Graf is a chick? No way!

 

[jollygreen07]

Hmm.. I didn't know that the Navy had a destroyer named WILBUR CURTIS. Oh, wait, Time Magazine is too busy to worry about the little details. Decent article. Seemed pretty fair, which is rare for a Time article on the military.

 

[nittany03]

No, it doesn't. The article insinuates that Graf is a victim of the Navy pushing undeserving women into positions of command in an overzealous effort to diversify itself.

I don't buy it...it was Graf who chose to make the Navy a career. She accepted the command assignments instead of retiring. Clearly she thought she had the ability to have command at sea.

OK, poor choice of words; we agree on the gist of the article. I guess I read "sexism" as "male chauvinism" not "preferring either gender over the other."

 

[phrogdriver]

Thought this was interesting in view of the topic. SP has a high BS quotient, but does have some things that make one think.

 

[CommodoreMid]

I challenge the author's math when he says 90/100 ensigns will make LCDR since that's the selection rate. He neglects to consider that 90% comes from those who stayed past their initial commitments. In reality it's much lower since a lot of people bail. With those numbers come the question of retention in general. Are we keeping the best and the brightest, or does the fact that they leave cause some otherwise unqualified people (people like Graf) get a chance to command? There's no real way to prove this either way unless Big Navy were to do some kind of massive study on the quality of fitreps of those who left vs those who got screened for promotion/dept head/command. Even then, that neglects the idea of a 360 evaluation that could theoretically could have prevented a person with such sadistic tendencies of Graf to get command.

In short, I don't think there is a good solution to this supposed leadership problem.

 

[Flash]

Out here in Japan, I have not heard one good thing said about HAG by the officers who served with, under, or near her. I think I felt Yoko breathe a collective sigh of relief when she was removed, but it quickly turned into an outraged groan when we all found out she'd been shuffled off somewhere and was keeping her rank and benefits.

Maybe not. In the latest update a Navy board is recommending a General Discharge when she retires. No reduction in rank (the bar is pretty high for officers two-star and below) but more than just a slap on the wrist.

I noticed she is still blaming her wardroom......

 

[BigRed389]

Maybe premature since I believe it still goes to SECNAV for action but:

 

[Uncle Fester]

I didn't find it amazing. I'm sure it's exactly what she told her attorney. It's the excuse matrix common to every shitty leader: It's their fault, not mine... It's a few malcontents spreading rumors and fanning the flames... I'm the victim of a conspiracy... I was saddled with a lousy wardroom/squadron/company, what could I do? See The Caine Mutiny to see it dramatized, it's dead-on. I'll note that not one person who's worked with, for, or near her has anything good to say about her.

I've worked for a captain who was exactly like her, except the physical assaults (and I'm fairly sure that's just because he was too chickenshit to hit anyone).

 

[phrogdriver]

In the book, The Caine Mutiny, the situation isn't nearly as clear cut as the movie, BTW.

As in many domestic situations, a female tends to hit a lot more than a male, because she know she'll get away with it, and that the male is the one who will get in trouble if he hits back.

 

[Uncle Fester]

A warship counts as domestic violence?

It's fairly clear to me that Captain Graf was in over her head when they put her in command. Being captain is a big job and it's the rare person who can handle it. Plenty of CO's get relieved for one reason or another - booze, fucking the help, abusing the crew, running aground, etc and so on. The only reason this case got noticed by the General Public is because of the CO's gender. The whiff of possible scandal caught the media's attention.

Within the Navy at least, I've never heard anyone say anything about the fact that she's a woman having anything to do with her either being in command or getting relieved. She was a shitty CO, she crossed the line when physical abuse started, she got fired. Period. Should she have been in command in the first place? Shit, I don't know, and I don't know how you could answer that definitively. I'm sure we've all seen CO's - male, female, and questionable - who should never have been given command.

If anything, I'd chalk this episode and many others to the Navy's passive-aggressive evaluation system. For fear of a vindictive CO killing the career of a promising officer, they've made it nearly impossible to give someone a negative evaluation for anything short of criminal misconduct. You can't say anything negative about someone in the Tank in Millington during screen boards. You can't give a frowny-face fitrep without REALLY good reason. If anyone in the process had any misgivings about Holly Graf's fitness for command, there would have been almost no way for them to do anything about it.

 

[phrogdriver]

I was likening one aspect of this to domestic violence, not the warship. A male CO hits me, he's getting hit right back. I'll still have a fighting chance when they investigate, and I'd get the chance to beat the hell out of him, too (not to mention being the legendary guy who kicked the crap out of CO). A female CO hits me...well, let's just say it'd be hard to get drinks at the club after beating her up, even if she started it.

 

[Uncle Fester]

Well, there is that. There's no upside to fighting a girl. If you win, you're a bully. If you lose, you're a pussy. Even if the girl has several paygrades on you.

The weird-abusive-eccentric Captain stories are dime-a-dozen out there in the Shoe world. One of my favorites is the CO who stormed aboard at 0100 on a Saturday morning inport, telling the CDO to get everyone in and take care of the mast cases on his desk. Nothing urgent in the cases, you understand; he just apparently decided to dispense some justice during the midwatch.

Guy I worked for got into a screaming match with the Panama Canal pilot during a transit. Almost drowned me and my boat crew when he insisted on putting the RHIB in during high seas. Tried to tell the helo det OIC that only he had wave-off authority, and if he told them to land, by God, they were going to land! We were all proud to be his crew, needless to say.

Anyway, he was an awful CO; incompetent shiphandler, screaming, abusive, mercurial. No one liked or trusted him. Never should have been in command in the first place. He was passive-aggressively 'relieved' by the Commodore (i.e., told to turn over command six months early and retire) and no more was said. If he'd had ovaries, then this exact debate would have been going on then, too.

My point is, shitty CO's get through the system regardless of gender.

 

[Clux4]

We have an inadequate evaluation system across DOD. There are 3 groups of people that are in position to evaluate ones competence, your peers, your subordinates and your supervisors. Granted it is easiest to allow just supervisors to do the evaluation, it leaves much to be desired. Efforts should be made to create a well rounded system and not just settle for what we have today. Assigning arbitrary numbers/letters plus colorful statements is not enough and that is why we see all this mediocrity around.

If a CO threw a mug at me or caused me any bodily harm, I would make sure he always remembered where he crossed the line. If he even thinks of pulling that shit with me, it is because the last guy did not teach him a lesson.

 

[BigRed389]

We have an inadequate evaluation system across DOD. There are 3 groups of people that are in position to evaluate ones competence, your peers, your subordinates and your supervisors. Granted it is easiest to allow just supervisors to do the evaluation, it leaves much to be desired. Efforts should be made to create a well rounded system and not just settle for what we have today. Assigning arbitrary numbers/letters plus colorful statements is not enough and that is why we see all this mediocrity around.

If a CO threw a mug at me or caused me any bodily harm, I would make sure he always remembered where he crossed the line. If he even thinks of pulling that shit with me, it is because the last guy did not teach him a lesson.

There are WAY too many potential problems with a system like that.