Crimes of Command
1985 - 2015
The last decades of the twentieth century proved tumultuous for the United States Navy. The promise of President Ronald Reagan’s 600-ship Navy brought more and more advanced technology to the navy. Ships continued growing, but the dangerous steam plants gave way to more advanced, more reliable, more powerful, and far safer gas-turbine technology. Ships were safer, navigation more precise, and the training programs instituted in the 1970s were in full form. Major fires dropped from a mid-1980s high to an almost imperceptible statistical blip by the end of the millennium. Major collisions and groundings were, in comparison to earlier years, rare. However, while overall ships numbers dropped, from 571 in 1985 to only 287 in 2015 and personnel numbers fell from 579,000 in 1985 to 327,000 in 2015, the number of crimes of command remained steady. and removal from command skyrocketed. Where the first four post-war decades averaged roughly 25 incidents per year and the three following decades averaged 24 incidents per year, command removal jumped from 1 or fewer per year to average 10 per year between 1985 and 2015, with a clear increase as the millennium approached. Only two years, 2005 and 2006, had fewer than 10 command removals in the 21st century. Absolute blame and culpability for individual and collective action now resided in the individual commander. The weight of the command literally rested on one person’s shoulders. While technology made operations safer, a safer world also reduced the margin for error.
The new Arleigh Burke-class destroyer was commissioned in 1991 and even thirty years later is the world’s premier surface combatant. Over 500 feet long and displacing over 8000 tons, these ships are almost the size of McVay’s Indianapolis with only a crew of 300 officers and men. By 1989 diesel submarines were gone from the force and the Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered submarines ruled the seas. These submarines are 362 feet long, displace over 6,000 tons with a crew of 129 officers and men. Capable of launching torpedoes and land attack guided missiles, no place on the globe lies beyond their reach. By the end of the millennium navigation systems integrate visual and radar information with the Global Positioning System (GPS) and electronic displays instantly show positions on charts relative to land masses, water depths, and even other ships. A worldwide system of satellite and underwater reconnaissance provides improved and detailed charts. Ships now determine where they are, to within feet, and like fires, groundings dropped to statistically negligible numbers. Improvements in radar, and fewer ships at sea, also meant fewer collisions. Crimes of command remained but the consequences are significantly different from previous decades.
The Navy never reached the 600-ship goal, suffering instead through a steady drawdown as the Cold War ended, counter-terrorism took center stage, and social and individual actions eclipsed operational issues. In previous decades, Connelly Stevenson and Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter were outliers but, by the late 1990s, the Navy removed far more commanders for personal failures than true crimes of command. However, over time operational crimes of command acquired the same taint as personal failings, and all misdeeds are corrected the same way - removal and administrative discipline. While leaders laid the foundation in the forty years after World War II, their successors erected and gilded the temple of accountability in the last years of the century. In these last decades the final movement from an individual commander’s personal responsibility to one of command culpability was finalized and taken one step further. While professional actions of the commander or crew remained paramount, by the first decade of the twenty-first century, commanders were liable for the individual personal actions their crew took; like Captain Arthur Fredrickson in Ranger, modern commanders were now accountable for junior sailors knowingly turning the wrong valves and the actions taken by those sailors on liberty, at their homes, on travel or even vacation. By the end of the twentieth century commanders were wholly and completely accountable for every action within their commands – even as their authority eroded under increased communications technology and easier oversight and intrusiveness of supervisory commanders who were in turn less physically connected to the sea.
USS Stark - 1987
The 1970s-era Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate was conceived as a low-cost supplement to carrier battle groups and as escorts for North Atlantic convoys expected to reinforce Europe in a war between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact. These 400-foot long, 4,000-ton ships were the true successors to World War II era destroyers and destroyer escorts like Hobson, Frank E. Evans, Charles H. Roan, Hartley, and Brownson in a way the Arleigh Burke-class cannot be. However, without a major sea war and increasing global commitments, even these small ships ultimately operate on their own. At 9:09 p.m., on May 17, 1987, USS Stark (FFG 31), under Captain Glenn Brindel’s command, operated alone in the central Persian Gulf where an Iraqi Mirage F-1 fighter jet fired two Exocet anti-ship cruise missiles at her. While the first missile did not explode, the second missile’s explosion, both missiles’ unexpended fuel and the weapons’ impact killed 37 of Stark’s 200 sailors. Another twenty-one sailors were injured.
Read more about Stark:
USS Cole - 2000
On October 12, 2000, shortly after 11 a.m., as the crew lined up for lunch, two men drove a small boat along USS Cole’s (DDG 67) port side and detonated blocks of C-4, Semtex, RDX (cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine) and TNT.[1] The explosion killed seventeen of the 296 crew and injured 42 others, ripping a 32-foot by 36-foot hole and causing extensive internal blast damage.
Read more on Cole:
USS William P. Lawrence - 2013, and unfinished
On September 22, 2013, during operations in the Red Sea, a wave struck a helicopter shortly after it landed aboard USS William P. Lawrence (DDG 110) breaking the helicopter free of its moorings and sending the helicopter and its pilots into the ocean. Both pilots died.
The new Arleigh Burke-class destroyer was commissioned in 1991 and even thirty years later is the world’s premier surface combatant. Over 500 feet long and displacing over 8000 tons, these ships are almost the size of McVay’s Indianapolis with only a crew of 300 officers and men. By 1989 diesel submarines were gone from the force and the Los Angeles-class nuclear-powered submarines ruled the seas. These submarines are 362 feet long, displace over 6,000 tons with a crew of 129 officers and men. Capable of launching torpedoes and land attack guided missiles, no place on the globe lies beyond their reach. By the end of the millennium navigation systems integrate visual and radar information with the Global Positioning System (GPS) and electronic displays instantly show positions on charts relative to land masses, water depths, and even other ships. A worldwide system of satellite and underwater reconnaissance provides improved and detailed charts. Ships now determine where they are, to within feet, and like fires, groundings dropped to statistically negligible numbers. Improvements in radar, and fewer ships at sea, also meant fewer collisions. Crimes of command remained but the consequences are significantly different from previous decades.
The Navy never reached the 600-ship goal, suffering instead through a steady drawdown as the Cold War ended, counter-terrorism took center stage, and social and individual actions eclipsed operational issues. In previous decades, Connelly Stevenson and Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter were outliers but, by the late 1990s, the Navy removed far more commanders for personal failures than true crimes of command. However, over time operational crimes of command acquired the same taint as personal failings, and all misdeeds are corrected the same way - removal and administrative discipline. While leaders laid the foundation in the forty years after World War II, their successors erected and gilded the temple of accountability in the last years of the century. In these last decades the final movement from an individual commander’s personal responsibility to one of command culpability was finalized and taken one step further. While professional actions of the commander or crew remained paramount, by the first decade of the twenty-first century, commanders were liable for the individual personal actions their crew took; like Captain Arthur Fredrickson in Ranger, modern commanders were now accountable for junior sailors knowingly turning the wrong valves and the actions taken by those sailors on liberty, at their homes, on travel or even vacation. By the end of the twentieth century commanders were wholly and completely accountable for every action within their commands – even as their authority eroded under increased communications technology and easier oversight and intrusiveness of supervisory commanders who were in turn less physically connected to the sea.
USS Stark - 1987
The 1970s-era Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigate was conceived as a low-cost supplement to carrier battle groups and as escorts for North Atlantic convoys expected to reinforce Europe in a war between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Warsaw Pact. These 400-foot long, 4,000-ton ships were the true successors to World War II era destroyers and destroyer escorts like Hobson, Frank E. Evans, Charles H. Roan, Hartley, and Brownson in a way the Arleigh Burke-class cannot be. However, without a major sea war and increasing global commitments, even these small ships ultimately operate on their own. At 9:09 p.m., on May 17, 1987, USS Stark (FFG 31), under Captain Glenn Brindel’s command, operated alone in the central Persian Gulf where an Iraqi Mirage F-1 fighter jet fired two Exocet anti-ship cruise missiles at her. While the first missile did not explode, the second missile’s explosion, both missiles’ unexpended fuel and the weapons’ impact killed 37 of Stark’s 200 sailors. Another twenty-one sailors were injured.
Read more about Stark:
- Inside the Danger Zone: The U.S. Military in the Persian Gulf, 1987-88 by Harold Lee Wise
- Missile Inbound: The Attack on the Stark in the Persian Gulf by Jeffrey L. Levinson and Randy L. Edwards
USS Cole - 2000
On October 12, 2000, shortly after 11 a.m., as the crew lined up for lunch, two men drove a small boat along USS Cole’s (DDG 67) port side and detonated blocks of C-4, Semtex, RDX (cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine) and TNT.[1] The explosion killed seventeen of the 296 crew and injured 42 others, ripping a 32-foot by 36-foot hole and causing extensive internal blast damage.
Read more on Cole:
USS William P. Lawrence - 2013, and unfinished
On September 22, 2013, during operations in the Red Sea, a wave struck a helicopter shortly after it landed aboard USS William P. Lawrence (DDG 110) breaking the helicopter free of its moorings and sending the helicopter and its pilots into the ocean. Both pilots died.
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