Navy Culture

​Navy culture builds on traditions of the sea and seafaring in a nearly unbroken line from the British Empire through today’s modern ships of steel and nuclear weapons. One common saying is that the United States Navy is “over 240 years of tradition, unaffected by progress;” clearly not fully true, however, tradition is a such a cornerstone of naval life that the word is an unofficial fourth core value and the single most common rationale for any action. “Tradition” is used in many ways and forms and often interchangeably with custom and routine.

However, tradition is not the bedrock historical habit commonly believed. In reality, cultures usually invent traditions, consciously creating and adapting them for unique and specific reasons. “The term 'invented tradition' is used in a broad, but not imprecise sense…[and].. includes both 'traditions' actually invented, constructed and formally instituted and those emerging in a less easily traceable manner within a brief and dateable period...” Hobsbawm and Ranger write that the purposes of these “invented traditions” are to “inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour [sic] by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.” They tell us that these creations are “responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations” where tradition differs from convention or routine (lacking significant ritual or symbolic function) and custom (which is flexible where tradition is not).

This created tradition appears and reappears in naval thinking. The most commonly cited form comes from one of the cases later discussed. Following a 1952 collision at sea in which an aircraft carrier cut USS Hobson in half killing 176 sailors, including her captain, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial which reads in part:

• On the sea there is a tradition older even than the traditions of the country itself and wiser in its age than this new custom. It is the tradition that with responsibility goes authority and with them both goes accountability. This accountability is not for the intentions but for the deed. The captain of a ship, like the captain of a state, is given honor and privileges and trust beyond other men. But let him set the wrong course, let him touch ground, let him bring disaster to his ship or to his men, and he must answer for what he has done. No matter what, he cannot escape…

This article has been reproduced and repeated so often that the lessons within are now mythic in nature and scope. Adherents, especially those with limited understanding of history, are unaware that the lessons are more modern than mythic. The lessons are relevant, but they are not as clear as some profess, or even as well understood as some interpret. In fact, in “Hobson’s Choice” we have the first mention of “a tradition older even than the traditions of the country”- the origination of “with responsibility goes authority and with them both goes accountability;” two ideals firmly embedded in today’s Navy.

Modern Navy culture is largely affected by two things - women and World War II. World War II looms large over modern naval thinking. At the United States Naval War College, Pacific battles against the Japanese are studied and dissected. Novels of the war, including Mister Roberts, The Caine Mutiny, Winds of War, and War and Remembrance, are favorites among officers and sailors alike. Women are the modern impact, with female service at sea allowed in two periods - aboard non-combatant ships in the early 1970s, aboard combatant surface ships since 1995, and submarines since 2015. The period between women first embarking ships in the 1970s and embarking surface combatants in 1995 was one of Navy leadership’s most turbulent times, and a time oft written about.

The 1991 Tailhook Scandal provides a central core of writings. More than 100 women, both civilian and active duty, were assaulted at a naval aviation convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. The incident was a social watershed, not only for what happened in Las Vegas, but what happened afterward. The scandal and botched investigation directly claimed the careers of a Secretary of the Navy, a Chief of Naval Operations, at least three admirals, and almost a dozen other officers. The scandal tarnished the reputations of many others, and “tailhook” remains shorthand for an embarrassing, and revealing, chapter in naval history. However, writings on Tailhook deal more with the investigations, or recommendations for the future of women in the service than they do with any crimes of command. Multiple studies and books speak of military issues with sexual assault, drunken debauchery, botched investigations, and general incompetence as crimes, but they are not crimes of command. Crimes of command, in their purest sense, are solely related to being in command. Crimes of command occur when a commander violates the ideal of command.