Why?

Why write this book?

In 2004 I was done with my executive officer tour in USS The Sullivans (DDG 68) and working at the Headquarters, United States Marine Corps. The previous year or so had a spate of commanding officers gracing the cover of Navy Times and the Navy’s Chief of Naval Information (ChInfo) released a story detailing a comprehensive report done by the Navy Inspector General. ChInfo’s offices were down the hall and around the corner so I wandered down and sweet talked a copy from the lieutenant who had it on his desk.
I read through report and thought “this is it?”. There were some great nuggets, and some lessons to be learned, but nothing. Nothing salacious and nothing of import. Basically, the commanders were removed from command, there were no common characteristics and that was that.
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Six years later I was done with my own command tour. There’d been a spike in removals, another report, and at a Surface Navy Association luncheon I sat next to a recently retired Captain who commanded twice at sea. The topic came up and I asked him about the current official line that only about 1% of commanders were being removed. He scoffed and said something to the effect that 1% is too many, no one should be getting fired – they all know what the rules are.  However, I knew that this 1% number was a problem when you moved back in time. Of today’s 2,500 command positions, only 300 are ships. At the end of World War II, the Navy had over 6,000 ships - 20 times as many as today. If the ratio of ships to overall commands held true, then in 1945 wouldn’t you expect a potential removal rate of 500 commanding officers – each year? If 26 removals make headlines today, what would happen with 500? How valid is that accepted number of 1%?

Over the next ten years I collected stories of commanders removed from command. Some I knew, some were friends; none of the stories were good. At the very least a career was over. Sometimes a sailor was dead. Sometimes a ship damaged very badly. And sometimes, rarely, something bad happened and the commander wasn’t removed and moved on and up. What? Something didn’t make sense.

Eventually, I found a list of incidents someone else cataloged and digitized it. I searched and added to it. I found names and ranks and stories and tried to figure out what happened then and compare it to what was happening now.

In the beginning I had some ideas and preconceptions that matched the current beliefs and feelings of officers and sailors in the Navy and Coast Guard. By the time I was done, those ideas were turned on their head.

I ended up enrolling in the PhD program at Salve Regina University with two goals - assuage the decades old desire to earn a doctoral degree and write this book.  The book is a modified form of my dissertation, but not much modified. Without the PhD you wouldn’t have the ethics or leadership pieces towards the end and those were critical to my finding, and understanding, why the Navy today removes more commanders than in years past.
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