Yesterday USNI News had an article up about defense bill and what the Navy got and what it didn’t get. You can read the whole thing here:
https://news.usni.org/2021/12/07/new-defense-bill-saves-2-cruisers-approves-13-battle-force-ships-adds-12-super-hornets
I’ll get the light work out the way first: It was stupid to save 2 cruisers. When I retired in 2018 I’d recently worked on and been aboard the three Mayport CGs, the Hue City, Philippine Sea and the Gettysburg. I know Gettysburg went to Norfolk to finish her upgrades (because it was taking too much time and costing too much money in Florida so the Navy uprooted all the families and moved them to Virginia…Brilliant). I know for a fact that all three of these ships were in the “rode hard and put up wet” condition, much like the SpruCans that we retired in the early 2000s. The steel part of the ship was in rough condition (remember the CG that had to come back to Norfolk because of a leaking fuel tank?) but the aluminum was in horrible shape. Phil Sea has a fan room outboard of officer country, a long narrow plenum and the over 60 feet of bi-metallic, aluminum bulkhead and steel coaming were in horrible condition. I know. I submitted a condition report on it. Had a hell of an estimate for repairs, too, since the aluminum is critical weld (that’s another rant, er, story). My point is that the only reason why we’re keeping the ships is the financial impact to the local area that two large warships have. Not what they add or subtract to the Navy’s ability to perform it’s mission, but pure freaking pork! Shame!
Safety and the Navy:
“We understand that based on the Navy’s investigation into the USS Bonhomme Richard fire the Chief of Naval Operations intends to restructure the Naval Safety Center into the Naval Safety Command with a more senior flag officer in command and a mandate to ensure safety best practices and lessons learned are more fully incorporated across the Navy,” the joint statement reads
So a senior Flag gets a bigger rice bowl and exactly what does that do to ensure that the Navy is operating safely? My guess is zero. No one yet has felt the pain of that loss, meaning all the officers and senior enlisted responsible for the loss of a capital ship in peacetime. And folks, when no one feels the pain, no one cares because it’s just Mommy yelling again and you know she never spanks us.
When I was a foreman doing new construction, with 130 shipfitters, welders and helpers working for me, I made it my #1 priority that we would work safely. I pushed and prodded and in one week had 3 guys go out for eye injures. That was unacceptable. I had a meeting with both shifts and all supervisors. I told them that everyone would wear their safety glasses 100% of the time including under a welding hood. I also said that I would not only write the employees up, I would also write their supervisors up. TINS. Two weeks later I walk through the shop and I see a guy with no glasses on. I called him over, told him to get his glasses on and go to the office, he was getting a written warning. Called his leadman over, told him the same thing. Leadman laughed it off. I told him next violation was 3 days off. 2 days later, he got three days off. Yes, I gave a supervisor unpaid time off. I never had a problem that a look couldn’t fix and I never had another eye injury. THAT’S how you get people started in a safety state of mind. Eventually they come to understand that I wasn’t doing it for me, it was for them.
The Navy already has years of practice at doing things safely and tons of manuals and procedures that tell you in detail how to do it. Fire Safety is something that should be beat into every sailor from the day they report to boot, OCS or the damned Academy. I know the requirements for us contractors are both lengthy and detailed. They are spelled in in the 17 pages of Navy Standard Item 009-07, para, 2.2 through 2.8:
https://www.navsea.navy.mil/Portals/103/Documents/SSRAC/NSI/FY20/Finals/009-07_FY20%20NMD.pdf
Now here’s the really important part: this never works unless it’s enforced. At Mayport we had a gang of ruthless safety people both from our side and from NAVSEA and every morning they did a safety walk of every job site along with a ships force representative. We made sure that we were squared away before the got there but anything not to their pleasure was fixed ASAP. It was the right thing to do and every petty thing was important. I knew that, I’d been to shipboard fire fighting school at Mayport in the early 80s when they wanted some of us to know what it was like. Didn’t have to convince me.
So what’s it going to be, big Navy? Business as usual until the next big fire? And if it does happen to be a contractor, burn their asses, they deserve it!
Safety in the Navy and Cruisers
Byron for CNO! You make more sense than anyone in the Pentagon or Capitol Hill. We are not going to be prepared when war kicks off in the Western Pacific