Ship Aground

Look, scraping an underwater reef is one thing... but jeez, that ship looks like a damned beached whale! I mean, c'mon guys... "hey, I think I see the beach over there, steer away from it."

Of course, I am an Army puke. All I remember is push one lever forward and pull the other one back to turn (the M-113 anyway).

Just this afternoon I got into an argument with my colleagues about the endless second chances our students get. Guess what, the real world doesn't give you those chances. If you don't teach them that early, you're stabbing them in the back.

The results-oriented real world does not suffer failure gladly.

It is finally free and the Captain was relieved...

If the Navy played by these rules 100 years ago a young LT Nimitz would have gotten the sack in 1908 for grounding his destroyer (USS Decatur).

"The Captain was a good man, and this was not his first command. Two years prior, he had commanded the USS Tripoli in the Gulf when she hit a mine; the Captain's skill and leadership and ceaseless preparation of his crew ensured that Tripoli lived to fight another day. So, he was a proven man who had saved a ship in combat.

And he was relieved of his command of Wasp."

That seems like a less than economical use of manpower resources.

Almost always, relieving the captain is the right thing to do under the circumstances, for is this not evidence that he and the pilots he appoints can't be trusted with handling the ship?

I can think of only one exception, when it was worse NOT to run the ship aground: on D-Day, when, according to Army lore, some Navy lieutenants dropped troops too far offshore, rather than risk bringing their landing craft in close, with the result that many soldiers drowned.

There is a big difference between Lt. Nimitz running his destroyer aground in the early 1900s and a modern warship with all the navigational bells and whistles getting stuck outside the gates of Pearl Harbor.

I am not saying the Captain was acting in an incompetent fashion, but when you are entrusted with a billion dollar ship and the lives of its crew then perfection has to be your standard, whether it's feasible to meet or not.

Solomon, you may be confusing that with a destroyer (can't remember the name) whose captain closed with and engaged the German guns at one of the beaches. I don't remember if his intent was to run his ship aground, but I believe it happened and his batteries basically slugged it out with a portion of Hitler's Atlantic Wall.

Perhaps someone else remembers the details a little better than I.

I'm sure the port pilot is also looking for a job right now too!
Your right, there is no excuse for running a ship aground today unless she had a propulsion or steering failure then there might be some slack given.

Joel,

I think you are referring to the Captain of the destroyer who on June 6 1944 observed the slaughter on Omaha beach and took his ship in a close as it could go and blasted holes in the German defenses thus stopping the slaughter and allowing the Americans to begin their advance.

It is an ancient tradition in naval warfare amongst many Navy's that if a Commander loses or damages his ship in peacetime it is court martial and dismissal. If he loses his (or her) ship in wartime due to enemy action there are no personal consequences. The one exception was the USS Indianapolis, the controversy continues to this day.