Command of a Carrier : Prestige Often Fleeting for the Chosen Few

They are the chosen few: 14 of the Navy’s most daring and highly decorated war heroes who each day play the role of judge, jury, jailer, father figure, fire chief, treasurer and mayor aboard a floating city of 6,000.

Few jobs in America can match the power and prestige of a commanding officer of an aircraft carrier. But along with the unbridled authority comes the peril that a freak accident, such as a fire or oil spill, could end an illustrious military career spanning decades of distinguished service.

Seven commanding officers have been disciplined during the last 3 1/2 years for carrier mishaps ranging from collisions at sea to the death of a sailor in a shipboard brig.

Capt. Phillip R. Wood, who relinquished command of the Kitty Hawk in San Diego on Friday, was admonished in October for his role in improper supply purchases. He will retire March 31 after 31 years of service.

Capt. Robert Leuschner was replaced Jan. 27 as skipper of the Enterprise after the ship struck a rock off the coast of San Diego last November, causing $17 million in damage to the hull.

And the Navy is investigating an incident in which the Coral Sea ran into shallow water in the eastern Mediterranean in December, causing the ship’s water condensers to ingest large amounts of sand. A Navy spokesman said the ship’s commanding officer, Capt. Robert Ferguson, is not likely to be disciplined. Ferguson took control of the Coral Sea from Capt. Gene Tucker, who was fired in May after the carrier collided with an Ecuadorean oil tanker.

The recent string of disciplinary cases has led some top Navy officers to reconsider their career goal of commanding an aircraft carrier. Recently, several senior officers have declined commanding officer jobs in favor of bureaucratic jobs in the Pentagon, Navy sources said.

For some captains, the tremendous career risks of running a carrier, combined with a new incentive program to encourage top-notch Navy officers to become budget and procurement specialists in Washington, have taken some of the polish off the prestigious position of commanding officer of a carrier. This is a departure from the days when leading a 90,000-ton carrier was every sailor’s dream and a guaranteed ticket to a promotion to admiral.

“Some individuals prefer the Washington scene where you fight the budget every year,” said Eugene J. Carroll Jr., a retired admiral who is deputy director of the Center for Defense Information in Washington. “ . . . It’s a hell of a lot safer than being commander on a carrier. You’re not at the mercy of some seaman or fireman in an aft boiler room turning the wrong valve . . . or a storekeeper who fiddles with the computer.”

To a large extent, the fate of a commander of a carrier rests with his 6,000 crew members, whose average age is 19 1/2.

Last year, the Navy began selecting procurement officers for possible promotion to admiral who would not have to compete with veteran combat officers for the higher rank. The Navy currently has 900 officers, ranging from commander to admiral, who are procurement specialists.

“Now, pursuing a career in procurement . . . provides a path to promotion all the way to four stars that is as attractive as (traditional warfare officers),” Navy Secretary John Lehman Jr. told the House Armed Services Committee earlier this month.

But after the new promotion standards were introduced last year, the Navy began to lose some of its highly qualified leaders at sea to desk jobs, Carroll said.

“All the management specialists in the world won’t do you a damn bit of good if you don’t know how to conduct efficient operations with ships and planes,” said Carroll, who commanded the carrier Midway during the Vietnam War.

Nonetheless, most Navy captains continue to strive for command positions on carriers.

Capt. David Hoffman, who succeeded Wood, said he did not hesitate to accept the opportunity to become commanding officer of the Kitty Hawk.

“This is what I’ve wanted to do since 1958 when I went into the Naval Academy,” said Hoffman, 44, a decorated fighter pilot who flew 200 combat missions over North Vietnam and was a prisoner of war for 15 months. “I recognize the risks. . . . I’m far more interested in going ahead and taking the challenge and seeing if I can meet up with it.

“The basic definition of a successful naval career is to make captain. I’ve done that. . . . If something happens to me that has happened to some very fine naval officers, so be it.”

The seven commanding officers whose careers were tarnished by various accidents all approached their assignments with the same confidence and impressive credentials as Hoffman. In some instances, brilliant Navy careers of captains on carriers were destroyed before they could reach the rank of admiral.

The commanding officer of a carrier typically begins his Navy career as an ensign after graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md. Over a period of decades, he climbs the ladder up the ranks of lieutenant, commander and captain.

“No one ever told us we had to take this job,” Wood said. “We fight very hard, we’re very competitive, we’re aggressive and we do a lot of things in order to get selected. We’ve all grown up together and we want to do better than the next guy.

“When (a commanding officer) has a collision or a major oil spill or a race riot on board, we feel sorry for him. But that’s the way it is. He didn’t do something right. Maybe he could have avoided that, you know.”

Wood acknowledged that his colleagues probably felt the same way about the supply department problems that plagued his ship.

The following are the seven commanding officers who have been formally disciplined by the Navy since 1982:

- Capt. Dan Pederson retired after he received his second letter of censure in October, 1982, for the reported abuse of crewmen being held in a brig aboard the Ranger. Navy officials had predicted a bright future for Pederson before the 1981 death of 20-year-old Airman Recruit Paul Trerice, who was forced to do exercises and put on a diet of bread and water before he died of heat stroke.

- Capt. Robert E. Taylor was reprimanded and not promoted to admiral after the Kitty Hawk collided with the Canadian destroyer Yukon in January, 1983. At the time, the Kitty Hawk was undergoing sea trials off the Washington coast as part of the final stage of a 13-month overhaul.

- In a particularly embarrassing episode in April, 1983, thousands of cheering relatives were waiting to greet the crew of the nuclear-powered Enterprise on its return home from an eight-month cruise when the carrier ran aground in San Francisco Bay. Navy officials immediately announced that they were conducting an inquiry into the grounding that could have “catastrophic career implications” for the ship’s commander, Capt. Robert J. Kelly.

Kelly, who later described the accident as an “ignoble end” to his last voyage, accepted full responsibility for the grounding. But the incident apparently did not jeopardize his career. Although the Navy probe concluded that “human error” caused the accident, Kelly was promoted two months later to commodore and is now a rear admiral.

- Capt. Arthur Frederickson was reprimanded after the Ranger hit the fleet tanker Wichita in July, 1983--only one week after he relieved Capt. Anthony Less. The collision, which caused nearly $1 million in damage to both ships, occurred on Frederickson’s second day of a six-month deployment to the western Pacific.

Four months later, Frederickson was in trouble again after a fire broke out in one of the Ranger’s machinery rooms, killing six sailors. The original inquiry into the fire’s cause placed the blame on two low-ranking enlisted men, but the chief of naval operations refused to accept those findings.

Adm. James D. Watkins concluded that ultimate responsibility for the fire rested with the chain of command and issued an administrative letter of caution to Frederickson. Watkins also went back and disciplined Less for serious engineering department deficiencies even though he had turned the ship over to Frederickson four months earlier. Frederickson quit the Navy in July. Less is a rear admiral in Washington who works for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

- Capt. Tucker was fired as commanding officer of the Coral Sea in June because the Navy “lost confidence” in him. The dismissal stemmed from a nighttime collision between the Coral Sea and an Ecuadorean oil tanker off the coast of Cuba. For reasons that remain unclear, the carrier made two left turns as it approached the tanker, putting it on a collision course.

- Capt. Leuschner was replaced Jan. 27 by Capt. Robert Spane after the Nov. 2 crash of the Enterprise. The warship struck an underwater mountain 100 miles southwest of San Diego, ripping a 40-foot gash in the outer hull. Leuschner recently reported to Washington for his next assignment.

- Capt. Wood was issued an administrative letter of caution for his “deviations from accepted standards in supply and financial management” aboard the Kitty Hawk. Such letters are intended to improve efficiency rather than being a form of punishment, a Navy spokesman said. The action came as a result of a Navy investigation into charges of widespread waste and abuse aboard the ship made by Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) and Petty Officer 2nd Class Robert Jackson.

During an interview earlier this month in his Kitty Hawk cabin, Wood reflected on the pressures that commanding officers face once they are accused of neglecting their responsibilities.

“When you are in a little bit of difficulty, there are some admirals who will support you because . . . they’ve been there,” Wood said. “The worst thing is to have an admiral who’s never been a commanding officer of an aircraft carrier trying to decide your fate. . . . There’s a lot of senior officers in the Navy who will let you hang out to dry . . . and you get to be very lonely.”

In his case, Wood said, Adm. Sylvester Foley, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet before he retired last fall, and Vice Adm. James Service, commander of the Pacific Fleet’s naval air force, refused to allow top Navy officials to give him a punitive letter.

Wood’s case has sparked a renewed interest among commanding officers in focusing special attention on all operations aboard carriers, from the quality of the four tons of meat and vegetables served daily to the spare parts inventory of 100,000 line items valued at more than $200 million.

Some carrier commanders make the mistake of spending nearly all of their time on the bridge, the place where navigators maneuver the ship and air officers oversee the movement of aircraft on the crowded deck. In doing so, they neglect other critical operations on the 16 decks below.

“I’ve seen commanding officers stay on the bridge so long that they are reduced to vegetables,” Carroll said. “They failed because they trapped themselves on the bridge and wouldn’t go take care of the other things on the ship that are so important. . . . You’re sitting on one of the great power plants of the world, and you better know how it works and how it is maintained or you will be in trouble.”

Other crucial responsibilities aboard a carrier include the handling of 20,000 tons of conventional weapons, loading 4,500 barrels of jet fuel, converting 400,000 gallons of salt water into fresh water daily, and distributing a monthly payroll that exceeds $8 million.

In the wake of the Kitty Hawk’s supply problems, commanding officers recently were informed by the chief of naval operations that they must keep a strict watch over their ships’ accounting practices.

“We will attack the notion that readiness, without due regard for accountability, can be used as an excuse to continue improper supply practices,” Watkins said.

This responsibility, combined with the other risks inherent in managing an aircraft carrier, has led newly appointed commanding officers to thoroughly examine their warships before they assume control. Once a commanding officer signs his relieving documents, he is held accountable for anything that goes wrong, even if blame for an accident can be traced to his predecessor.

“We go into it with our eyes wide open,” Wood said.

Wood recalled that when he took over the Kitty Hawk in August, 1984, he was startled to learn that low-ranking sailors were changing the ship’s oil during off hours.

“I come to find out the third class (petty officer) could do it on a weekend,” Wood said. “Well, you know that’s just an accident waiting to happen.”

Wood said he crossed his fingers that no oil was spilled in San Diego Bay between his change of command ceremony and the next morning, when he huddled with his staff.

“I got them in here and I told them, ‘You’re never going to transfer fuel oil outside of working hours,’ ” Wood said.

When Capt. Walter J. Davis assumed command of the Ranger in July, he took immediate steps to prevent a repeat of the tragic death of the sailor held in the carrier’s brig. Commanding officers are responsible for judging the guilt or innocence of sailors who commit misdemeanor crimes aboard carriers and determining the appropriate punishment.

Davis said that each sailor he sentences to the carrier brig is required to write him a personal note every day. The letters, which Davis calls “love notes,” assist him in keeping tabs on conditions in the brig.

Despite such precautions, commanding officers acknowledge that it is virtually impossible for them to monitor every activity aboard their ships for which they are held accountable.

“It’s not like we started with this yesterday,” Davis said. “We’ve been around these things all our careers. But you always realize there is something there that could bite you.”

The commanding officer is required to serve 18 months on a conventional carrier and three years on a nuclear-powered ship, during which time they will rarely see their families. For many, 1 1/2 years is all they can take.

Wood said that, during a typical six-month deployment, he slept each night in his cramped cabin in the fetal position with a telephone tucked under his pillow. That’s because his crew had standing orders to notify him of a wide variety of conditions. These included a ship coming within 10,000 yards of the Kitty Hawk, changing weather conditions or a sailor falling overboard.

“After a year and a half, I got to get some rest,” Wood said. “You see these bags under my eyes? I’m tired. . . . It is a very demanding job . . . the most demanding, challenging job that anybody could ever hope to have.”

It also is one of the most underpaid professions. For an average annual salary of $55,000, a commanding officer is held responsible for carriers valued between $300 million and $3.5 billion, depending on the ship’s age, size and class.

Before senior officers are even considered to lead a carrier, they are required to fly roughly 5,000 hours in Navy aircraft and to conduct about 1,000 accident-free carrier landings. They also must command a combat ship and an aircraft squadron, and usually serve as executive officer of a carrier.

Even after a candidate has achieved a flawless safety record in planes and on ships, his management or leadership style may be questioned. Or his readiness rates may not match up to a competing squadron or ship. Or his performance at the Naval Postgraduate School may not make the grade.

“It’s an incredibly tough process that these guys go through,” said Cmdr. Tom Jurkowsky, a Navy spokesman in San Diego. “You could make one dumb mistake and ruin yourself as a junior lieutenant and never recover. You’re always being compared against the other guy. You still have the ultimate responsibility thing that always hangs over you no matter what you’re commanding. You have to have virtually a perfect career to ultimately get command of a carrier. You’ve got to be the best.”

And if you survive the final cut to command an aircraft carrier, you can lose it all in a minute.

“You’re held accountable for virtually every action by every person on a small city,” Carroll said. “You better be damn good before you get there, and you better be damn lucky after.”