What are the motivations of the crew and how can a submarine commander best motivate them?
Discipline and morale-wise, how do submarine crews differ from other units? The fact that they’re stuck in a can is a major different but are there others and in what ways do they influence discipline and morale?
As with any command, you motivate people by rewarding the good work they do, and by weeding out any bad apples as soon as you can. Being arbitrary in how people are treated is a sure way to earn their contempt. If the senior NCOs feel they’re being listened to, that information gets relayed down the line. So how do you reward the crew? By including them in some of the decisions being made, making sure the scut work is evenly handed out, writing recommendations for awards (when warranted), writing good evaluations that reflect good performance (these are critical, as promotions depend on them). Basically, the old “firm-but-fair” doctrine.
I wasn’t a sub sailor, but my understanding is that things are somewhat more informal on a boat. Submarine sailors are a small community and word gets around quickly about bad actors.
Not drowning has to be up there.
I’m also a former submarine officer. I had two COs that were noteworthy. The first one was a lot like iiandyiiii’s “Captain J.” He was fantastic. My second CO was unfortunately a lot more like “Captain O” and he was my CO for most of my first tour as a junior officer.
One thing thing to keep in mind is that U.S. Navy has a zero-tolerance mindset with respect to mistakes and perceived failures. In particular, if a ship were to ever have a collision or run aground, the CO’s career is over (along with any other officer involved in the incident). This is in sharp contrast to the situation a century ago when Ensign (later Fleet Admiral) Chester Nimitz famously ran his ship aground. Though Ensign Nimitz was court-martialed, found guilty of neglect of duty, and issued a letter of reprimand, this incident had no apparent effect on his career, and he was later promoted to Fleet Admiral.
This would never happen today, to say the least. And because any such mistake is career-ending, you end up with a lot of senior officers and COs who are in absolute fear of ever making a mistake.
So with that as a backdrop, my second CO’s overriding motivation was to avoid making any mistakes that might jeopardize his career, and he didn’t care how much it trashed his crew. His answer to any problem (or perceived problem) was to work the crew harder or throw more people at the problem.
For example, ship spaces not clean enough? Then have an extra all-hands field day, including all personnel who just got off the midwatch. Then repeat the next day, and the next. :smack:
Trash and garbage not being disposed of properly (i.e. quietly enough)? Then stockpile the trash and fill the freezers with garbage instead of disposing of it.
Someone makes a mistake on a plot during section tracking party? Then add a second person to assist. Then add a third person to oversee the first two. :rolleyes:
During an extended deployment, I spent over four months standing a six-hour watch (i.e. shift) as Engineering Officer of the Watch, followed by another six-hour watch in the control room for section tracking party, followed by several hours of section tracking party reconstruction in the next watch, leaving me with 2-3 hours to sleep and eat (much less showering) before going back on watch again. After a few months of this, I felt like a zombie. I actually started having hallucinations due to lack of sleep, started getting sick all the time, and developed ulcers due to stress.
This miserable experience is what ultimately led to my decision to leave the Navy, which was sad because being a submarine officer was my dream job. 
Sorry for this post turning into a bit of a rant…
I’m surprised USS Jacksonville (SSN 699) isn’t on that list. Jax collided with a Turkish freighter whilst on the way out of Norfolk in 1982 (“the crash crew of '82”), hit a barge whilst on the way into Norfolk in 1984 (“back for more in '84”), and ran into a Saudi container ship on the way out of Norfolk in 1996.
It has to be that way when no one can get more than a couple hundred feet away from anyone else for weeks on end. I was on three boats, and also did a tour on a tender - and the latter was almost like serving in an entirely different navy. As a PO1 on the skimmer, I never entered chiefs’ berthing or lounged, and very seldom passed through officers’ country. On the boat, even as a PO2 I had no problem with going into the goat locker or wardroom to chat with whoever was there. (“Knock and enter” - my version of that was a couple raps on the door as I was opening it, or as I walked through it if it was already open.)
In my total of 13 years on three boats, I went through 7 COs. (8 XOs and 8 COBs, too. :)) The first one was a four-striper , very mellow, very much a people person. His relief was the exact opposite - within 24 hours of the change of command we’d had a man overboard, a successful Z5O security drill (successful on the part of the intruder, that is), and oil pumped into Norfolk harbour, and from that day on as far as he was concerned the crew were all fucked up and nothing was going to change his mind, even after half the crew had been replaced.* He was a screamer, who thought nothing of cussing out the navigator or the engineer over the boat’s speaker system, or stomping into the control room and asking “Officer of the Deck, do you have any idea what the hell you’re doing in here?” Another CO was a former jarhead E6; he seemed extra hard on the nukes, but was generally quite approachable. He would have made a good wartime skipper on one of the old fleet boats.
This is probably off-topic, but I had no idea what a Z5O drill was, and in Googling it, found two hilarious examples of how it can go wrong, here. The first story won’t run afoul of the SDMB’s Fair Use Policy, I think, (the second one’s longer and funnier):
I was hoping that robby and iiandyiii would make an appearance in this thread. Good to see they did. I’d no idea that you served on subs too, SCAdian; great stories. Didn’t minor7flat also serve on subs?
Transcripts must show work below sea level.
At least in my era, USAF squadron commanders & XOs (both O-5 billets) were in a similar predicament which brings out a similar mindset.
I had the poor fortune to transfer into a squadron (~=18 planes, 24 pilots, & a dozen support staff) that had just wrecked a jet and therefore received a new CO & XO after the previous pair were shoved out of the service. The new top guys didn’t really know what needed to be done, but they knew what they needed to prevent: another accident.
Total risk avoidance, micromanagement up the ass, and extreme overreaction to any routine abnormality or deviation from perfection were the standing orders of the day every day.
It was not a nice tour, even for those of us who arrived after the mishap. Neither was the squadron nearly as combat-effective as it had been before the changeover. At least according to the older heads who’d seen both regimes.
Those two had a lot to do with my leaving USAF. Just like robby.
This guy was really good at causing JOs to resign their commissions, too.
Submarine commanders would deal with people and people problems most of the time. So look at psychology/management/supervision for the reality of such a position. (But reality might be boring for a fictional account!)
Interesting info, thanks everyone, especially **iiiandyiiii’**s great analysis. Looks like I overlooked people–relationship skills and was only focusing on combat traits.
Now that being said, isn’t the likelihood of a US submarine these days actually engaging an enemy warship in combat about as unlikely as a USAF fighter jet getting into an air battle with an enemy fighter jet - extremely rare in the past 20 years? It COULD happen, of course, in some major war scenario against China or another country, but otherwise is extremely improbable?
I completely understand that. The issue that arises from informality is that many people mistake it for friendship instead of comraderie, and discipline can become problematic, just like in the civilian world. It’s difficult to discipline someone who you consider to be a friend. I had a CO who liked to hang out with junior enlisted guys, and who insisted on being called “Keith” when off duty. It was inappropriate, and I refused to do it. Hell, I couldn’t even bring myself to call my Chief by his first name when off duty, and our families were actually friends.
On my first boat I had no problem with going in to the goat locker in search of my chief, finding only the doc, and asking, “Hey, Thomas, have you seen Fred?” Thomas didn’t mind, and Fred wouldn’t have minded either. In fact, I was still calling one of those chiefs by his first name after he made master chief.
Then the Soviet Union fell apart, and without the Evil Empire to focus on people started worrying about petty details. The only chief I used first names with was my own chief (along with the guys I was already on first-name basis with before they made chief). On my third boat I didn’t even call my own chief by his first name, even when we were away from the boat - just the newly minted ones.
My last tour was with the State Department, where civilian attire and complete informality was the order of the day. Calling someone by their rank can be dangerous in some locations. I had no problem with it, except that I found that there was a noticeable lack of discipline and even downright insubordination in many people who just didn’t seem to understand that they were still subject to the UCMJ.
I think you need to distinguish the external circumstances at the time to decide on the best character traits for a commander. Specifically, wartime vs. peactime – the traits needed are significantly different.
During peacetime, like robby mentioned, the main path to promotion for a commander is not making mistakes, and always being clean & tidy (‘shipshape’). Plus a fair dose of sucking up/politicking.
In wartime, however, there is an actual, objective measurement of how well a commander is doing – how many enemy ships has he sunk? Nobody higher-up cares if his ship is dirty, or if he occasionally runs aground, or writes lousy reports – as long as he keeps sinking enemy ships.
So in peacetime, caution, exactitude in following orders, and ‘not making waves’ are desirable traits. But when war comes, the desirable ones are aggressiveness, determination, boldness, & effectiveness. Almost exact opposites – the peacetime virtues are detrimental in wartime. (For example, the USA submarine effort in the Pacific didn’t become effective against Japan until most of the peacetime sub commanders had been replaced by new, younger commanders.)
I have never served in the military. I’m an engineer, and I’ve worked for a small defense contractor where one of my program managers was a guy who had retired from the navy after a career in which he commanded a Los Angeles class fast attack submarine.
Some qualities that stood out to me:[ul]
[li]He was tall and lanky - at least 6’3". Not the body type I tend to associate with the cramped quarters on a submarine;[/li][li]He was very pleasant and easygoing - helluva nice guy. Made small talk easily, and knew as much as people were willing to share about our families, our outside interests, stuff like that. He inspired considerable loyalty among people who worked on his projects, in part because he was just so personable.[/li][li]He was good at listening to, and taking in, the opinions of the technical experts on his programs. He wasn’t afraid to ask “stupid” questions. It quickly became clear that while he may not be the subject matter expert on a technical topic, he was no fool.[/li][li]He was an excellent manager of people. He was able to strike that difficult-to-find balance between staying out of our way while we did this work, and keeping abreast of what we were up to and making course corrections when necessary. (Not all managers I’ve worked for do this well.) Our technical meetings were always pleasant, and while programmatic decisions were ultimately his he’d trust the judgement of his people. If circumstances dictated that what we wanted to do just wasn’t possible, he would explain why.[/li][li]He was decisive. When a decision needed to be made, he’d make it and we’d move on.[/li][li]His inclination was to set aggressive goals for a program. He trusted the technical people working for him to reign him in when he proposed something that just wouldn’t be doable in the time/budget available.[/li][/ul]While I dealt with him in an environment quite different from that of a submarine, I got the feeling that many of these character traits were at the heart of his success as a CO.
Doesn’t seem so very different from being a decent civilian manager or even a decent human.
What kind of decisions would they be brought into as reward?
If a submarine CO realizes he has a bad apple in the middle of a long deployment, what are his options?
What happened to the pilot who wrecked the jet? Or was he the guy who wanted to play Icarus in Arabia?
The CO & XO of that squadron were forced out but how did it impact the CO, XO & OO of the larger unit the squadron was a part of?
Also, I have a vague recollection of you saying something along the lines of: “when a pilot loses control below 5km, SOP is for the pilot to eject to save the investment in the pilot”. But if the pilot is going to be drummed out after wrecking the plane, what’s the point from an organizational POV?
The pilot jumped out successfully. The Icarus event I wrote about was over the Gulf of Mexico from a base in Florida.
The larger unit CO & XO AKA OO were OK career-wise, provided they promptly cashiered the unit CO & XO. Which they did with (I was told later) unseemly speed and gusto.
The pilot wasn’t drummed out. He was a junior-/mid-level officer such as myself. It was his bosses who were drummed out.
He was immediately marked as a no-hoper for high rank, but that would not prevent him from serving and flying another 10 years before he hit the up-or-out ceiling at around the 15 year point in a then-standard career.
As it was he, I, and most of our contemporaries left the service a couple years later for the airlines when our commitments ran out and the airlines were hiring. The pyramid is designed to be pretty steep right there and although this unit had unusually poor retention, the system is designed to lose about half its people at that point anyhow.