Navy punishes four more for boat seizure
The Navy Times reports that four more sailors were punished for the seizure by Iran of the two boat crews earlier this year.
Four officers and two enlisted went to mast before Navy Expeditionary Combat Command head Rear Adm. Frank Morneau. Of the four officers, two were found guilty of disobeying a superior and dereliction of duty, according to an NECC statement and given punitive letters of reprimand — a potentially career-ending move. A third officer officer was found not guilty of dereliction of duty.
My frame of reference for this whole thing is back in the good old days of the Cold War when we used to patrol the East German Border, and ya know what? I would have publicly fired my squad leaders if they did shit like this;
The sailors from Coastal Riverine Squadron 3 did not brief or even plan their route from Kuwait to Bahrain. While the original route would have avoided Iran’s territorial waters around Farsi Island, the crew immediately deviated from their original course to make up for a late start.
The crew did not report to their operational handlers on shore when they sighted land unexpectedly or report the mechanical failure.
Task Force 56, the riverine squadron’s immediate superior in 5th Fleet, tasked the sailors beyond their capabilities and limitations and fostered a “can do/will do” culture.
The tactical operations center charged with tracking the transit failed to do so and reacted poorly when things started going wrong.
We would train for months before we became operational at our posts on the border so that every private knew how to respond to every single situation they might encounter, it doesn’t look like the Navy took their mission in the Gulf as seriously. We’d spend hours rehearsing our operations and doing map exercises, but it doesn’t appear that the sailors and their leadership cared too much about being successful in that regard. Especially since they should have known that Iran was just praying for a situation exactly like this to earn some points with the media.
This was a failure of leadership, plain and simple. All the way up to the office that cut off funding for proper training.
Category: Navy
“The sailors from Coastal Riverine Squadron 3 did not brief or even plan their route from Kuwait to Bahrain. While the original route would have avoided Iran’s territorial waters around Farsi Island, the crew immediately deviated from their original course to make up for a late start.”
Cripes. I’m no water person but I believe our local sport fishermen prepare better than that for a day on the river. Of course, the fishermen don’t spend their prep time on sexual preference and attire concerns like the Navy does.
The LT who was the OIC is where the buck stops.
If his Sailors were not doing the right thing to prepare, he should have made them prepare.
If his chain wasn’t providing him with the tools to do the job, then he had to have the moral courage to raise the Bravo Sierra flag.
I can only hope that LT has been cashiered. He should be court martialed along with some of his shipmates.
I agree that the LT was responsible but where were the PO’s? In the Army, at least, I would expect the squad leaders and team leaders, and for damn sure the platoon sergeant (rank equivalent of a Navy CPO) to make sure procedures are followed. If they can’t do that why the hell are they drawing a paycheck? That’s their WHOLE job!
You’re right. The PO1s and CPOs should have recognized the complacency and kicked ass, but the LT should have recognized the senior NCOs were part of the problem and laid down the law. It doesn’t really take much if you have fundamentally good Sailors working for you. No one goes into the military to be a fuck up.
LT is the skipper. The buck stops with him.
Agreed. The whole operation was fubar from the start, and the complacency was generated from the PO1’s on up. Someone should have raised a flag. Anyone.
Speaking of Lts, I’ll just leave this right here.
(I know Navy LT is different but an Lt is an Lt.)
Have to disagree, ChipNASA. As an O3, a Navy LT has been around long enough to know their ass from the proverbial hole in the ground.
If they don’t know which end is up by then, IMO they should be strongly encouraged to seek alternative employment.
don’t confuse an lt in the army with an Ensign in the Navy! a Lt has been around a few years!
Wasn’t he an LT(jg)?
The investigation report (link in a comment of mine below) refers to the RCB 802 boat captain as an LT (Lieutenant), not an LTJG. (Para IV.A.52, p. 68) I suppose it’s possible this is an error. The report is dated less than 2 months after the incident, so it’s likely any ranks in the report would be current.
Man, my guys used to give me so much shit because before every op I made them do a full opord with rehearsals and battle drills…. I didn’t care. It’s true it took up a lot of time pre and post mission but this is a perfect example of why routine simply isnt.
If I was the commander of one of those boats, ummmmmmm…..we were probably be at war with Iran right now.
Would, not were.
You wouldn’t have put yourself in that situation.
That is true, but, if for whatever reason I did:
I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist.”
Taffy 3 kept fighting, and their odds were way worse than anything that Riverine Squadron faced.
USS Johnston. I know that one.
Great Story.
To me it was one of the most amazing acts of heroism ever displayed in naval history, from the entire Task Force.
For anybody who considers themselves a history buff, particularly military history, if you have not read the book Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, then you are doing yourself a great disservice.
…And the men of Taffy 3 were part of a world war. The goobers in the Gulf, not so much.
That may be part of the problem here.
To the best of my knowledge, the Navy Surface Warfare community hasn’t been in a major surface engagement against enemy vessels since WW2, so there may be an institutional hesitance to start shooting in a situation like this that has trickled down to the tactical unit level. That hesitancy, combined with the sheer tactical buffoonery of these two crews and the emergent proclivity of USN Flag Officers to assume the role of ‘virtual ship captain’ via electronic means and thence micromanage and second-guess everything that a tactical unit does or does not do, very likely contributed to both of these boats being captured without a shot being fired in their defense.
Perhaps it’s time to re-emphasize the old Navy tradition of “Don’t Give Up The Ship!”.
https://www.navalhistory.org/2010/06/01/dont-give-up-the-ship
Ahem.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/praying_mantis.htm
Though Preying Mantis was the largest, there have been four others as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chumonchin_Chan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_%C4%90%E1%BB%93ng_H%E1%BB%9Bi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_in_the_Gulf_of_Sidra_(1986)
I hate to say this, but everything I’ve seen to date says the Navy is all show and no ‘go’ at this point. It almost appears that the Army has been neutered down to that level in many areas, too.
FTA: “The price was steep. Evans and many of his shipmates were killed as Japanese fire eventually overwhelmed Johnston, sending her to the bottom. Although severely wounded early in the battle, Evans pressed the attack until he vanished when his ship went down. For his “valiant fighting spirit,” he received the Medal of Honor.”
Good read. Sobering. Wow.
Yea. This guy. SemperFi.
I watched the CNO and one of his aides talking about this incident on CNN. I know this may sound silly to many however I couldn’t help but notice that the CNO’s aid wore dress blues that were, in my opinion, in bad need of some serious tailoring.
I served on a Boomer back in the 70’s. Spit and polish was not our cup of tea however this clown wasn’t even up to our standards and our standards were pretty darn laid back when compared to the rest of the Navy.
A common saying at that time in the Navy was “S__t flows down hill”.
Ill fitting uniform = Lack of pride
The lack of pride filters down…
No, it doesn’t sound silly. It sounds like the GAF/GAS attitude is prevalent everywhere, starting at the top. If they don’t care, who does?
And/or a fear of reporting an issue in a “zero defect” and “can’t trust your chain of command” working environment…
Bingo. “Zero defects” is a myth. It’s also hugely counterproductive.
If the boss consistently “fires the messenger” whenever they receive a report of a problem, pretty soon they will receive no reports of problems. The problems will still exist, though. People will simply attempt to work around them, or will “paper them over”.
Until, of course, it bites them dead in the ass – just like it did here.
Or the messenger learns to spin the bad news in such a way that it sounds good.
Great news Sir! You no longer have to pay 2/3 of your Army!
*and then run like hell before they get it sorted out and chop off your head*
Well, personally I consider “spinning the facts” (AKA “hiding the truth through misleading language”) to be a form of “papering over problems”. But I guess you could consider it a separate category.
I have a gut feeling one day one of these sailors will be claiming “POW” status and the story will end up here.
The sad thing is that they’ll probably qualify for ex-POW benefits from the VA in any case. By law, the VA – not DoD – makes that call. And being held “under conditions equivalent to those of a POW” counts.
That’s the primary reason we have over twice as many people drawing ex-POW benefits from Vietnam and the Gulf War than bona fide ex-POWs from those two conflicts that are still living. The VA has proven itself institutionally incompetent to make that call.
We’ve beaten that issue to death over the years. Like the EP-3 crew I doubt that they will receive the POW medal, but likely will qualify for benefits as you suggest.
On the very last page of the Navy report there is a reference commending the female sailor (I think there was only one), who was able to activate the emergency beacon while on her knees, bound, and under gunpoint and observation by the Iranians “at great personal risk to her safety”. Glad to see that there was at least one sailor who did their job.
Decorate her, promote her, heck, put -her- in command of the damn boat next time. I would bet money that her response to the demand to “heave to” would have been “Open fire.”
Reminds me of the incident during the Kosovo conflict (whatever the hell we were calling that) where a HMMWV with 3 GI’s were captured by the Serbs and held for a couple of days.
I had just come off a rotation to the Balkans and I figured out what happened because I had seen it before: Complacency, laziness, not following procedures, etc. Soldiers (and sailors) get so used to doing the same mission over and over and over that they start taking shortcuts. Everything becomes “routine” since nothing usually ever happens, and that becomes the habit.
But of course, the enemy is always watching, and waiting, and when they see those shortcuts being taken, they know there is a vulnerability they can exploit.
I’d be willing to bet money that these same sailors probably sailed this route a hundred times before, using the same slack procedures, without incident.
Complacency kills. In this case, all that was killed were a few careers, so all in all we got off lightly.
The official Navy command investigation into the incident can be found here:
https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=793951
That report appears to indicate that the unit’s operations out of Kuwait were generally limited to within 60NM of Kuwait. Farsi and Jazirat Islands (the two islands, owned by Iran and Saudia Arabia, respectively, between which the two craft passed before they were captured) appear to be substantially farther from Kuwait than that.
Looks more to me like a unit chain-of-command operating “loosey-goosey” (or a clueless chain-of-command) than complacence due to familiarity. There are a number of other disturbing things noted in that report that lend credence to either (or both) of those being the case – from the O6 level down to the boat COs.
My money’s on “both”.
The conditions were perfect for this situation to develop into and turn out the way it did.
It could have been avoided.
(I guess it’s all okay though, since John Fawkin’ Kerry thanked the Iranians for taking care of the sailors and all that)
Concur. IMO the chain-of-command responsible Fornicated Fido here six ways from Sunday – from CAPT on down to the boat commanders. And it wasn’t a one-time deal. They appear to have been operating very laxly, and with little command awareness of that fact, for months prior to the incident. Either that, or their chain-of-command gave implicit approval to their normal mode of operations via knowing about it and saying nothing.
I was kind of taken aback when I read the crews morale was diminished, particularly after leaving Bahrain and being sent to Kuwait. Seems they were upset about not getting per dorm. (There was more to it in the investigation, but that got my attention).
The only one that had a set of balls to try and do something was the only woman that was captured… she tried to activate a emergency distress beacon when the shit started going bad when they were captured.
We were briefed about that incident when we arrived at Camp Bondsteel in 2002. IIRC, they were captured in ’99.
You know, if you’re going to take a trip some place, it’s a good idea to look at a map first. They’re available online from Google. The island in question is on a map of the Persian Gulf, as plain as the nose on your face.
Someone let me know when the Navy starts teaching sailors to navigate on water, willya? I don’t think there’s much excuse for going out on open water in or near hostile territory with little to no preparation or idea where you’re going.
Take CAPT Queeg to mast!
Ahh, but the strawberries that’s…that’s where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with…geometric logic…that a duplicate key to the wardroom icebox DID exist, and I’d have produced that key if they hadn’t pulled the Caine out of action. I, I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officers…
And then Jose Ferrer comes in at the end to remind everyone what their duty is and reveal the true villain.
Next time, please issue a spoiler alert, sheesh….
Oh, sorry-I thought there was a half a century exemption on those.
I wonder how many more heads will roll?
Anyone E6 and above should get Hammered, specially those with the SWCC Warfare Pin.
Bunch of Fuck Offs just serving to kill it at the Per Diem bucket.
MANY awe inspiring U.S. Navy ships in WW2. Two of the many:
USS Samuel B Roberts (better known in Navy lore as the USS Sammy B
&
USS Johnston
There are many more but I think often of these. Small warships imbedded in the soul of a battleship, captained by men of tremendous bravery and an heroic crew willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in the face of being massively outgunned.
And today we have group hugs, safe spaces and aromatherapy for micro aggression. And we have posers who couldn’t hack the sacrifice of service but now claim to have done so.
You got that right Chief, which is why I am soooo glad I’m retired. I couldn’t work in the environment that’s been created.
USS Laffey, the ship that wouldn’t die. Struck by a half dozen kamikazes, four or five bombs, and strafed again and again, while all on picket duty all alone in the Pacific. The sailors fought like banchees, knocking seven or right Jap a/c out of the sky. That was then.
Well, they didn’t sink, so they have that going for them. They can put that on their resume. After being canned from the Navy.
Interviewer: So, you were in the Navy. What did you do?
Former Sailor: I didn’t get sunk.
Interviewer: Hey, I consider that a plus for this company. We can use men like you.
Yes, it’s sarc
I don’t mean to bag on the navy, but I can give you an even more horrible example. Myself and another SFC where attending the COIN academy in Afghanistan. When we finished, a navy run PSD gave us a lift to Bagram so we could head out to units and evaluate COIN stuff for the CTCs. These Navy MAs and a couple of Army NG privates took off in a 2 uparmored SUV convoy and headed for the airport. We asked them about additional security, they said they didn’t need it. We asked them how do they keep in commo with HQ and they said cell phones if they need it, but nothing had nothing had ever happened. They weren’t even wearing their gear. We obviously were extreamly uncomfortable (I was a Scout, he was a grunt and we were fully kitted up). Just a total lax attitude. They spoke about stopping at markets and eating and buying things, even asked us if we wanted to stop. We strongly advised them that they were being complacent and that they were putting themselves at risk. They looked at us like we were just A**hole Army guys. Needless to say, I was happy to get inside Bagram and get away from those dudes. A few months later I read that they had been killed while stopped in a market and shopping by themselves. The second you stop being careful in bad guy country, you get killed. Sad, really sad.
That’s why they called it Indian country in Vietnam, y’know.
They weren’t complacent. They were fucking idiots.
A friend of mine deployed to A-stan. Told me he didn’t even plan to carry a weapon outside the wire. I told him that might be a big fucking mistake. Once he got in country I used to call him and he finally told me he almost shit his pants every time he went into Injun country. He actually asked to short tour after one month (he’s a civilian) To this day, he won’t tell me why he left. I think it was cause he was scared out of his mind 24/7. At least he had sense enough to recognize danger unlike these chuckleheads.
I still shake my head at his bravado.
Taliban setup a trap for them. Booze was found in the vehicle later on. I remember that. Not all of us attached to a JTF in country had the freedom to do as you please, as those guys did.
I remember when the Military was trained to destroy stuff. Having been in the Navy as well as the Army, we trained to fight. Now it seems they train not to offend anyone. I blame the social justice warriors that seem to permeate the services. As with cockroaches they fuck up everything they touch.
I googled that unit and clicked on the FB page. Nice tough pic, I’ll say, followed by a great many pics of certificates being handed out. That Surrender and Apology Training must be very popular. https://www.facebook.com/corivron3/
Charming, isn’t it?
They have this on their FB page:
‘Coalition of Sailors Against Destructive Decisions Team’
I think I am going to gag.
hardly the first Navy fuck-up with international consequences…but at least people held accountable…remember in 2001 when that EP-3 got clipped by a PRC fighter and emergency landed at Hainan Island with the “back end” gear and materials largely intact…”heroes welcome” for the crew…
Yeah, I always wondered why some of those classified materials didn’t go out the door while over deep water.
The COMEVAL on that mission should have been tossed out the door