Houston should be a happy guy. Following a disgraced guy after a big foul-up is a great gig. You can ask for (and get) plenty of resources and the next FITREP will look great. It's following after a tremendously successful guy/gal that stinks.
Agreed. The CO is just there to let the senior chain of command sleep comfortably at night, but they won't hesitate to shoot him if they need to. (I think USS GREENEVILLE went through five changes of command in the next two years after Waddle was fired for the EHIME MARU collision.) And the new CO already got flag sponsorship from his NR tour, so if he doesn't get surprised by the old CO's leftovers then he'll have a nice early promotion to O-6 for pulling everyone's ashes out of the fire.
It's the new XO/Eng who are gonna be perpetually miserable with all the "help" coming aboard to "look around and see how things are going", and the crew that's going to be attending a bezillion ethics & integrity training sessions. The entire crew will have been judged to be either liars or blissfully-ignorant idiots. Motivation & initiative (and re-enlistment rates) are gonna suck on HAMPTON for about three years.
Are the skippers of these boats usually O-5s? I would have guessed O-6.
Yep. Attack subs have had O-5s since the nuclear classes started. The OHIO class boomers used to be O-6s until about the mid-90s, then they boosted more O-5s [-]because the O-6s were whining about going to sea again on a second command tour[/-] to give the O-5s more command slots. Now that the first four OHIO boats are being retrofitted to SSGNs with embarked special forces detachments, I think the first few COs will be O-6s and then perhaps they'll back off to "senior" O-5s.
In WWII a U.S. submarine officer could have command of a diesel boat as an O-4, some of whom were barely in their late 20s. By the end of the war many O-4s had only six years' commissioned service instead of today's 9-10. The average age of German submarine COs was 23, but they tended to have short careers and die young.
PS. Do you have to be named after a city to get a boat?
That's a funny story. The last fish class was the USS STURGEON (SSN-637) and near the end of that line Rickover started naming them for his Congressional supporters. You had steely-eyed killers of the deep standing tall aboard feared warfare platforms like the "GLENARD P. LIPSCOMB" and the "RICHARD B. RUSSELL". Kinda tough to build a reputation with monikers like that, especially if your sponsor is an alcoholic.
The LOS ANGELES (SSN-688) class was supposed to go back to fish, but Rickover changed the name. When asked why he reportedly said "Fish don't vote."
Of course the name has some influence on homeporting but not enough. USS NEW YORK CITY, in Pearl Harbor, didn't enjoy a very close relationship with the NYC politicians. That all changed for the better, however, when we managed to forge a relationship with the NEW YORKER magazine people. They threw a lot of good deals our way.
I don't worry about these incidents as much as those that may not be reported. These things are like cockroaches, or icebergs.
I agree that the plant-sampling gundecking is just the tip of the iceberg, but most of the subsequent findings (and their reporting in the media) won't be public. There are classification issues with some of the nuclear stuff, and most non-judicial punishments are protected by the Privacy Act. Being relieved of command is not punitive, but the career-ending letter of reprimand certainly will be.
A major housecleaning & cultural change is in progress. The XO/Eng have probably already been told to hit the road, and whoever was leading the radcon technicians has probably already gone to admiral's mast to be reduced in rank and kicked out of submarines. The engineering department's senior chief petty officer [-]should be hauled out back by his fellow CPOs and shot[/-] will no doubt have to retire since his reputation will never recover from this. Squadron has probably sent most of their staff to sniff around every other division, engineering & otherwise, looking for any other surprises. And when the boat is finally trusted to get underway, they'll have two dozen more riders keeping an eye on everybody. They'll even have a command-qualified O-5 [-]hatchet man[/-] squadron deputy aboard whose sole job is to be ready to relieve the CO if another major problem crops up. Without that O-5, if a serious nuclear incident occurred the boat would be told to shut down the reactor and snorkel back to port.
I'm going to a shipmate's retirement in a couple weeks and I'm hoping to pick up some gossip...