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from the pain-and-disability-are-their-own-punishments dept.
Former USS Fitzgerald CO Benson to Retire as Commander Next Month - USNI News
The former commander of a guided-missile destroyer that was involved in a fatal collision in 2017 will retire at his current rank and will be eligible for retirement and medical benefits, his lawyer confirmed to USNI News on Wednesday.
Cmdr. Bryce Benson will retire from the Navy on Dec. 29 after a two-year legal battle with the Navy over his role in the June 17, 2017, collision of USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) and container ship ACX Crystal off the coast of Japan that resulted in the death of seven sailors.
Benson's retirement was first reported by ProPublica.
The Navy had scheduled a Board of Inquiry for Benson following the dismissal of criminal charges earlier this year, USNI News had learned. The ruling of the board could have threatened his medical care for treatment for traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder Benson suffered during the collision. The stateroom where Benson was sleeping during the time of the collision was crushed by the bow of Crystal, and Benson was flown off the ship for medical treatment as soon as help arrived on the scene. The Navy reversed course last month and allowed Benson to leave the service without a board of inquiry.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday November 23 2019, @01:30PM (1 child)
To me, the main point of interest is the hypocritical culture of extreme personal responsibility that empowers the scapegoating. The Navy might have it worse than most, perhaps because of the extreme hierarchy and purposes of military organizations, but they're hardly the only one so afflicted.
So many organizations push everyone to the breaking point and beyond, and while heroics may hold things together a little longer, when things finally break, the people at the top blame it all on the underlings. Then you see spectacles like highly trained and respected people who did nothing wrong being treated to harsh and humiliating discipline, as if they were naughty schoolchildren instead of adults, as the "Sea Witch", Captain Holly Graf, did. It's especially nauseating to observe higher ranks hypocritically finger wagging and moralizing to them over the trumped up if not outright fake lapses they've been accused of making. Especially disgusting was the attempt to turn the tragic disaster in 1989 on the battleship Iowa into reason to bar homosexuals from the military, by trying to blame the whole thing on them. For further embarrassment in the charade, the lower ranks have been relentlessly trained to suck it up, and accept (or at least pretend to accept) that it really is all their fault. The highest ranks don't always get away with it, though, as the backlash over the 1991 Tailhook scandal showed.
I have personal experience with this. I was a defense contractor, doing work for the Navy, and my boss was a former Navy captain. The project ended in an utter train wreck that fortunately didn't cause any physical harm. The former captain was very much out of his element, didn't appear to understand that running a research project is very different than running a mission. He was constantly pushing us for results, with profanity laced growls, snarls, and threats, while being otherwise useless because not only did he not grasp the situation, he didn't care to even try. Like there was the time I showed up for a meeting 30 minutes early, and he was already there and the first thing he said to me was, where the fuck had I been, as if I was late. That sort of stuff was about all he could do to keep up the appearance that he merited his position as boss, since he didn't know jack about the boring technical details. He can't have been a very good captain either. I suspect the Navy pushed him out a tad early. But if so, why were they still willing to work with him in a civilian capacity? Was it to keep that revolving door working smoothly? At any rate, he made a total ass of himself at the last big meeting. Tried to blow smoke up everyone's behinds, and no one was fooled. They ripped him apart. He was feeling all sore that he'd done his best to gain us more time, and we'd let him down, hadn't given him anything worth showing. The larger problem with the effort was that the Navy was asking for too much, and then hindering us by keeping secrets, throwing stupid restrictions at us, and contradicting themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 23 2019, @02:58PM
Welcome to DOD contracting, buddy.
It's hard to complain too much if you are taking their money.
Where do you think the acronym SNAFU came from?