Customer Reviews

Command at Sea

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A text for naval officers, with chapters on taking command, commissioning a ship or submarine, organization and administration of the command, and roles of various officers. Other subjects include maintenance and logistics, safety, training and inspections, independent operations, and forward operations and combat philosophy. Includes a glossary, and appendices of sample plans and orders. This edition incorporates changes in the field since 1982, and discusses lessons learned from the Persian Gulf, Bosnia, and Haiti.
Command at Sea is an unusual degree of responsibility & accountability that is placed on the shoulders of one individual. There is an excert on page four of the book that defines that degree of responsibility. It reads;
"In each ship there is one man alone who in the hour of emergency or peril at sea can turn to no other man. There is one man alone who is ultimately responsbile for the safe navigation, enigineering performance, accurate gunfire and morale of his ship. He is the Commanding Officer, He is the ship".
If ever there was situation where the Comamnding Officer experienced the paramount of this statement, it was Commander Paul Rinn, skipper of the USS Samuel B. Roberts, on April 14, 1988. The ship was escorting Kuwati tankers in the Persian Gulf when it entered a mine field.CDR Rinn ordered his crew to general Quarters. Then the ship began backing down and following it's wake. A mine exploded, blowing one of the ships's engines off it's mount and into the overhead. CDR Rinn knew that the survival of his crew depended on his actions, the crew watched every move he made. Throughout the night the crew fought fires, controlled flooding, treated the injured and saved their ship. In the predawn hours of April 15, 1988 CDR Rinn walked through his ship. He saw his crew, some exhausted, some sleeping, some talking quietly. The fought to save their ship, a ship that was sinking and they won. All the training, all the hours of drills had paid off. At 0503 the Quartermater of the Watch, QM2 Nicholson made the deck log entry, "Observed Sunrise".
This is job of the Commanding Officer, this is Command at Sea. You can delegate the responsibility, not the accountability. Can you take the challenge?

I am going to skip the synopsis of this book and go right the review.
If you are in ANY sort of leadership position, from being a parent, working fast food, a seaman recruit new to the Navy to Commanding Officer of a ship, you can get a lot of of this book, in tips on leadership without looking like a complete moron. Who should really read this book are those new to a ship and family members of those in the Navy. It helps make sense of the insanity of ship board life.

This book may be considered a classic, but it's a disgrace. Its stance on Enlisted members is pure prejudice. Just read its so-called "advice" for a commanding officer to give to an Enlisted member who wishes to marry a foreign national. The Navy should denounce this book and honor the many fine Enlisted members who defend our nation.