Old School Ties

As navies go, the U.S. Navy is not conservative. It pioneered in dive-bombing, in landings and take-offs from carrier decks, in torpedo-plane attack. But the Navy is conservative, if not downright shortsighted, in its officer promotion system.

A major peacetime difficulty is deciding who will be brilliant commanders in war. In peacetime the Navy wants men who will run an efficient Navy. In wartime efficiency is not enough: the premium is on the man of originality, resourcefulness, quickness of mind. That sort of man is penalized by the Navy's peacetime promotion system. In the Navy, as in any established institution, orthodoxy is comfortable, safe, comparatively lucrative; while the historic commanders were men who flouted the rulebooks of their day--a fact which tends to escape the "battleship admirals."

Naval promotions are passed upon by nine-men Selection Boards. If a man is "passed over" twice, he is retired at the end of a prescribed period. Although only some 50% of all Navy officers are Annapolis graduates, Annapolis men dominate most Selection Boards. In awarding promotions, they seem invariably to favor those who wear the Annapolis label.

An extreme example of the Annapolis clan spirit is the Green Bowlers, a secret fraternity of Annapolis men dominated by the single idea of helping one another up the naval ladder. Composed of top-flight graduates in each class, the cabal of Green Bowlers was started in 1909, has been reported abandoned. Its influence remains.

Working at more than their usual fever-heat, Columnists Drew Pearson and Robert Allen indignantly cited the cases of three Navy men who were heroes of War II, who had twelve to 16 years' active service, and who were "passed over" by Selection Boards in 1940 and 1941--were even demoted hundreds of numbers on the promotion list. The three:

> Commander Cassin Young, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his exploit at Pearl Harbor. Blown overboard by an explosion, he swam back to his ship, climbed aboard and calmly maneuvered it to safety.

> Commander Elmer P. Abernethy, captain of the Navy oiler Pecos, who ordered his crew to abandon ship in the Battle of Java, then manned a machine gun on the bridge and fought off Jap planes strafing his escaping men.

> Commander Francis J. Bridget, cited by his commander for "extraordinary heroism" in the bombing of Cavite.

The columnists complained that the Navy still goes ahead with scheduled retirements, then calls the retired men immediately back to active service because it needs them. In such status such officers have no hope of permanent advancement, drop back to retirement at the war's end.

There is no real evidence yet of injury to the Navy's wartime fighting strength by the system's operation, inequitable as it may seem. This is cited by Navy brasshats as their side of the story. Another brasshat argument is that just because a man went to Annapolis, or has a friend on the selection board, does not prove ipso facto that he will be a knothead in combat. Another argument is that if the Navy were composed entirely of "original thinkers" it would not last long as a Navy.

But that there was room for improvement in the system, and that the Navy had need of all the best manpower available, without regard to Green Bowlers, was plain.

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