On Trust and Being a Nuke

WillyShake once again proves that submariners can write well if they pay attention in the non-engineering courses, and has a most excellent post on the subject of trust and redemption against the backdrop of his experience as a nuclear officer. Unfortunately for us sub-bloggers, we've got lots of great stories we could tell if it only wasn't for those darn security classification issues. It's often said facetiously, but with a hint of truth, that an American submarine exists to take the reactor to sea. The influence of Hyman G. Rickover and the "nuclear power first, submarining later" mind-set that many see throughout the Force makes many wonder if today's submarine COs could fight as well as their counterparts; an excellent nuke with poor tactical skills has a much better chance of reaching command than an excellent tactician who hasn't "broken the code" on what goes on back aft. (I don't have the exact statistics, but an officer who serves as the Engineering Department Head has about twice the chance of reaching command than one who serves as Combat Systems Officer.) I personally am not worried about how we'd do in a fight; the same mindset that pushed the nukes to the forefront resulted in the design of such incredible boats that a CO would really have to screw up to lose a sub-on-sub fight against even the best CO in a non-American boat.
Anyway, WillyShake's story of redemption in being selected as ORSE EOOW (Engineering Officer of the Watch for the annual nuclear skills examination -- a big deal) after a previous mistake led me to think about a time that I needed to trust my junior officers, and how I could have done better. As the Engineer during drills, your job is to stand in Maneuvering and be the "safety monitor"; you know what the drills are, and know how the plant and crew should respond; your job is to stop the drill if things threaten to get out of hand. I eventually learned that, but during this one exam I was worried that my EOOW wasn't doing things as quickly as I thought he should, and since I couldn't talk to him (the senior examiner was also in Maneuvering) I decided to resort to some "non-verbal" communication. As the poor EOOW is looking through his book(s) of procedures, I'm standing beside him, tapping him on the ankle with my foot. He's still not giving orders, so I tap him harder, and eventually just flat out kick him. His yelp startled the senior monitor, and I'm sure he knew what was going on; my EOOW eventually gave the right orders, and we did fine on the exam. (This JO ended up becoming Engineer on USS Miami while I was still Eng myself, on the Carter.) So, Mike, if you're out there, I'm sorry I bruised your ankle, I know I should have trusted you more, and I thank you for not hauling off and slugging me, as I so richly deserved...

Going deep...