Now This Is A Decent Ass-Chewing!
HMS Superb (S 109) was in the news recently for grounding in the Red Sea; today she's back in the news for something that happened back in January. It seems that one of the sub's crewmembers was found asleep on watch; this resulted in the XO ripping the crew a new one. That's not that big a deal; what is unusual is that one of the submariners being bawled out caught the whole thing on his cell phone. From the BBC article:
During the six-minute address, which is peppered with expletives, the officer strongly criticised the sleeping watchman, the removal of safety ropes around storage tanks and the turning off of fans.The video, appropriately bleeped, can be seen either at the link above, or here. If you haven't been yelled at by an XO in a while, watch the video and relive the old days! (Of course, I'm sure many of us have been ripped into much, much worse -- especially my old shipmates on USS Topeka during the '91-'93 reign of "He Who Must Not Be Named".)
He told the men: "The incident last night is entirely f***ing unacceptable.
"You know far better than to allow stuff like that to happen. As submariners, you accept responsibility for yourselves and your shipmates.
"Getting your f***ing napper down while watching a f***ing DVD and swigging lager isn't accepting responsibility for your shipmates.
"It's throwing that responsibility away and saying, to me - I don't give a f*** what happens to my mates on board the boat and I don't give a f*** what happens to the boat.
"That's the worst example I can f***ing think of, but it stirs up some of the other things that have been going on."
posted by Bubblehead at 10:03 PM
11 Comments:
Sounds like a good XO doing his job well.
It's just stupid that somebody recorded it. If the backlash neuters just one XO, that will be a shame.
(Don't misunderstand me to mean that some XO's aren't @$$+*!#$, but the good ones can and should properly distribute the expletives when appropriate.)
RM1/SS
6/04/2008 7:11 AM
If they'd let me "swig lager" while I was on the boat, I imagine getting yelled at by the XO would have been a lot more interesting.
6/04/2008 11:12 AM
I was a well placed set of ears during the reign of "He Who Must Not Be Named" when he was getting his ass chewed about the way he was treating his crew by the then Commodore of SUBRON 11 in his stateroom on the tender. I wish we had cell phones back then, it was quite a show.
6/05/2008 10:37 AM
"He Who Must Not Be Named" . . . I remember the first YFG speech he ever gave to the nukes onboard . . . "You F****rs need to understand that I don't give a f*** about you . . . you're here to make me look good . . . it's that simple." And the CSS-11 Commodore was a tool . . .
6/05/2008 7:26 PM
That was definitely a well done chewing out. The closest thing I ever heard out of one of my XOs was when he called us "The biggest speed-bump in his road to Admiral" at morning quarters (he was a DC hot-runner with a retired Admiral as a father) just before he was short toured on our boat due to "poor crew morale and performance issues"
6/09/2008 10:22 AM
How dare you mention this XO and HWMNBN in the same sentence. While I never had the "joy" of going to sea with him, I did get the lesser pleasure of working with him on mission/deployment briefs/graphics at CSG7. The XO in the vid was doing his job with due justification for outrage, things that by rumor were not necessarilly requirements for a similar resonse by you-know-who.
6/09/2008 3:45 PM
He's actually easier to understand than the OOD who chewed me out late one watch for "resting my eyeballs" while serving as MOTW. I started drinking coffee the next watch, and still have the filthy habit. I just remember how the spittle flew from the corners of his mouth... In hindsight, I think I got off pretty easy.
6/10/2008 12:14 PM
Good for him. Wish I could do this a bit more in the civ world. PC
6/11/2008 8:06 PM
I was on the SLC, 91-94, and I can't remember the incident you are speaking of. Maybe it's because we spent so much time in Mare Island. Please...by all means...refresh my memory please...
6/24/2008 10:30 PM
Thanks so much for this post, pretty helpful data.
9/27/2011 3:05 AM
greathrit
1/13/2012 11:23 AM
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