An "in-work" story

On April 10, 1972, Midway steamed under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, bound on a 7800 mile voyage to the Vietnam War Zone.  This in itself was not uncommon.  What made this cruise different from proceeding ones in the ship's history was the fact that Midway was deploying over seven weeks in advance of the scheduled departure date with less than one week's notice, with a vastly abbreviated training period, and with the additional handicap of a short, three day loadout.

Shouldering these burdens, on April 29, exactly 19 days after departure, the aircraft of Carrier Air Wing Five were winging their way off MIDWAY and towards the Republic of Vietnam.  Their mission, as part of the ship's overall mission, was of two basic parts: one, they were to provide aerial support for the South Vietnamese forces in their efforts to turn back the tide of the Communist invasion from the north, and two, they were to protect the remaining Americans present in Vietnam as the withdrawal of United States ground forces continued.

From: Opening pages, USS MIDWAY 1972-73 Cruise Book

We had decided to get married thinking I was going to be at NAS Lemoore for at least a year before going on cruise. By  end of May, she and the other squadron wives would be bringing comfort to the wife of one Champ pilot as a confirmed resident in the Hanoi Hilton, and by end of summer Airwing Five wives would be dealing with 4 aircrew missing in action and 6 POWS. The fatalities would rise to 8 aircrew before MIDWAY came back to Alameda.  Not what she bargained for, at least not that quickly. 

The offensive, Operation Nguyen Hue, better known as the 'Easter Offensive' began at noon on 30 March 1972, when an intense artillery barrage rained down on the northernmost ARVN outposts in Quang Tri Province just below the Demilitarized Zone.

The 'Easter Offensive,' dropped all pretense of guerrilla war.  Instead, it was a three-pronged multi-division NVA cross-border invasion, well supported by tanks and heavy artillery. General Giap committed six NVA divisions to the attack in the northern portion of South Vietnam. Another three NVA divisions were ordered to strike in central South Vietnam, and a NVA/VC three-division force would attack north of Saigon.

With his reputation and his policy of Vietnamization at stake, Nixon implemented a massive buildup of air power in Southeast Asia and a broadening of the eligible targets. On April 6, U.S. fighter-bombers raided military targets 100 kilometers north of the demilitarized zone. As the available air assets made their strikes both in support of the beleaguered ARVN units and against targets in North Vietnam, squadrons of U.S. military aircraft redeployed from their bases in Japan, Korea, the Philippines and the U.S. mainland. Simultaneously, more aircraft carriers steamed toward Vietnam to join the two already on station there, until by late spring there were six aircraft carriers, each with approximately 90 craft, operating off the coast.

For the CAG 5 guys on MIDWAY who had walked aboard for the three week "mini-cruise" final preparation training event and examination prior to departing on a WESTPAC cruise to the Gulf of Tonkin, we recieved  the goodnews/bad news story on the night of 5 April as MIDWAY steamed south to the operating area off of San Diego. Bad news – we're going west early.  Good news – we're not going directly from here, we go back to Alameda for the weekend and leave on Monday. The airwing flew aboard the next day landing in gale force winds as Schoolboy litterally raced north.

As for "training," I hot-seated into the commanding officer's plane and launched for two arrested landings. Forty + knots of wind is a bit of unusual operating conditions, and Skipper Harvey, got out of the a/c as I walked up with a very puzzled look on his face.  He had no idea what we'd been told the night before.

Anchors aweigh, my boy, anchors aweigh. No passing Go, straight to war, nod to South Vietnam and head for the Red River Valley. First combat mission 30 April, support the full on conventional war defense of An Loc – tanks and all (TANKS???, this is not France in '44, what the…?) – for a few days , then right to the heart of it up North on 10 May, first Alpha Strike on 13 May to a little spot adjacent to the Than Hoa Bridge and first sight of Cryllic.  Cryllic- you know  Russian – the writing on the side of that big son-of-a-bitch Surface to Air Missile (SAM) that welcomed my best bud Floo and I to airwar North Vietnam. Dearest love Paulette, your new husband is a combat pilot now. 

Over on the East Coast, on Friday 7 April, "all those thinking you're heading for fun and sun in the Mediterranean step right on up, not so fast USS SARATOGA and airwing!"  Sara had just completed her mini-cruise and was intended to deploy in three weeks. Instead she left a day after MIDWAY, going around the Horn of Africa. Carol Reardon does a superb job in Launch the Intruders of telling the story of the VA-75  A-6 squadron Sunday Punchers on that cruise. Well written, worth the read.  A-6 suadrons are different than A-7 squadrons and East Coast things were different, but for those who went West on the 10th, you cannot help but see yourself in the mirror.

Operation Pocket Money, the mining of North Vietnam's ports, commenced on May 9. U.S. Navy A-6 bombers sowed the waters with sophisticated mines set to activate on May 11, giving the many ships in Vietnamese harbors, including 16 from the Soviet Union, time to vacate. Only five actually left, and several ships, including Soviet ones, were subsequently damaged. Since during the previous year up to 85 percent of all imports had arrived through the port of Haiphong, including all oil, this was a devastatingly effective blockade.

Responding to the Easter Offensive led to a full on reassualt on North Vietnam – Operation Linebacker which would continue until 22  Oct, 1972.  Nixon took off the gloves.  Restrictions from the '65-'68 Rolling Thunder attacks were mostly removed.  Planning was no longer in Lyndon Johnson's office and Defense Secretary McNamara "stick-and-carrot" was now just stick. Indeed, President Nixon consistently went against his SECDEF to take the fight right onto Hanoi's front door step. He believed he and America were being tested.  Air power – Air Force and Navy – were the answer.

The invasion of 1972 saw the first enemy use of massed armor coordinated with infantry and artillery in a fashion that the American generals, trained in European-style mechanized warfare, would be quite familiar with. In fact, the overt invasion by the North proved to be the opportunity that American military and planners had long dreamed of: to lure the elusive Communists into the open in a conventional, setpiece battle. Only in this type of conflict could the United States huge advantage in firepower and mobility be effectively exploited.

Cutting rail and communication lines and interdicting land-based supplies was accomplished to much greater effect than during attempts earlier in the war. Precision-guided munitions were introduced. B-52s were heavy players as were the AC-130 gunships down south. The army of South Vietnam (ARVN) even with uneven leadership stood tall in the saddle.  Giap's logistics flow was reduced to a trickle. All combined and finally with proper use of airpower, the victor from Dien Bien Phu and Tet got his ass handed to him.

One thought, not stated yet. There's lots of writing on the VN War and on use/miss-use of Air Power.  Rolling Thunder gets lots of words on ineffectiveness. But what's not found, unless you get into the more historic analysis by people with credentials significant enough to understand, is how truly effective air power was in staving off a major major effort by the NVN Politburo to win the war outright WHILE Nixon was still President and America was still involved.  If you strip off the fuzz of who, why, why not, and just look at how the air war was fought in this period, you find a different picture, a unique story of our eleven month deployment.

That "deep story" we earned, we own.

Al Nichols was that first combat loss, shot down and captured 19 May. Al was a combat experienced A-1 Sky Raider "Spad" guy.  Sobbering. There would be more and worse.

In successfully carrying out her mission MIDWAY was, at the same time, also helping to ensure the more long range objectives: the eventual release of American prisoners of war held captive in North Vietnam, and the end of Communist aggression in the free world.

It is perhaps fitting that MIDWAY could demonstrate her fulfillment of the Navy Creed during this cruise, for 1972 saw the 30^th anniversary of the battle from which she takes her name; the Battle of Midway.  It was during this battle that the aircraft carriers proved their importance in naval warfare and their effectiveness as a mobile weapons system.

Those of us who came home will never forget those who could not.

USS MIDWAY 1972-73 Cruise Book

Vietnam at War; The History 1946-1975 by Lt. Gen. Phillip B. Davidson, USA (Ret)

Midway Magic by Scott McGaugh

Launch the Intruders by Carol Reardon

Aviator Flight Log Book #1: Lt. James E. Beakley, 11 July 1968 to 1 February 1974

Torpedos could not be launched in the shallow water at Pearl Harbor… we said, we thought… the Japanese thought otherwise

This information flow diagram shows the principal sources of knowledge that the U.S. had before the attack –yet complete surprise (codenamed To-ra, to-ra, to-ra) was still achieved. The diagram shows many, though not all, of the information available to authorities –but the lack of holistic interoperability meant to achieve Hawaiian defense failed. ... there were many failures that haunt our more recent disasters and, in all likelihood, our awareness, response, and recovery from the next disaster.

...from the minority report on the Pearl Harbor attack, when the two senators stated that it was "the failure of men," and not any other reason, that led to the success of the Japanese attack. ... these "failures" were well documented in the majority report and are presented in what follows. Note that the congressional investigation was performed in 1946, though the event was December 7, 1941, because Congress did not want to pull commanders out of the Pacific during the war. On December 8th, a second key quote –which belies many of today's failed interoperability among people, processes, and tools, is that many people at all levels of leadership –and for various reasons we suggest in what follows –believe their abilities and capabilities are "good enough," and they are inevitably wrong.

Thirteen of the 25 failures reported in the congressional investigation of the attack on Pearl Harbor were largely independent of technology –these were failures of men:

•Lack of coordination among personnel in different organizations or parts of the same organization

•Assumption that others were taking action, but failure to verify what was assumed

•Failure to think through the entire defense enterprise that protected the fleet in port

•Missed, ignored, paraphrased, or failed to verify messages that failed to prompt an expected reaction.

The remaining 12 Pearl Harbor failures (are)primarily leader shortsightedness and inter-organizational jealousy, letting their personal relationships impact their planning and decisions, while delegating responsibility with limited authority.

(Now) show quotes from the 2004 9/11 Report and the 2005 Katrina Report demonstrating the same type of failure of organization as evident in the Pearl Harbor investigation. A clear lesson taught by 1946 that was ignored through 2005, and arguably is largely ignored today at all levels of government.

As the day closed on September 11 2001, we began the process of "doing what we know"- we had been attacked – strangely suprising to some in other lands, Americans strike back hard when treaded upon – so we went to war in the way we know how.  The events of September 11, 2001 were of such magnitude, shock and so far outside the norm of how we perceived warfare, and our whole intelligence process was so much still Cold War mind set, we didn't "know what to do" ...really. We attacked, we fought, we used B-52s and smart bombs with special forces guys doing the targeting and riding with Afghans on horses. We learned, but we were still doing what we know not knowing what to do. 

After the invasion of Iraq, that became apparent - who exactly were we fighting, how many groups, were they connected?  We learned, the hard way. Army General Petraeus and Marine General Mattis rewrote the counterinsurgency manual – many had long fought even using the term insurgency. Americans fought, Americans died, some learned.  But it has been a tough think.  What kind of war have we been fighting: guerrilla warfare, non conventional, unconventional, fourth generation, irregular?  Is the answer counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, what? The debate on whether what applied in Iraq applies in Afghanistan still ebbs and flows – below the surface for most Americans.

It's gets hard when the protagonist stop wearing blue and red uniforms to understand the true nature of warfare.  Yet, old principles still abide, Clausewitz's trinity does indeed still hold:

1. primordial violence, hatred, and enmity, which are to be regarded as a blind natural force; 


2. the play of chance and probability within which the creative spirit is free to roam; 


3. element of subordination, as an instrument of policy, which makes it subject to reason...." 

(This set of elements is usually labeled "emotion/chance/reason"; sometimes "violence/chance & probability/rational calculation"; or, even more abstractly, "irrationality/nonrationality/rationality.")

Like most Americans over the past week I've searched the blogs, read the opinion pieces, the stories of the folks most directly involved, watched hours of commentators and ceremonies and dedications. I've searched and struggled to find words for this blog, given the focus on decision making in severe crisis.

Below are three articles and links to the originals that surround the idea of learning and focusing so that we as a people – top to bottom – can know what to do.  They are well worth your time.

One introductory comment, then the rest stand on their own needing no help from me. The first article is about Rick Rescorla.  His story has been featured here before.  (See  Sheepdog of Morgan Stanley) He may be the only person who knew what to do on September 11 2001. Learning from the first WTC attack, he prepared those at Morgan Stanley for what he was sure would be another attack. Ignoring Port Authority notice to remain in place after the attacks, he evacuated Morgan Stanley employees. Were it not for him, the losses at the twin towers would have been not 2800 but 5300.

Knowing what to do is possible – it takes constant learning and the will to stay the course. Day is done, what next?

Rick Rescorla, Hero: Vietnam to 9/11

Boundary Condition #3 (3)

"And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour" offered a narrative connection of the 4 July adoption of the Declaration of Independence with the Christmas morning Battle of Trenton as possibly representing the singularly most significant or compelling event in our country's history to this day. Without Trenton there would have been no "Spirit of 76" out of the 4th of July.

Molly Pitcher at the Battle of Monmouth

We celebrate a day, but our independence is a narrative that ebbs and flows.  It cannot be understood or grasped from one event or the decisions around that occurrence.  It is easy and understandable to find ourselves in the great American game of baseball, high fiving the coach at third base, losing site of the fact that we didn't hit the triple that got us there, nor is there guarantee the next batter will bring us home.  We won the lottery of birth but what do we owe and what must we continue to do in recognition of our luck?

The fourth part of DaVinci's Horse posted in Spring 2008 sixth PWH edition concluded with a point out of East of Eden (1952) by John Steinbeck which tells the stories of three generations of two families, focusing on the theme of good against evil and making prominent use of the biblical story of Cain and Abel.   Cain murders his brother out of jealousy after God rejects his gift but then accepts Abel's. In the novel, Steinbeck ascribes great significance to the translation of the Hebrew word timshel ("thou mayest" or "thou will") overcome sin or evil.  He believes it demonstrates that humans have free will and can triumph over sin if they choose to do so, but victory is not guaranteed.

Continuing, the George W. Cecil quote was offered:

On the Plains of Hesitation, bleach the bones of countless millions who, at the Dawn of Victory, sat down to wait, and waiting died.

Said then and again now on 4 July 2011, I submit to you that those frontiersmen who defied Great Britain at risk of everything dear in fathering this nation, recognized full well that they were not guaranteeing anything, knew that what they had crafted was inherently flawed, and realized that what they had accomplished was to place a new nation at the dawn of victory – not for a year or a decade or a century but for as long as the people of the nation could reproduce the resiliency – spirit, blood, and treasure – of 1776.

Thou mayest.

The story must continue.

(Wonder how Molly celebrated the Fourth of July 1778?)

Those of us who came home must never forget those who could not

Boundary Condition #4 (3)

The Observe Orient Decide Act decision making process,  or as it is commonly known, OODA Loop, was evolved over time by John Boyd in search of improvements in capability in the highly competitive environment of war. Over time many have come to see the worth of the OODA process as instructive in any competitive environment.  Indeed Boyd's last work summarized his thinking in stating "without OODA loops… and without the ability to get inside other OODA Loops (or environments) we will find it impossible to comprehend, shape, adapt to, and in turn be shaped by an unfolding, evolving reality that is uncertain, ever changing, unpredictable."  Many consider Boyd and the "loop" in only the context of having a faster loop than the competitor. But the real value is found in the realization that the OODA loop in its complete form is really a process of learning – a way of search, analysis, synthesis, and aquistion of actionable understanding.  As such it is offered here as a crucial element when considering a culture of preparedness and the make up of resilient communities.

The video below was developed for youth soccer coaches based on the OODA process. I think you will find the method of presentation enlightening. You should be able to navigate to all 17 currently available segments.  Each lasts 2-3 minutes.

Boundary Condition #1 (4)

UPDATE 16 March: See the comments below from PWH's contributors and advisors

One significant element of an unconventional crisis as compared to other large catastrophes is the complex maps of actors – Catastrophic crises systematically involve an enormous variety of stakeholders, on an international scale.

Pictures from Japan: http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2011/03/world/hires.japan.quake/index.h tml?hpt=T1

Preparation? Readiness? Thinking the unthinkable?

Initial earthquake damage, then explosions and massive fire, then 30 feet of water, then flooding., nuclear meltdown, massive radiation in the atmosphere. Where does response start, where is the forward edge of battle, where is the center of gravity? How does leadership define and shape this "battlespace?"

 This most applies does it not? Unconventional Crisis: Parameters

Comments below reflect e-mail discussion that resulted from the recent announcement of the PWH blog Round #2 of the 2011 Boundary Conditions. They address  "unconventional crisis" in context of the catastrophic events ongoing in Japan:

Boundary Condition #2 (3)

A work in progress: With this post we conclude the second round of discussion on our 2011 boundary conditions.  Before reading Part 2, a few thoughts:

Of no surprise should be the issue of training as a key to operating successfully in unstable or high stress, high impact situations.  But what is emerging is the degree to which it is not just training to task no matter how detailed or how continuous, but apparently training combined with learning so as to teach recognition and perception skills i.e., how to recognize the edges of the envelop almost before those edges are actually defined.  Out of the Boyd discussion – smart Observation and then Orientation.

Recall Dr. Chet Richards question from the end of the "Synthesis" discussion closing the Washington article:  "What kind of organizations operate at rapid OODA loop tempo? Organizations whose leaders have, over time, imbued certain qualities into the fiber of their very being, with these four qualities:

• Superb competence, leading to a Zen-like state of intuitive understanding. Ability to sense when the time is ripe for action.


• Common outlook towards problems. Superb competence and intuitive understanding at the organizational level.


• Concept that answers the question, "What do I do next?" in ambiguous situations


• Understood and agreed to accountability

Now reflect on some extracts from the comments:

• In order to prepare responders for this it takes training that involves blending cognitive abilities with the physical action taking, working all stages of the Boyd Cycle


• The relative speed of accurate perception (orientation) and decision to action is key.  Achieving success in this dynamic relies on training/education, exercising, red teaming (or adaptive red teaming/alternative analysis during preparatory phases — pre-incident —and actual response — trans-/post-incident).


• One of the deficiencies in current incident command training is how to "orient" yourself to the situation. Responding to an unfolding event is totally different than commanding a planned event.


• Problems in recognition: First, some responders develop their SA once and then do not re-observe until things get bad or a sudden change occurs on the incident. Second, Orientation often stays confined to where a responder starts at an incident. Some also freeze their orientation to a specific point in time as they make decisions, usually their first encounter at the scene.


• A main concept in the HRO work is that if you train people, have them understand the true risk of the work they are doing, and keep them stimulated they can both become experts in their areas and be able to recognize when events fall outside of the usual pattern (unconventional crisis). With this recognition they can utilize their training to develop creative response approaches. But it is key that they are able to know with certainty that a crisis is unconventional so that they do not make errors regarding their response.


• Preparedness is motivated by the perception of the threat. That is why car insurance is more expensive for 20 year olds than. 50 year olds. Young men perceive the threat differently, and have less motivation to be prepared, or to avoid thresholds likely to cause problems.  Carrier flight deck accidents occur with sufficient regularity to keep perceptions of the threat high. Katrina-type storms don't.

Consider these points as you continue  reading Part 2 of the research work on high reliability organizations.  How much then applies to unconventional crisis as defined? Are the narratives of George Washington's leadership and carrier aviation instructive in that context?  Does OODA as an analysis tool lead to learning?

Self-Design and Self-Replication

Today's aircraft carrier flight operations are as much a product of their history and continuity of operation as of their design. The complexity of operations aboard a large, modern carrier flying the latest aircraft is so great that no one, on or off the ship, can know the content and sequence of every task needed to make sure the aircraft fly safely, reliably, and on schedule. As with many organizations of similar size and complexity, tasks are broken down internally into smaller and more homogeneous units as well as task-oriented work groups…

In order to keep this network alive and coordinated, it must be kept connected and integrated horizontally (e.g., across squadrons), vertically (from maintenance and fuel up through operations), and across command structures (battle group—ship—air wing). As in all large organizations, the responsible officer or chief petty officer has to know what to do in each case, how to get it done, whom to report to and why, and how to coordinate with all units that he depends upon or that depend upon him. This is complicated in the Navy case by the requirement for many personnel, particularly the more senior officers, to interact on a regular basis with those from several separate organizational hierarchies. Each has several different roles to play depending upon which of the structures is in effect at any given time.

Furthermore, these organizational structures also shift in time to adapt to varying circumstances. The evolution of the separate units (e.g., ship, air wing, command structures) and their integration during workup into a fully coordinated operational team, for example, have few, if any, applicable counterparts in civilian organizations.

 There is also no civilian counterpart for the requirement to adapt to rapid shifts in role and authority in response to changing tactical circumstances during deployment.

No armchair designer, even one with extensive carrier service, could sit down and lay out all the relationships and interdependencies, let alone the criticality and time sequence of all the individual tasks. Both tasks and coordination have evolved through the incremental accumulation of experience to the point where there probably is no single person in the Navy who is familiar with them all. …

For a variety of reasons, no two aircraft carriers, even of the same class, are quite alike. ..What is more, even the same formal assignment will vary according to time and place. Carriers differ; missions differ; requirements differ from Atlantic to Pacific, and from fleet to fleet; ships have different histories and traditions, and different equipment; and commanding officers and admirals retain the discretion to run their ships and groups in different ways and to emphasize different aspects. Increased standardization of carriers, aircraft loadings, missions, tasks, and organizational structure would be difficult to obtain, and perhaps not even wise.  There is a great deal to learn in the Navy, and much of it is only available on the spot.

Shore-based school training for officers and crew provides only basic instruction.  It includes a great deal about what needs to be done and the formal rules for doing it. Yet it only provides generalized guidelines and a standardized framework to smooth the transition to the real job of performing the same tasks on board as part of a complex system. NATOPS and other written guidelines represent the book of historical errors. They provide boundaries to prevent certain actions known to have adverse outcomes, but little guidance as to how to promote optimal ones.

Operations manuals are full of details of specific tasks at the micro level but rarely discuss integration into the whole. There are other written rules and procedures, from training manuals through standard operating procedures (SOPs), that describe and standardize the process of integration. None of them explain how to make the whole system operate smoothly, let alone at the level of performance that we have observed.  It is in the real-world environment of workups and deployment, through the continual training and retraining of officers and crew, that the information needed for safe and efficient operation is developed, transmitted, and maintained. Without that continuity, and without sufficient operational time at sea, both effectiveness and safety would suffer.

Moreover, the organization is not stable over time. Every forty months or so there is an almost 100 percent turnover of crew, and all of the officers will have rotated through and gone on to other duty. Yet the ship remains functional at a high level. …

Behavioral and cultural norms, SOPs, and regulations are necessary, but they are far from sufficient to preserve operational structure and the character of the service. Our research team noted three mechanisms that act to maintain and transmit operational factors in the face of rapid turnover.

First, and in some ways most important, is the pool of chief petty officers, many of whom have long service in their specialty and circulate around similar ships in the fleet.

Second, many of the officers and some of the crew will have at some time served on other carriers, albeit in other jobs, and bring to the ship some of the shared experience of the entire force.

Third, the process of continual rotation and replacement, even while on deployment, maintains a continuity that is broken only during a major refit. These mechanisms are realized by an uninterrupted process of on-board training and retraining that makes the ship one huge, continuing school for its officers and men.

The Paradox of High Turnover

"As soon as you learn 90% of your job, it's time to move on. That's the Navy way." Junior officer

Because of the high turnover rate, a U.S. aircraft carrier will begin its workup with a large percentage of new hands in the crew, and with a high proportion of officers new to the ship. The U.S. Navy's tradition of training generalist officers (which distinguishes it from the other military services) assures that many of them will also be new to their specific jobs. Furthermore, tours of duty are not coordinated with ship sailing schedules; hence, the continual replacement of experienced with "green" personnel, in critical as well as routine jobs, continues even during periods of actual deployment.

Continual rotation creates the potential for confusion and uncertainty, even in relatively standardized military organizations. …

It takes time and effort to turn a collection of men, even men with the common training and common background of a tightly knit peacetime military service, into a smoothly functioning operations and management team. SOPs and other formal rules help, but the organization must learn to function with minimal dependence upon team stability and personal factors…

Yet we credit this practice with contributing greatly to the effectiveness of naval organizations. There are two general reasons for this paradox.

First, the efforts that must be made to ease the resulting strain on the organization seem to have positive effects that go beyond the problem they directly address.

Second, officers must develop authority and command respect from those senior enlisted specialists upon whom they depend and from whom they must learn the specifics of task performance.

The Navy's training cycle is perforce dictated by the schedule of its ships, not of its personnel. Because of high social costs of long sea-duty tours, the Navy has long had to deal with such continual turnover—it attempts as best it can to mitigate the negative effects. Most important is the institutionalization of continual, cyclic training as part of organizational and individual expectations. This is designed to bring new people "up to speed" with the current phase of the operational cycle, thus stabilizing the environment just before and during deployment; however, this is accomplished at the cost of pushing the turbulence down into individual units. Although the deployment cycle clearly distinguishes periods of "training" from those of "operations," it is a measure of competence and emphasis, not of procedural substance that applies primarily to the ship as a unit, not its men as individuals.

The result is a relatively open system that exploits the process of training and retraining as a means for socialization and acculturation. At any given moment, all but the most junior of the officers and crew are acting as teacher as well as trainee. …

As a result, the ship appears to us as one gigantic school, not in the sense of rote learning, but in the positive sense of a genuine search for acquisition and improvement of skills. One of the great enemies of high reliability is the usual "civilian" combination of stability, routinization, and lack of challenge and variety that predispose an organization to relax vigilance and sink into a dangerous complacency that can lead to carelessness and error.  

The shipboard environment on a carrier is never that stable. Traditional ways of doing things are both accepted and constantly challenged. Young officers rotate in with new ideas and approaches; old chiefs remain aboard to argue for tradition and experience. The resulting dynamic can be the source of some confusion and uncertainty at times, but at its best leads to a constant scrutiny and re-scrutiny of every detail, even for SOPs.

In general, the Navy has managed to change the rapid personnel turnover to an advantage through a number of mechanisms that have evolved by trial and error. SOPs and procedures, for example, are often unusually robust, which in turn contributes another increment to reliability. The continual movement of people rapidly diffuses organizational and technical innovation as well as "lessons learned," often in the form of "sea stories," throughout the organization. Technical innovation is eagerly sought where it will clearly increase both reliability and effectiveness, yet resisted when suggested purely for its own sake. …

Authority Overlays

"Here I'm responsible for the lives of my gang. In civilian life, I'm the kind of guy you wouldn't like to meet on a dark street.—Deck petty officer

Our team noted with some surprise the adaptability and flexibility of what is, after all, a military organization in the day-to-day performance of its tasks. On paper, the ship is formally organized in a steep hierarchy by rank with clear chains of command, and means to enforce authority far beyond those of any civilian organization. We supposed it to be run by the book, with a constant series of formal orders, salutes, and yes-sirs. Often it is, but flight operations are not conducted that way.

Flight operations and planning are usually conducted as if the organization were relatively "flat" and collegial. This contributes greatly to the ability to seek the proper, immediate balance between the drive for safety and reliability and that for combat effectiveness. Events on the flight deck, for example, can happen too quickly to allow for appeals through a chain of command. Even the lowest rating on the deck has not only the authority but the obligation to suspend flight operations immediately, under the proper circumstances, without first clearing it with superiors. Although his judgment may later be reviewed or even criticized, he will not be penalized for being wrong and will often be publicly congratulated if he is right.

Coordinated planning for the next day's air operations requires a series of involved trade-offs between mission requirements and the demands of training, flight time, maintenance, ordnance, and aircraft handling. It is largely done by a process of ongoing and continuing argument and negotiation among personnel from many units, in person and via phone, which tend to be resolved by direct order only when the rare impasse develops that requires an appeal to higher authority. In each negotiation, most officers play a dual role, resisting excessive demands from others that would compromise the safety or future performance of their units, while maximizing demands on others for operational and logistic support.

This does not mean that formal rank and hierarchy are unimportant. In fact, they are the lubricant that makes the informal processes work. Unlike the situation in most civilian organizations, relative ranking in the hierarchy is largely stable and shaped by regular expectations, formal rules, and procedures. … the shipboard situation tends to promote cooperative behavior, which tends to minimize the negative effects of jealousy and direct competition. .. we rarely observe such strategies as the hoarding of information or deliberate undermining of the ability of others to perform their jobs that characterize so many civilian organizations, particularly in the public sector.

Redundancy

"How does it work? On paper, it can't, and it don't. So you try it. After a while, you figure out how to do it right and keep doing it that way. Then we just get out there and train the guys to make it work. The ones that get it we make POs. ‡ The rest just slog through their time."- Flight deck CPO

Operational redundancy—the ability to provide for the execution of a task if the primary unit fails or falters—is necessary for high-reliability organizations to manage activities that are sufficiently dangerous to cause serious consequences in the event of operational failures.  In classic organizational theory, redundancy is provided by some combination of duplication (two units performing the same function) and overlap (two units with functional areas in common). Its enemies are mechanistic management models that seek to eliminate these valuable modes in the name of "efficiency."  For a carrier at sea, several kinds of redundancy are necessary, even for normal peacetime operations, each of which creates its own kinds of stress.

A primary form is technical redundancy involving operations-critical units or components on board—computers, radar antennas, etc. In any fighting ship, as much redundancy is built in as is practicable. This kind of redundancy is traditional and well understood. Another form is supply redundancy. …Here is a clear case of a trade-off between operational and safety reliability that must be made much closer to the edge of the envelope than would be the case for other kinds of organizations. Indeed, for a combat organization, the trade-off point is generally taken as a measure of overall competence.

Most interesting to our research is a third form, decision/management redundancy, which encompasses a number of organizational strategies to ensure that critical decisions are timely and correct. This has two primary aspects: (a) internal cross-checks on decisions, even at the micro level; and, (b) fail-safe redundancy in case one management unit should fail or be put out of operation. It is in this area that the rather unique Navy way of doing things is the most interesting, theoretically as well as practically.

As an example of (a), almost everyone involved in bringing the aircraft [in for a landing] on board is part of a constant loop of conversation and verification taking place over several different channels at once. .... This constant flow of information about each safety-critical activity, monitored by many different listeners on several different communications nets, is designed specifically to assure that any critical element that is out of place will be discovered or noticed by someone before it causes problems….

Fail-safe redundancy, (b), is achieved in a number of ways. Duplication and overlap, the most familiar modes of error detection, are used to some extent—for example, in checking mission weapons loading. Nevertheless, there are limits to how they can be provided. Space and billets are tight at sea, even on a nuclear-powered carrier, and unlike land-based organizations, the seagoing Navy cannot simply add extra departments and ratings. Shipboard constraints and demands require a considerable amount of redundancy at relatively small cost in personnel. In addition to the classic "enlightened waste" approach of tolerance for considerable duplication and overlap, other, more efficient strategies that use existing units with other primary tasks as backups are required, such as "stressing the survivor" and mobilizing organizational "reserves."

Stressing-the-survivor strategies require that each of the units normally operate below capacity so that if one fails or is unavailable, its tasks can be shifted to others without severely overloading them. Redundancy on the bridge is a good example. 34 Mobilizing reserves entails the creation of a "shadow" unit able to pick up the task if necessary. … Most of the officers and a fair proportion of senior enlisted men are familiar with several tasks other than the ones they normally perform and could execute them in an emergency.

The Combat Direction Center (CDC, or just "Combat"), for example, is the center for fighting the ship.  Crucial decisions are thereby placed nominally in the hands of relatively junior officers in a single, comparatively vulnerable location. In this case we have noted several of the mechanisms described above. There is a considerable amount of senior oversight, even in calm periods. A number of people are "just watching," keeping track of each other's jobs or monitoring the situation from other locations. There is no one place on the ship that duplicates the organizational function of Combat, yet each of the tasks has a backup somewhere—on the carrier or distributed among other elements of the battle group.

In an "ordinary" organization these parameters would likely be characterized in negative terms. Backup systems differ in pattern and structure from primary ones. Those with task responsibility are constantly under the critical eyes of others. Authority and responsibilities are distributed in different patterns and may shift in contingencies. In naval circumstances, where reliability is paramount, these are seen as positive and cooperative, for it is the task that is of primary importance.

Thus, those elements of Navy "culture" that have the greatest potential for creating confusion and uncertainty turn out to be major contributors to organizational reliability and robustness under stress. We believe this to be an example of adaptive organizational evolution to circumstance, for it responds very well to the functional necessities of modern operations.

Some Preliminary Conclusions

"The job of this ship is to shoot the airplanes off the pointy end and catch them back on the blunt end. The rest is detail."- Carrier commanding officer

Even though our research is far from complete, particularly with regard to comparisons with other organizations, several interesting observations and lessons have already been recorded.

First, the remarkable degree of personal and organizational flexibility we have observed is essential for performing operational tasks that continue to increase in complexity as technology advances. "Ordinary" organizational theory would characterize aircraft carrier operations as confusing and inefficient, especially for an organization with a strong and steep formal management hierarchy (i.e., any "quasi-military" organization). However, the resulting redundancy and flexibility are, in fact, remarkably efficient in terms of making the best use of space-limited personnel.

Second, an effective fighting carrier is not a passive weapon that can be kept on a shelf until it is needed. She is a living unit possessed of dynamic processes of self-replication and self-reconstruction that can only be nurtured by retaining experienced personnel, particularly among the chiefs, and by giving her sufficient operational time at sea. This implies a certain minimum budgetary cost for maintaining a first-line carrier force at the levels of operational capability and safety demanded of the U.S. Navy.

Third, as long-term students of organizations, we are astounded at how little of the existing literature is applicable to the study of ships at sea. Consider, for example, the way in which the several units that make up a battle group (carrier, air wing, supply ships, escorts) are in a continual process of formation and reformation. Imagine any other organization performing effectively when it is periodically separated from and then rejoins the unit that performs its central technical function.  More importantly, most of the existing literature was developed for failure-tolerant, civilian organizations with definite and measurable outputs. The complementary body on public organizations assumes not only a tolerance for failure, but at best an ambiguous definition of what measures failure (or for that matter, success).

Naval Aviation 100 Years – Part 1: A Bad Night for Schoolboy – A Self-designing, High Reliability Organization

IV. Bad Night for Schoolboy – And Other Stories of the Carrier 

1. The Pilot's Story: Bruce Kallsen VA-115

2. Landing Signal Officer Perspective

3. Champs In the Middle

4. Survival on her own terms: Midway's Magic

Boundary Condition #2 (2)

Of all activities studied by our research group, flight operations at sea is the closest to the "edge of the envelope"—operating under the most extreme conditions in the least stable environment, and with the greatest tension between preserving safety and reliability and attaining maximum operational efficiency. Rochlin, Laporte, Roberts

        Today, one hundred years after the first naval aviator to-be checked in to begin flight training at North Island,  across the San Diego Harbor resides the USS Midway (CV-41), her operational service done, she is at peace.  But it was not always that way. Designed and built out of the needs of World War II, she missed that war by days. But in the Vietnam War, Midway was one of only two carriers to receive the Presidential Unit Citation, her fighter pilots were responsible for the first air-air kill of the war on 17 June 1965 and the last kill on 12 January 1973, in the Christmas bombing raids that led to the end of the war, while Air Force B-52s struck at Hanoi, CAG 5's Intruder pilots simultaneously struck Haiphong,  her attack pilots flew the last missions into North Vietnam, and she stayed on the line until the last day, the last mission of that war.  The '72 war cruise set the record for most days on the line for any carrier in the war.

Schoolboy, Midway's call sign if you needed to talk to her in the goings and comings of "jousting with SAM and Charlie" was a warship, designed to go in harms way for the United States of America.  From September 1945 to April 1992 neither Schoolboy's crew or her airwing ever failed in that task.  In the most demanding of missions, in the most demanding environment, Schoolboy owned the term reliant. 

But then some days were harder than others.

To this day I can't watch – actually hear – the scene in A Christmas Carol where Marley is about to appear to Ebinezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve without recalling that night. The junior officers of Attack Squadron 56 (VA-56) lived in two bunk rooms under the flight deck arresting gear.  During flight operations the sounds of Air Wing Five's jets dropping on to the deck, the run out of the arresting wires and the scraping reset of the cables was so routine you just hardly noticed after six months of day and night combat sorties over North Vietnam. But this was different – the nerve grinding screech was obviously something dragging across the deck that was big and out-of-place.  Something was obviously very wrong. Charlie Hokansen, Ray Oswald and I were unwinding (maybe a secret Scotch in hand), having flown combat missions earlier, our day was done, or so we thought.  Our other bunkroom-mate Mike "Manny" Bader was still out there, flying with our squadron commanding officer Lew Chatham. Even before "General Quarters, General Quarters, all hands man your battle stations" sounded,  we three were running towards the Champ Ready Room., not just to find out what the hell was happening, but because that was our General Quarters station. What we found was not good.  Almost immediately after entering the ready room, Skipper Lew followed - haggard, drenched in JP-5 jet fuel.  Schoolboy and her people were in trouble. Me

Given the previous definitions of boundary conditions, this article's purpose is two fold: First is to provide narrative of one event as part of the dynamic history of Naval Aviation- an event that comes out of personal experience, one in which I know the actors and the roles they played; Second is to use that narrative to re-introduce the idea of self designing high reliability organizations, with the carrier offered as the foremost representative. The stories of this event from various perspectives of the Air Wing Five actors are provided in PWH INTERSECTION and  its sub pages:

IV. Bad Night for Schoolboy – And Other Stories of the Carrier

• 1. The Pilot's Story: Bruce Kallsen VA-115


• 2. Landing Signal Officer Perspective


• 3. Champs In the Middle


• 4. Survival on her own terms: Midway's Magic

You must read these stories to fully comprehend how this serious accident – one that was on the verge of catastrophic – is indeed indicative not so much of the obvious danger inherent in sea-based aviation, but rather of the ingrained "knowing what to do" of a self designing, highly reliant organization.

Communities – citizens, private companies, political leadership, first responders – don't operate day-day in high tempo high threat environments.  But those low probability, Katrina-like incidents are really low predictability,high impact, every day occurrences – somewhere. No matter the possibility, thinking the unthinkable after the fact might just indicate an avoidable error.

On a carrier at sea, different scripts call for different roles.  Survival of the ship and its crew demand it.  Survival when there's no place to go is a team sport and quarterbacks change.  In the case of fire, one of the most serious emergencies on a ship at sea, us college boy arrogant, God's-gift-to-women, ne'er do well , flyboy-reason-the-ship-is-out-there, a-holes in speed jeans (anti-gravity or G- suits) report to our ready rooms so that most likely we can be assigned to a 19 year-old petty officer to man fire hoses on the flight deck - and might I importantly add, we most definitely take his direction.  He knows a hell of a lot more about saving my precious than we do.

The mission of an aircraft carrier is  to launch and recover combat aircraft, but its core strength is in getting past those moments when all teeters on the edge.  This is the team moment, the CV moment, if you will, and in most incidents it is led and conducted not by the aviators but first by chief petty officers, and then by first, and second class petty officers.  Knowledge, experience, adaptability, and an attitude derived from an understanding that this is their time, their moment.They, not the aviators are the difference makers.  They know it and so do the aviators, from the Captain of the ship and the Airwing Commander down to the most fledgling aviator.

In this 100th year of Naval Aviation, Project White Horse 084640 has chosen to use the stories of naval aviation to discuss the carrier as representing a self designing  highly reliant organization, and queries "what might be learned in answer to the overall question 'what kind of an organization…' survives and indeed thrives in crisis rich environments?"

Previously posted in Edition #6 of PWH, the findings of the research by Gene Rochlin, Todd La Porte, and Karlene Roberts are re-introduced as a extract in two parts beginning below. I encourage readers to see the Complete article.

Extract Part 1

The Self-Designing High-Reliability Organization:
Aircraft Carrier Flight Operations at Sea

(The complete article was originally published in the Autumn 1987 issue of Naval War College Review)

"A hundred things I have no control over could go wrong and wreck my career . . . but wherever I go from here, I'll never have a better job than this. . . . This is the best job in the world." Carrier commanding officer

Recent studies of large, formal organizations that perform complex, inherently hazardous, and highly technical tasks under conditions of tight coupling and severe time pressure have generally concluded that most will fail spectacularly at some point, with attendant human and social costs of great severity. The notion that accidents in these systems are "normal," that is, to be expected given the conditions and risks of operation, appears to be as well grounded in experience as in theory.  Yet there is a small group of organizations in American society that appears to succeed under trying circumstances, performing daily a number of highly complex technical tasks in which they cannot afford to "fail." We are currently studying three unusually salient examples whereby devotion to a zero rate of error is almost matched by performance—utility grid management (Pacific Gas & Electric Company), air traffic control, and flight operations aboard U.S. Navy aircraft carriers. 

Of all activities studied by our research group, flight operations at sea is the closest to the "edge of the envelope"—operating under the most extreme conditions in the least stable environment, and with the greatest tension between preserving safety and reliability and attaining maximum operational efficiency.  Both electrical utilities and air traffic control emphasize the importance of long training, careful selection, task and team stability, and cumulative experience.

Yet the Navy demonstrably performs very well with a young and largely inexperienced crew, with a "management" staff of officers that turns over half its complement each year, and in a working environment that must rebuild itself from scratch approximately every eighteen months. Such performance strongly challenges our theoretical under standing of the Navy as an organization, its training and operational processes, and the problem of high-reliability organizations generally. (Emphasis added)

It will come as no surprise to this audience that the Navy has certain traditional ways of doing things that transcend specifics of missions, ships, and technology. Much of what we have to report interprets that which is "known" to naval carrier personnel, yet is seldom articulated or analyzed.  We have been struck by the degree to which a set of highly unusual formal and informal rules and relationships are taken for granted, implicitly and almost unconsciously incorporated into the organizational structure of the operational Navy.

Only those who have been privileged to participate in high-tempo flight operations aboard a modern aircraft carrier at sea can appreciate the complexity, strain, and inherent hazards that underlie seemingly routine day-to-day operations. That naval personnel ultimately accept these conditions as more or less routine is yet another example of how adaptable people are to even the most difficult and stressful of circumstances….

The purpose of this article is to report some of our more relevant findings and observations to our gracious host, the Navy community; to describe air operations through the eyes of informed, yet detached observers; and to use our preliminary findings to reflect upon why carriers work as well as they do.

See Part 2 >Self-Design and Self-Replication

See INTERSECTION IV. >Bad Night for Schoolboy – And Other Stories of the Carrier

At the time of publication, Professor Rochlin was adjunct professor of energy and resources and a research political scientist at the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Professor La Porte was professor of political science and associate director of the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and Professor Roberts, an organizational psychologist, was professor of business administration at the University of California, Berkeley.