The Other McCain

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Tip: Pentagon Covering Up Fact That Female Officers Nearly Sank Navy Ship

Posted on | June 17, 2018 | 13 Comments

The USS Fitzgerald after a deadly collision with a freighter in June 2017.

An anonymous email came in over the transom this morning:

Hi, Stacy.
During the early weeks after the USS Fitzgerald was speared by a lumbering Philippine container ship, it was noteworthy that the captain and a couple of admirals were publically named, but not the actual officer in charge, the officer of the deck. (OOD) The other person who should have kept the Fitz out of trouble is the person in charge of the combat information center, the Tactical Action Officer. That individual is supposed to be monitoring the combat radar, which can detect a swimmer at a distance of two miles.
Not until a year later, when the final reports are made public and the guilty parties have been court-martialed, does the truth come out. The OOD was named Sarah, and the Tactical Action Officer was named Natalie, and they weren’t speaking to each other!!! The Tactical Action Officer would normally be in near constant communication with the OOD, but there is no record of any communication between them that entire shift!
Another fun fact: In the Navy that won WWII, the damage control officers were usually some of the biggest and strongest men aboard, able to close hatches, shore up damaged areas with timbers, etc. The Fitz’s damage control officer was also a woman, and she never left the bridge. She handled the aftermath of the accident remotely, without lifting a finger herself!
Look it up: The OOD was Sarah Coppock, Tactical Action Officer was Natalie Combs. . . .
When I noticed last year that they were doing all they could to keep the OOD’s name out of the headlines, I speculated to my son that it was a she. Turns out all the key people (except one officer in the CIC) were female!

Indeed, I did some searching, and Lt. Coppock pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty. Lt. Combs faced a hearing last month:

In an 11-hour hearing, prosecutors painted a picture of Lt. Irian Woodley, the ship’s surface warfare coordinator, and Lt. Natalie Combs, the tactical action officer, as failing at their jobs, not using the tools at their disposal properly and not communicating adequately. They became complacent with faulty equipment and did not seek to get it fixed, and they failed to communicate with the bridge, the prosecution argued. Had they done those things, the government contended, they would have been able to avert the collision.

That two of the officers — Coppock and Combs — involved in this fatal incident were female suggests that discipline and training standards have been lowered for the sake of “gender integration,” which was a major policy push at the Pentagon during the Obama administration. It could be that senior officers, knowing their promotions may hinge on enthusiastic support for “gender integration,” are reluctant to enforce standards for the women under their command.

This was the story of Kara Hultgreen, the Navy pilot who died in a 1994 F-14 crash. Investigation showed that Hultgreen had been allowed to proceed in her training after errors that would have meant a washout for any male pilot. But the Clinton administration was pushing for female fighter pilots, which resulted in a competition between the Navy and Air Force to put women into these combat roles. It is not necessary to believe that (a) women shouldn’t be fighter pilots, in order to believe (b) lowering standards for the sake of quotas is a bad idea. Of course, you may believe both (a) and (b), but it is (b) that gets people killed.

It seems obvious that the Pentagon (and the liberal media) sought to suppress full knowledge of what happened to the Fitzgerald in the immediate aftermath of the June 2017 incident that killed seven sailors, in the same way the details of Kara Hultgreen’s death were suppressed. It took investigative reporters like Rowan Scarborough of the Washington Times a lot of hard work to find out what actually happened to Hultgreen. Let’s hope other reporters will dig into what’s happening in our military with the “gender intergration” agenda at the Pentagon now.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!



 

 

Category: Media Bias, Military, Sex Trouble

Comments

13 Responses to “Tip: Pentagon Covering Up Fact That Female Officers Nearly Sank Navy Ship”

  1. News of the Week (June 17th, 2018) | The Political Hat
    June 17th, 2018 @ 3:06 pm

    […] Tip: Pentagon Covering Up Fact That Female Officers Nearly Sank Navy Ship An anonymous email came in over the transom this morning […]

  2. Pentagon cover-up: USS Fitzgerald accident was the responsibility of female officers
    June 18th, 2018 @ 7:55 am

    […] They’re getting court-martialed so now it’s all coming out. […]

  3. Never Yet Melted » USS Fitzgerald Collision Connected to Female Officers on Duty Who Were Not Speaking To One Another
    June 20th, 2018 @ 10:48 am

    […] Robert Stacy McCain received an anonymous letter pointing out that other issues besides simple negligence were involved in the USS Fitzgerald’s collision. […]

  4. Navy woes | David Knights' Weblog
    June 20th, 2018 @ 1:59 pm

    […] Is there more behind the recent USN woes than we’ve been lead to believe?  Sounds like there is a more interesting story than has been widely reported. […]

  5. News Briefs – 06/21/2018 |
    June 21st, 2018 @ 6:31 am

    […] Some are saying it was almost entirely female officers that almost sank the Fitzgerald. I still feel two Destroyers was a bit too coincidental to not be some form of enemy action on top of that. […]

  6. The women were not speaking to each other - Barrel Strength
    June 21st, 2018 @ 5:30 pm

    […] From the blogsite “The other McCain” […]

  7. Equal Treatment – Splendid Isolation
    June 22nd, 2018 @ 7:29 am

    […] I have this opinion that if women are to be treated exactly the same as men, then when they fuck up bigly, their names should be reported in the news rather than covered up. […]

  8. Cause of USS Fitzgerald Collision? | The Lexicans
    June 22nd, 2018 @ 2:13 pm

    […] to Robert McCain the 2 officers who should have easily kept her out of harm’s way weren’t speaking to […]

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  10. Maggie's Farm
    June 25th, 2018 @ 8:14 am

    Monday morning links

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    June 26th, 2018 @ 8:29 am

    […] Read the whole thing. […]

  12. The Daily Gouge Archive, Monday, June 25th, 2018
    June 26th, 2018 @ 8:30 pm

    […] Pentagon Covering Up Fact That Female Officers Nearly Sank Navy Ship […]

  13. Interesting Items 06/25 – Interesting Items
    June 27th, 2018 @ 4:18 pm

    […] Diversity.  Sadly, the US Navy has been in the forefront of opening combat positions to women since the days of Patsy Schroeder (D, CO) getting even with the Navy for the drunken brawl that was the 1991 Tailhook Annual Symposium in Las Vegas.  To be fair, they were warned at the time not to hold a drunken brawl that year.  They chose to hold one anyway.  This opened the door for the feminists using calls for diversity, affirmative action, and social engineering to go after the Navy and reshape it more to their liking.  Clinton SECNAV John Dalton starting in 1993 really pushed the noodle.  His actions led directly to unqualified women being put in the cockpit of F-14s (Kara Hultgreen) and other combat positions as penance.  Once you change your standards for one group of people you want to politically benefit, in this case, women in combat, and that order is given from the highest levels of leadership, sooner or later you destroy that military service.  Latest example of this comes from the after-action report of the deadly collision between the USS Fitzgerald and a Philippine container ship in June 2017, killing seven and almost sinking the ship.  The collision took place around 0130 off the coast of Japan.  It turns out that the Officer of the Deck (OOD) was female, the Tactical Action Officer, and the Damage Control officers were women.  The top two were not speaking with one another for some reason, as such, they did not communicate about traffic in front of them.  The Damage Control Officer never left the Bridge following the collision.  She did everything remotely.  It turns out that all key people except on officer in the CIC were female.  The Navy has done its best over the course of the last year to keep the name of the OOD out of the press.  The results of Courts Martials suggest that the Navy lowered standards for the sake of “gender integration”, a major policy push during the O’Bama administration.  Lowering standards for the sake of quotas gets people killed in this business.  We hope SECDEF Mattis refocuses the Navy along with the other services on things that matter rather than filling quotas at the cost of human life.  And if the leadership of this ship is unable to keep from hitting something they should have seen miles away, God only knows how they will do in combat.  http://theothermccain.com/2018/06/17/tip-pentagon-covering-up-fact-that-female-officers-nearly-sank-… […]