When news broke that
Capt. Gregory McWherter's high-flying career had essentially ended,
support came flooding in from thousands of sailors and civilians who
said he'd put the Blue Angels flight team back together after a spate of
safety issues.
While his support remains strong in some
quarters, the release of the Navy's investigation into the Blue Angels
under McWherter paints a picture of aviation culture lapsing into
demeaning behavior from a bygone era, where porn, lewd comments and
raunchy pranks are condoned — even celebrated — as "boys being boys."
Those
days are gone. In the wake of the report, many sympathetic to McWherter
after his April 18 firing from his post-Blue Angels job as executive
officer at Naval Base Coronado, California, were shocked that a
commanding officer reportedly allowed his team to act with abandon,
saying this behavior has been off limits for a long time, according to
interviews with former squadron commanders.
"As a former Blue
Angel, as a former admiral in the Navy, I still am having trouble
getting my mind wrapped around how quickly this came about in the
squadron," retired Rear Adm. David Anderson told Navy Times in a June 11
phone interview.
Anderson and other
experts believe the unique give-and-take of the Blue Angels — where a CO
is both the final authority and a wingman whose flying is critiqued by
junior officers — may have fostered the "toxic" culture under McWherter,
whose eagerness to repair his team after returning in 2011 for his
second command stint created new problems.
"And also, how it got
into this mentality of a juvenile one-upmanship, to see who can shock
the most," added Anderson, the current president of the Blue Angels
Association. "That's not the Navy I know. That's not the Navy I served
in. That's not the Blue Angels I know."
Aviation leaders are
reviewing the Blue Angel's command structure, in light of the report
that found blatant disregard for regulations.
"The totally
inappropriate command environment fostered by Capt. McWherter was so
unacceptable that it should have been clear to each member of the team
that standards of personal dignity and respect were violated," Vice Adm.
David Buss, the head of Naval Air Forces, said in a June 3 statement.
Inside the Blues
The
Blue Angels are a far cry from a typical squadron: It's a more
democratic atmosphere, lacks an executive officer and boasts a selection
process more akin to joining SEAL Team 6 than your average ready room,
Anderson said.
"One of the hardest jobs is to go in as a
commanding officer of the Blue Angels and really understand, this is a
weird group," said Anderson, a retired F/A-18 pilot who flew with the
Blue Angels in the 1980s. "They vote on members to come in. How am I
supposed to come in as the commanding officer, and have some junior
officer at the table critique my flying? It's a very unusual
relationship."
On the other hand, Anderson said, it's up to an
experienced CO to know when to treat his junior officers as equally
capable pilots and when to be their boss.
"He has to learn very
quickly when he is one of the pilots sitting around the table talking
about safety of flight, and when he is the commanding officer of the
squadron," he said. "That includes command climate, morale of the
troops, meeting basic standards."
Anderson said he has spoken
with senior Navy leadership as they look at steps to tweak the Blue
Angels structure to prevent future command climate issues.
But making the team more like the rest of the fleet isn't the answer, he said.
"If
we were to select officers for the team the way the Navy selects
officers for a squadron, it would be very detrimental," he said.
For
instance, if the squadron were to get an XO, a position typically
responsible for ensuring regulations are followed and standards met, he
argued the selection process should be similar to the way the team
already chooses pilots, through a campaigning process and a vote by
existing members.
The 1991 Tailhook scandal was a tipping point
in naval aviation, where headlines of sexual harassment and lewd
behavior rocked the Navy for months and forced reforms. The Navy had to
take a hard look at itself in the fallout.
But in today's climate, a retired three-star flight officer said, COs must know better — or face the consequences.
"I
think commanding officers and leaders — not only COs in the Navy, but
leaders in general — have to be attuned to the times," said retired Vice
Adm. Lou Crenshaw, who commanded an attack squadron, an air wing and
the John F. Kennedy Carrier Strike Group during his three decades of
service.
Another former squadron commander, Capt. Mark Light, said he couldn't believe anyone would tolerate this misbehavior.
"In
today's environment, you can't survive that way. Ten years ago, that
was probably commonplace, I guess," said Light, a former C-2A Greyhound
pilot who has studied toxic leadership closely as a faculty member at
the Army War College. "It hasn't been like that in any of the ready
rooms I've been in for a really long time."
Others disagree,
arguing that lewd behavior, name-calling and bullying are still present
in some squadrons. One of them is Lt. Steve Crowston, who as an ensign
in 2009 faced his squadron's harassment culture head-on when it came
time to get his call sign.
Members of Strike Fighter Squadron
136, an F/A-18 Hornet unit based at Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia,
offered up ideas like "Gay Boy" and "Fagmeister." They settled on
"Romo's Bitch," razzing Crowston for his loyalty to the Dallas Cowboys
and their quarterback, Tony Romo.
Crowston, now the education
officer on the San Diego-based aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, filed a
complaint for workplace sexual harassment with his inspector general,
but they found his claims to be unsubstantiated.
He took the case up to the Pentagon's IG office, where it took a year and a half to be vindicated.
"No
new evidence was introduced. How does this happen?" Crowston told Navy
Times via email June 10. "I think the court of public opinion knows
exactly why Navy pilots escaped substantiated charges at that time. The
aviation community is thick as thieves."
Despite that, Crowston
said a stigma has followed him since — through Naval Special Warfare
Group 2, Naval Ocean Processing Facility Dam Neck, Virginia, and now the
aircraft carrier Carl Vinson.
"While being attached to these
commands, I have publicly been called 'Fag Boy' in a department head
meeting," said Crowston, who added that he won't let it drive him out of
the Navy.
"I decided to stay Navy in an attempt to be a positive
influence and voice for other LGBT service members who for whatever
reason are not able to stand up for themselves," he said.
Losing their 'swagger'
Just
months after McWherter took command of the Blue Angels for the second
time, former Navy Secretary John Lehman wrote a piece for Proceedings
magazine on the 100th anniversary of U.S. naval aviation, arguing that
political correctness had doused the profession's spirit.
"Those
attributes of naval aviators — willingness to take intelligent
calculated risk, self-confidence, even a certain swagger — that are
invaluable in wartime are the very ones that make them particularly
vulnerable in today's zero-tolerance Navy," he wrote.
There are those, however, who believe pilots can be just as fearsome in a PC climate.
Light said, today's pilots are better fliers than ever, even if they can't have pinups in their cockpits.
"Our
aviation community is vastly more professional, vastly better prepared
for every possible issue than they were 10 or 20 years ago," he said. "I
don't see that you need to disrespect people to be a good fighter
pilot, or any other kind of pilot."
Experts say the case boils
down to standards. The Navy has clear guidelines, McWherter violated
them, and he paid with his career.
"He regrets it now," said
Anderson, who said he's had multiple conversations with McWherter in
recent months. "And I don't think he regrets it only because of his
career, but because of his personal reputation. And that's not Greg
McWherter."
On top of that, Anderson said, every officer in that ready room is responsible for letting the behavior continue.
He said professional training taught those officers what was appropriate, and that it was their duty to try to fix it.
"This
is not 'boys will be boys.' This is Navy standards," he said. "If this
was a college campus, if this was a small company that did not have to
answer to the American taxpayer, they may get away with it. ... But in
this day and age, I just don't see this as a tool that's acceptable
under any circumstances."
Source: http://www.pnj.com
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