The reception was held on the former U.S. Navy sloop-of-war Constellation, a handsome feature of the newly restored Baltimore waterfront. It was late fall in 1974, but a lovely afternoon, and the guests were enjoying their drinks and canapés on the sloop’s spar deck, the main deck open to the weather. I had been included in the guest list, probably because Schmidt was a naval history buff. I had been through the receiving line and was engaged in a superficial conversation with the German naval attaché, when I saw President Ford, with Chancellor Schmidt in tow, pushing his way through the crowd of congenial guests, obviously headed for me. Schmidt said to me, “Admiral, President Ford tells me you commanded the nuclear aircraft carrier Enterprise.” I admitted that I had, and that it had been a memorable experience. Seeing my pilot’s wings, he added that he had a great deal of admiration for the men who ran the carriers and those who flew off of them. I agreed and added, “Of course you know that President Ford served on board a carrier in the Pacific during World War II.”
“No, I didn’t realize that,” answered Schmidt. Turning to the president, he asked, “Which one was that?”
“The USS Monterey,” President Ford answered.
To my surprise, Schmidt said, “Oh, but that was one of the small escort carriers, not a big one.” I was shocked at the chancellor’s lack of tact. Clearly taken aback, Ford said, “Monterey was not a small carrier, was it Jim?”
I was speechless, being asked to settle a personal dispute between two heads of state on a very important aspect of the president’s naval career. The Monterey’s designation was CVL-26, the CVL standing for “small aircraft carrier.” She had been converted to a carrier from a cruiser hull laid down before the war. The CVL carriers at ten thousand tons were definitely smaller than the standard Essex-class carriers at twenty-seven thousand tons. I gulped and stammered, “The Montereyclass carriers were not the largest in the fleet, but they could steam at thirty-two knots and carried first-line fighters and bombers. They were classified as ‘fleet’ carriers, as opposed to escort carriers, and operated with the fast carrier groups in Halsey’s and Spruance’s task forces thirty-eight and fifty-eight.” At that juncture the first lady, Betty Ford, joined the group and the chancellor shifted his attention to graciously greet her. I executed a quick and stealthy disengagement.
That afternoon I did a quick review of World War II carrier characteristics and force levels. During the war, the Navy had constructed sixty-nine carriers of the Casablanca and Commencement Bay classes, which because of their light displacement of less than eight thousand tons and limited speed of under twenty-five knots, were classified as “escort carriers” embarking the less capable FM-2 Wildcat fighters rather than Monterey’s newer and much higher-performance Grumman F6F Hellcats. President Ford had known what he was talking about.
FLEET READINESS
Less than two weeks after the change of command, the facts of life were driven home: Being CNO involved more than honors and ceremonies. The occasion was the hearings of the House Armed Services Committee on the material condition of the fleet. As CNO, I was the only witness to testify before the committee, which is the way it should have been. Force readiness is a “command responsibility,” and I was sternly lectured by congressmen who had been congratulating me just weeks before. In their view, the material condition of the fleet was deplorable. I had to agree with them.
The committee staff had done their job well, collecting statistics on the steadily increasing number of material casualty reports per month, the growing percentage of ships not fully ready for war, for deployment, or even for getting underway. Even our own people were complaining. A retired three-star admiral on vacation in Bermuda put in a long-distance telephone call to me in the CNO’s office to berate me about the awful appearance of two fairly new U.S. destroyers that had anchored in Bermuda Sound. According to the apoplectic admiral, they were ruststreaked, soot-begrimed, and peeling paint — all to such an extent that their lack of a man-of-war’s smartness was clearly evident from as far away as the tourist-filled beaches in the resort areas.
The event that took the prize and caught the attention of the committee’s chief counsel was the Atlantic transit the month before of a five-ship amphibious task group deploying from the amphibious base at Little Creek, Virginia, for duty with the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. One ship, an LST, was unable to get underway and remained moored at the pier in Norfolk. Two more vessels, both LSDs, had feed-water problems and were forced to turn around shortly after leaving the Chesapeake and return to Norfolk. A fourth broke down after leaving the Azores and was towed into port at the Spanish naval base at Cadiz. The one remaining ship, an amphibious transport, did make it all the way through the Straits of Gibraltar. Unfortunately, I could not assure the congressmen that such a miserable performance would not be an isolated episode, unless the Navy, with the help of Congress, turned around the awful downward trend.
The poor material condition of our naval vessels was a principal concern of the congressmen. I took a lot of heat, and it was well deserved. The committee’s allegation was that the ships were in terrible condition. I agreed but added, “Yes, but Congress has to bear some of the responsibility. You haven’t appropriated the necessary funds for overhauls, repairs, or spare parts. The Navy’s budget is at the lowest point since 1948.” My mention of Congressional responsibility annoyed some of the members even more, and their words were almost threatening. The committee responded that their staff was reporting that the crews were not doing the maintenance they should. I replied,
There is some truth to that report, and there are two reasons. First, the work ethic in the fleet has eroded. We are working hard to correct that. But a more serious concern and a related cause is that we have a shortage of experienced petty officers, who are our real maintenance and repair technicians. The young sailors lack the training and experience to maintain, much less repair, this complex equipment. Our best sailors are not reenlisting. . They are frustrated in their jobs because they don’t have the parts and equipment to maintain the ships and aircraft and they work long hours scavenging for temporary makeshift solutions. It is demoralizing for responsible, conscientious sailors. We are working on that problem, too, training our new people. But you’ve got to give us some time.
The committee chairman said, “We’ll help you. We could legislate a policy that, for any ship that fails a readiness inspection, the captain will be relieved of his command.” I said, “Please don’t do that. The Navy is just as hard up for competent captains as experienced petty officers. And it’s not necessarily the captain’s fault. We’ve hit the point now where the more we push the crews, take their liberty away from them to work them after hours, the worse their morale becomes. Any more squeezing and they may give up altogether. It’s a very delicate balance. We are routinely working them ten to twelve hours a day. But if it were to become sixteen hours a day, I’m afraid the men would become physically and psychologically exhausted.” The committee’s response? “We don’t think you’re being tough enough.” So I had Congress on my back as well.
Actually the causes of the decline in the fleet’s material readiness were several, and Congress was to blame for more than just a little. The main reasons for the decline were no secret. My predecessors in the Navy had been warning the Department of Defense and Congress for several years. The ships in the fleet had simply been run to death in Vietnam operations. Ship overhauls had been delayed, and then cancelled, to meet operating schedules or respond to emergency requirements. Inport periods were shortened. The crews were exhausted yet expected to perform deferred maintenance, in port, between cruises and during their postdeployment leave periods. Both crew morale and the program for much needed upgrades and repairs also suffered.