
The Navy’s Pacific Fleet commander, Adm. Robert F. Willard, in his final endorsement of an investigation into the fire, directed that Capt. David C. Dykhoff and his executive officer be relieved of command.It was probably a good day to be fired, because tomorrow after 10:00am the Navy story everyone will be talking about will be the DDG-1000. By making a statement in the afternoon on the west coast the eve before a major Congressional pissing contest on shipbuilding, this story gets at best a 12 hour news cycle and then disappears.
Dykhoff was fired “due to a loss of confidence in his ability to command and his failure to meet mission requirements and readiness standards,” Navy officials said in a statement released Wednesday afternoon.
On Wednesday, Vice Adm. Thomas J. Kilcline Jr. pulled Dykoff from command and also fired the ship’s executive officer, Capt. David M. Dober, “for substandard performance,” according to the statement.
According to the Navy Times article the combination of unauthorized smoking and improperly stored combustibles started the fire. The full report was not released, but the article mentions some of the report might be released in a few weeks. We hope so.
It is an exercise in futility to speculate what the contributing factors were on the ship itself, only the report could tell us. Were the inspection procedures being followed properly? Was there a breakdown in quality of leadership for inspections with this specific area of the ship? Was there a ship wide systematic problem that led to the change of command? Why wasn't a DC party able to quickly address a fire started by a cigarette before it consumed over 80 spaces of the ship? Lets be serious, if you can't quickly put out a cigarette, how the hell can you expect to put out a massive fire caused by an anti-ship missile consuming multiple decks and burning white hot on rocket fuel? There are plenty of questions, but only the report could tell us the answers.
The Navy continues to send signals to its commanding officers that perfection is demanded, anything short of perfection and the CO can be gone. Actually, that isn't completely true, the only time we ever see this type of perfection demanded by anyone over the rank of Captain is when it involves women, what we call the Tailhook rule. Accidents are not allowed, ever, and every major incident is always the COs fault, always. If an accident happens on your watch, kiss your career goodbye. It's a tough topic to speculate beyond the generic signals, because the Navy never explains why it takes the actions it does, meaning everyone in the Navy is left to speculate the same observations we list above.
In this case, the CO and XO are almost certainly not the smokers who contributed to the fire, but several members of the chain of command and crew would have been responsible for stowing flammables and not smoking in an unauthorized area. The Navy should put as much public humiliation on those folks responsible as they do on the officers. Failure to do so gives disgruntled sailors a lot of power, the ability to 'accidentally' screw up and insure a CO's career is killed.