Scorpion Submarine Disaster

At the route of the issue….I had the audacity to imply that the current state of the fleet and high naval bureaucracy are more of an artifact of the Scorpion disaster than any of the current written products about the sub. I have gored many interests including all of the navy, the shipyards and especially the nuclear industry. I happened to think the going “off topic” is an agreed upon euphemism for that I am making people across the board feel uncomfortable about what they have witnessed and haven’t stepped forward to correct…that is going on right now. I happen to think the Scorpion tragedy is much bigger than finding out the reason why it sunk…more like changing the climate of today’s sub fleet and changing the way we purchase Navy submarines and ships. I am throwing up a mirror…and people just don’t like to see the image.

I happened to think this group is too insider and military oriented…and not including outsiders and those with an oppositional orientations. There is no doubt this distraction theme is an agreed upon technical rouse in order to get me disconnect from the group. How come I wasn’t sent up to some kind of board….with these e-mails we accuse you of distraction…how are these related to site and does other people do the same thing? What about a process before disconnecting me…isn’t our Constitution about having a process. It’s more about group dynamics and coherence…than about what is really going on. My greatest success just maybe that I outed a troublesome side of individuals that wasn’t available for observation before this began.

I think in the future…everyone who participated or was involved in what happened on this site is going to regret their roles in this. I think the future would look very kindly to what I had tried to write about with the Scorpion. What I have tried to do is give everyone a window with what the cultural attributes was surrounded the Scorpion….and current events in the navy. I think what we’ve all learned from participation on this site; is that we can get to the bottom of what caused the lost of the Scorpion…and we should interact with current condition in the submarine fleet. I think the primary function on this site should morph towards cleaning up events in the sub fleet…making the lives of submariners better, figure out a way to keep the submarines out to sea longer….in defense of our national security. I was the first one who raised the issues of a relief crew or having two crews on a fast attack submarines….and I think we over stressed the Scorpion’s crew with having a single crew on a submarine.

I happened to think we should favor the living over the dead. Our primary area of concern should be about what we have learned about the Scorpion…and making sure that an accident is never set up in the current fleet, such that we would never have another lost of a submarine….and all of our sub’s run at absolute war time efficiency and effectiveness. We just have outrun the front page board declaration of the intentions on this site.

I think as the months and years go by…people will think that I have interacted with conditions in the current fleet and the Scorpion accident coming out of this site…and people will judge me as an extraordinarily talented individual.

I am getting signals that the domestic nuclear industry was involved on bringing attention to me with going off subject. That I implied that the totalitarianism and false altruism with the means of using military power…getting ships to sea by intimidating sailors, making dysfunctional organizations over worked with a lack of resources, teaching the heart and head of the nuclear industry over the years with how to control information and how to intimidate employees, teach executives across a grand scale in how to intimidate domestic nuclear workers…how to ramrod the regulators and NRC …this set up the unjust culture in our domestic nuclear industry. Generally the nuclear navy was the training ground with the future nuclear plant executives and NRC employees… this trained everyone in the game of controlling information and intimidating employees on a grand scale, leading to a collapse of the nuclear industry. It was training on injustice on a grand scale.

Can you imagine me on the Enterprise back in the months leading up your airplane crash…if I was in the information stream? I would have assumed those deaths were coming. I would have tried interacting with the coming accident no matter what were going to be the consequences to me. I would have been talking to congress and talking to the newspapers…I would have gone all the way up the chain of command…until they put me in the brig and accuse me of being insane. I would have sacrificed my career and the relationship of my wife, children and grand daughter pursuing the coming accident…because it’s just not worth trading your conscience for a career or having a family. It just not worth it.

"What gem? Several of Mike's emails caused me to rethink a notion I held since my first day observing this august body. That notion was that "can do," "make do," "go the extra mile," "not on my watch" were the necessary and appropriate watchwords of military service during the 60s and 70s, a time when an increasingly unpopular war was being financed very often out of operational, training and maintenance budgets, a time when the insanity of "Mutually Assured Destruction" became understandable, ergo, possible. These ill conceived notions caused us to devalue human life by wagering death and injury against "national security," and "getting the job done." It led us to several deaths, and near loss of Enterprise, to a very preventable fire, essentially caused by the lack of a jet starter hose of sufficient length to keep the starter engine exhaust a safe distance from missile warheads held on an F4's wing. Starter hoses were in short supply, so when the hose developed holes or breaks, it was common practice to simply shorten the hose. It led to my crash one night on the flight deck of USS Midway, killing 5, injuring dozens, destroying 8 aircraft, all for the shortage of operable Multiple Ejector Racks (MERs). The MER's failure caused two 500-lb bombs to be hung up on my starboard wing; normal procedure would have had me jettison both the bombs and the MER, but since MERs($4,000) were in short supply, the decision was made to bring the bombs and attendant MER aboard, a common decision primarily determined by the skill and experience of the pilot. Unfortunately, my starboard axle failed upon touchdown, and I rode the aircraft into the pack of parked aircraft, having lost the arresting cable. We must be constantly reminded of the atmosphere under which Scorpion was operating. I had minimized and discounted this "constantly scrambling and always behind" atmosphere as "Standard Operating Procedure." Mr Mulligan reminded me to not overlook the operating tempo of the time. I accuse no others of requiring this same reminder, but I owe Mike an apology for my discounting of him."


It anyone on our Scorpion site had a hint….of how much injustice and suffering…the intimidations that prevented corrections of problems with calling somebody crazy or insane…nobody would ever use that term outside of a medically qualified individual. That just might be everyone’s greatest sin on this board…caused the most suffering….with allowing somebody to call someone insane over a disagreement. You will all be judged with what you did or didn’t do, in associating with calling me insane or standing by and allowing it to happen. If only you knew the magnitude of suffering…our “American gulag”…with how we use the term insanity and how we collectively mistreat people with a mental disability. If only you knew the magnitude collectively with how the “good people” mistreat and create enormous injustices with those who have a mental disability in the name of saving a buck. Collectively today we are treating those with a mental illness worst than the 1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s. The system is terribly under resourced and littered with unqualified people.

This wasn’t about the technical details with what failed the Scorpion…what pipe broke….it was about a large and prolonged breakdown of ethics, morality, justice and injustice…and the game is still in play with the Navy. It’s what broke on the Scorpion board.

You people needed a human sacrifice and to nail somebody on the cross…isn’t that the story of the Navy? Nobody needs to make an apology to me…I forgave you before this all began.

Thanks,

Mike Mulligan
Hinsdale, NH