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Report finds wide failures in sub records

SAN DIEGO — For more than a year, as far as any of the submarine higher-ups knew, the daily and monthly chore of sampling the water that cools the fast-attack submarine Hampton’s nuclear reactor was done on schedule.

But in reality, the logs had been faked.

As the attack submarine Hampton was finishing its deployment last September and heading to its new home port of Naval Base Point Loma, Calif., officials discovered the faked logs.

Once investigators started digging deeper, what they found was shocking.

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Summary of investigation report

One Hampton sailor told Submarine Squadron 11 that he and others aboard the boat had “committed numerous” integrity violations, including recording false grades and cheating on a host of exams, including those to qualify for officer of the deck/ship’s duty officer; contact coordinator; and engineering officer of the watch/engineering duty officer. In a small crew, it’s not unusual for sailors to sign off on officer qual cards or proctor exams.

At commodore’s mast Oct. 9, the unidentified sailor pleaded guilty to integrity violations.

The preliminary investigation prompted the Point Loma-based squadron commodore, Capt. Paul Jaenichen, to order a broader command investigation under the Judge Advocate’s General Manual.

Among the findings:

* Some Hampton crew members long had cut corners on the daily checks of the water that cools the reactor, according to the JAGMAN investigation provided to Navy Times on March 7. The 30-page summary came with names and sensitive information redacted.

* They forged signatures of supervisors, even the skipper’s, on radiological control logs and radioactive material tags.

* Several crew members, presumably engineering laboratory technicians, admitted to logging old sample data as daily and monthly radiological surveys without taking new samples, often at the direction of another crew member. One sailor told the investigator that he “was directed by [redacted] to log fabricated data, to which he admitted doing.”

* In his endorsement of the report, the Pacific Fleet submarine commander went a step further, saying Cmdr. Mike Portland “set unachievable standards for his crew, was intolerant of failure and publicly berated personnel.”

Hampton was ordered to stay in port as the investigation continued. On Oct. 25, Jaenichen fired Portland “due to a loss of confidence,” roughly one month before Portland was due to hand over command to his replacement.

When the dust settled, the hammer had come down on three other officers and seven sailors. The engineering officer was pulled from the boat. Two other officers received nonjudicial punishment for conduct unbecoming an officer. They lost their nuclear qualification designator. Two sailors were stripped of their naval enlisted classification codes, and several junior sailors, including ELTs, were administratively punished.

The Submarine Forces commander, Vice Adm. Jay Donnelly, questioned whether the integrity violations had gone beyond Hampton, and last fall ordered “Deep Dive” teams to the fleet to look more closely at morale and retention woes.

Experienced submariners say they believe the investigations revealed a broader practice of questionable reports and shady practices across the force. One called the Hampton situation “a failure of the worst kind.”

“It was the failure of the team,” said a former submarine commander who asked not to be named but who is knowledgeable about the investigations and suspected actions of Hampton’s crew.

The command climate aboard Hampton, he said, and intense pressure to meet high standards had squelched any reporting of wrongdoing.

“How could so many people’s minds, attitudes and outlook become so complacent that the whole team could fail?” he asked.

Reactor safe, CO faulted

Despite the violations aboard the Hampton, Navy officials insist that the nuclear reactor and the boat’s safety were never compromised.

“The actions taken to address the issues identified and investigated in Hampton are necessary to return the performance of Hampton’s crew to appropriate Navy standards for operation and maintenance of nuclear-powered warships,” Rear Adm. Joseph Walsh, Pacific Submarine Force commander, wrote in his endorsement of the report. “The specific deficiencies identified during this investigation resulted in no unsafe operations or maintenance of reactor or propulsion plant systems and no loss of radioactive material.

“Nuclear reactor coolant samples were analyzed by a naval shipyard laboratory and data were sent to an independent Department of Energy laboratory, which confirmed no detrimental effects, neither short- nor long-term, to the reactor,” Walsh wrote.

In his Jan. 10 endorsement, Walsh pointed the finger at Hampton’s skipper.

“[Portland] failed to exercise oversight of personnel and processes and failed to train his leadership team to effectively manage issues under their cognizance. These factors created a poor command climate that directly contributed to problems identified in this investigation. Further, these factors contributed to his failure to identify these problems for over one year,” the endorsement said.

Walsh, who commanded the fast-attack submarine Hyman G. Rickover and Submarine Group 2, wrote that he faults Portland’s command style and climate for the subsequent actions by his junior officers.

“Junior officers aboard Hampton took advantage of loose exam practices to pass written examinations,” he wrote. “These test results did not reflect their actual level of knowledge. Specifically, the officers used an officer exam file to prepare for the written examinations and took advantage of poor proctoring (i.e. no proctor or proctors providing hints or answers).”

According to the investigation, one Hampton crew member admitted that “he would grade his own exams and enter the grades for himself in a matrix. He believed he should not have to take the exams, but that was the way it was done on Hampton.”

Another former Hampton crew member “denied committing any integrity violations while onboard” the submarine, the investigator wrote in the report. “He did state that [redacted] and Officer of the Deck (OOD) exams were virtually identical to previous exams and that this fact was known to officers who used prior exams to study.”

Shady practices

The JAGMAN investigator cited, among other things, an intense and stressful command climate and a “lack of moral courage” among some of the crew. Among the findings:

* “The [redacted] regularly falsified departmental exam scores as [redacted] to fill in gaps in the exam statistics and helped officers cheat on exams by providing or allowing them to review answer keys.”

* “The former [redacted] was a willful accomplice in falsifying grades during his tenure. He knew and approved of falsified records in the departmental training programs.”

* “The [redacted] knew or strongly suspected exam scores were being falsified and did not take the appropriate action.”

* “The [redacted] purposely maintained an appearance of ignorance of the integrity violations happening in his department and on the ship to preserve culpable deniability.”

* “The [redacted] attempted to persuade subordinates to misrepresent the use of a [redacted] to remove paint from the [redacted] to prevent having to report it off the ship or take arduous corrective actions after his assessment that the amount of paint removed was not substantial. This was partially due to a command climate that made it difficult to report mistakes, and due to a lack of moral courage as a senior shipboard leader.”

In interviews and Internet blogs, submarine veterans expressed anger but not surprise at what the Hampton investigation found.

The retired officer agrees that Portland, as the skipper, is most responsible for the integrity violations of the crew. The JAGMAN investigation included an August 2006 command climate survey, but it and associated recommendations were not released by officials.

“In large measures, these things are done because of the circumstances that he created,” the former commander said, noting Portland’s detached, unapproachable leadership style may have led subordinates to stretch the rules to please their boss.

“Part of being in command is walking the ship,” he added. “You have a lot of control of your time” to talk with the crew and see them perform their jobs instead of spending too much time off the boat.

That includes periodic monitoring and talking with the ELTs, among the few submariners who have something akin to private space aboard the boat, he said. “The guy ... basically does business by himself. He operates unsupervised.”

Other submarine veterans admit that Hampton likely isn’t alone in the cheating and shortcuts taken by the crew.

On the “Bubbleheads” blog, a “20-year goat” wrote that “if the upper echelon of the Navy dug a little deeper in this on other submarines in the Fleet that they would find things like this happening on most of the submarines. COs are more arrogant and more publicly critical of their crew than ever before.”

Another posting complained of unrealistic reactor safeguard standards. “The standard is so unobtainable on an operational submarine, everybody ‘cheats,’” commented “jq5,” identified as recently retired.

One retired “nuke” master chief, an electronics technician and once ELT-qualified, wrote in a Military Times online forum: “Young sailors don’t make mistakes, they are either poorly trained or poorly led, or both. In this case, also poorly supervised. I’ve seen similar things before, guys gundecking logs or whatever, and they get rooted out and punished because the people in charge are paying attention. This is different. The whole nuclear fleet is going to experience some pain on this one.”

“This is not an isolated incident,” added an anonymous posting on the same forum. “It is not the failure of a few blue shirts, [a] Chief, and a [chemistry/radiological controls assistant]. It is a systemic failure of the system.” The writer added: “It is a culture of coverup. It needs to be investigated and changed before someone gets hurt.”