[John Rogers]

Sometimes things will not go as you want them to! The recent collisions of the Navy ships and the fact that poor manning levels and automation probably had a good part in the whole thing reminded me of an incident back in 1977 or so when I was stationed on the CGN25, USS Bainbridge. This one was nuclear powered and as we worked up for deployment several of the engineering rates were manned to low. Some watch rotation was 6 x 6 which is really bad. Especially the MM's and nuc ET's. Seems that all the new people were going to the USS Nimitz as it was just coming on line. Sooooo us group of nuclear chiefs got together and wrote a letter to BUPERS about poor manning and lack of PO1's and such and after a few mods the CO signed it and away it went up the chain of command. We never heard a thing for about 6 months and then there was a nuclear cruiser wide letter that came out and guess what........BUPERS changed the manning levels so they matched what we had at the present time!!! Boy what a mistake that was although we finally did get additional people!