Navy has fired 6 commanders since January, including "Horrible Holly" aka "Female Captain Bligh"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/05/AR2010030504326.html

Navy has fired 6 commanders since January, triple its usual monthly rate
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Navy has fired six commanding officers since the start of the year -- triple its usual monthly rate -- including a foul-mouthed captain who was dismissed for subjecting her crew to "cruelty and maltreatment" aboard a warship in the Pacific.

Capt. Holly Graf, commander of the USS Cowpens, a guided-missile cruiser, was relieved of duty Jan. 13 after an investigation found she cursed so much at her 400-member crew that even the sailors -- no strangers to four-letter words -- were intimidated. According to the Navy inspector general's report released this week, officers complained that their captain humiliated them in front of the rest of the crew by calling them "idiots" and "stupid" as she spat a stream of obscenities. One noncommissioned officer said Graf treated him like a toddler, forcing him to take a "time out" by standing alone in an empty watch room.

Although verbal abuse would hardly put Graf among the worst tyrants ever to command a ship at sea, her former crew members have been exacting mutinous revenge in recent weeks by posting hundreds of anonymous comments on the Internet that describe her as "Horrible Holly," as well as a modern-day Captain Bligh. Graf's has been highlighted in much of the criticism. One Web site, www.militarycorruption.com, called her "an incompetent and unstable 'politically correct' poster girl for all the super feminists at the Pentagon and the U.S. Naval Academy." ....

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http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1970226,00.html

Complaints About Female 'Captain Bligh' Began Early
By Mark Thompson

Navy Commander Maurice "Mo" Kaprow was stunned to watch then Commander Holly Graf in action. He saw her for the first time after arriving aboard her ship, the destroyer U.S.S. Winston S. Churchill, in Italy just before the Iraq war began in 2003. A Jewish rabbi and a Navy chaplain, he'd been sent to the Churchill on temporary assignment as the vessel readied for war. Usually pulling out of port is a methodical and precise process. But as Kaprow recalled on Friday, "I never in my life saw such chaos as there was on that bridge — Holly Graf began yelling and screaming rudder orders, engine orders, insulting people. I'd never seen anything like this."

It got even more bizarre as the ship pulled out of Sicily's Augusta harbor. "Just after clearing the breakwater, the ship began to rumble and shake — now she's screaming even louder because nobody knows what's happening," Kaprow said. "I begin to hear young sailors' voices from the fantail, and they're singing, 'Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead.' " Kaprow remembered being perplexed by the sudden song. "Then someone came up to me and said, 'We've ran aground. She's finished' " — assuming the accident would mean the end of their commander's career. "They were jumping for joy and singing on the fantail," he said. Actually, one of the ship's props had broken, but the crew's reaction still amazed Kaprow. "I was flabbergasted," he said.

Kaprow left the Navy last month after a 20-year career and visits to some 200 ships. Morale aboard the Churchill, he said, was the worst he ever saw — even on the eve of war with Saddam Hussein, when the Churchill launched Tomahawk missiles from the eastern Mediterranean toward Iraq. "I think the lady is mentally unbalanced," Kaprow said. "I don't believe she ever should have had command."

The Navy removed Graf from command of the guided-missile cruiser U.S.S. Cowpens in January for "cruelty and maltreatment" of her crew. But Kaprow's account makes clear that such conduct also occurred on the first ship Graf commanded. His tale is noteworthy because, unlike most others who witnessed Graf in command, Kaprow was an independent Navy outsider not subject to Graf's orders. Questions continue to swirl about how Graf not only retained her command but kept getting promoted despite reports from eyewitnesses like Kaprow.... The man known as the "combat rabbi" aboard the Churchill found the environment aboard the ship to be "weird, absolutely weird." Graf would talk to some of her officers but not to others. She would show up at the daily morning intelligence briefing in apparel that Kaprow had never seen on a Navy warship before. "She'd be wearing black slippers," he said, "with one fuzzy ball on each one." Then there were the tirades. "She would argue with the briefers, belittling them," Kaprow said. "Just absolute vile stuff that I had never heard from a C.O. before."....

She was unfit for command.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1969602,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
The Rise and Fall of a Female Captain Bligh

I was speaking in more general terms. This captain was an asshole who had no business running a ship.

My brother has been very successful as a CO, and almost never uses profanity or raises his voice. Crew members respond well to being treated with respect.

surface fleet.

My dad was a sub skipper and NEVER did that kind of thing. 40 years later, the sailors still love him.

When my dad was a sub skipper, the crew still loves the fact that he and the XO didn't do that.

An informed by Limbaugh comment.

:eyes:

could have done some service had he written "Unfit for Command" about her. Of course, never having actually served would have left him talking out of his ass.

Command of a ship is a unique experience. "Many are called, but few are chosen".

In a way, you have to complement the Navy and her for their persistence in trying for such a number of years.

She's a bad officer and an asshole... I've seen them come in all shapes, sizes, colors and genders

been covered in detail the past year in Navy Times.

She sounds like a badass that should have been relieved.

It doesn't, however, mean that the standard of acceptable behavior in women is tighter for women than for men. Political PR people note that you in commercials you cannot put up as much footage of female candidates speaking as male candidates speaking. People don't like being 'lectured' by women as it makes them feel as though they are kids back in school.

It's better she's out.

I know the crew loved the female skipper of IWO JIMA. It takes all kinds.

not in real life...

Good for the navy to relieve her of command....

And to the poster child of politically correct, byte me. The Navy makes these mistakes more often than people think, as in appointing people to command that should never be in command.

You can't force respect. It is a simple concept that eludes some people.

Technically all politicians are suppose to be called by their title even after leaving office President Clinton, Congressman Dean, etc.

I have never heard one of them threatening to sue because someone called them "Clinton, or Dean".

This is not from military experience, but I've had managers like this. They think they can bully and humiliate people into better performance. The result is just the opposite. Performance goes down, which leads to more bullying and humiliation, which leads to even worse performance.

You can be firm with people and require performance without being an asshole.

Good riddance to her, how the hell she ever got the job is beyond me.

... specifically b/c it affords a vehicle for their ass-holery

A man who is unfit for command is unfit for command.
A woman who is unfit for command is unfit for command.

part of a larger pattern.




OR,
is this behavior less tolerable from a woman?

Clearly, she was not able to command a naval ship, and has shown it on two separate ships. What is described is not leadership, not commanding, but rather an out-of-control control freak sending morale to the very depths of the sea on which her crew sailed.

Perhaps the incidents were not on record at the time of the promotion? Perhaps they were known at least off-the-record as common knowledge, but positives from other portions of the captain's career outshone the crazy attitude? All I can do is speculate. I can say I am none too impressed with my tax dollars being spent on salary for such a captain, and on an expensive piece of technology like a navy ship being use to act out control fantasies. It sounds to me like simply pulling out of the dock was damaging or potentially so for the ship in at least one incident. And, while it "is the captain's ship," American taxpayers deserve better from this captain for their money.

This is a HUGE problem in the sub force, because of the force reductions under GWBush.

her crew.

It wasn't until the 2nd command that it was established as being a pattern on HER part. If the Navy invests several hundred thousand dollars in training an officer for command, you definitely want to give that person a second chance to prove themself.

The USN has the smallest number of hulls since before the First World War.

The USN is less than half the size it was say, in 1990.

I can see the point about wasting the cash spent in training without a benefit of the doubt being granted. At the same time, if the issues from the first ship were on the table, a probationary situation would work...she comes out of a ship where things just aren't quite kosher...watch to make sure Captain Bligh II doesn't make another mess. Perhaps that is what is in fact happened. Glad at any point that her services are no longer required.

swiped the leftover strawberries from the officers' mess