My problem with stories like this is twofold.
First, integrity is one of the principles of the program. You guys hide behind "I'm smarter then the watch officer and I therefore know better" persona if you want to make yourself feel better....but I openly question your integrity. You guys chose the easy way out vice doing your job properly. All nukes, officer and enlisted, are called upon to ask questions when they arise. Instead of thinking the watch officer is an idiot or a jackass, take the time to show him why he's wrong and your right. If he still disagrees, use your chain of command.....LPO, LCPO, DIVO. There again, this is watchteam back-up, another principle of the program. Blatantly disregarding an order from a senior is wrong, wrong, wrong!!!!
Second, there are lots of nuke wanna-be's and junior nukes who read these posts. You openly advocate "getting one by" the watch officer. These young guys are going to take that advice to heart and think that is the way things get done in the fleet. Your are advocating actions that are contrary to the collective good. Shame on you!!!
Oh, if Barry Jackson or any other watch stander, officer or enlisted had told me he was going to do whatever he wanted vice what I said as the EOOW, we would have issues. I would have called RL Div LPO, LCPO, and CRA to the box and we all would have had a discussion in regards to formality, compliance with procedures, and disrespect prior to me authorizing the add.
Before you slam on me for not understanding what I speak of, I was enlisted for eight+ years prior to getting commissioned, so I have walked a mile in your shoes.
All I can say to that is don't be so full of yourself. -- Which was precisely the problem with those very junior officers who changed additions. They, for some inexplicable reason, believed themselves to have the superhuman capacity to discern the difference between 350 grams and 360 grams on those nomographs. We're talking about a blurry copy of a semi-logarhythmic graph that had been marked up, laminated, measures with a rusty ruler, and not so damned accurate to begin with.
We're talking about a snot-nose who thought that proving he could read a graph better than the ELT was justification for making my logs look like $h!t - even assuming that he COULD tell the difference between 350 and 360, the extra 10 grams would be about the same amount that got rocked up on the screen of the fill funnel, or spilled in the bilge, or left stuck to the walls of the beaker ... etc.
We're talking about people who relied on us to save their nuclear reactor from melting, but still thought it wise to treat us like children by continually correcting our work. That got fixed, one way or another.
We are NOT talking about ELT's falsifying records or disobeying orders. We are talking about good ol' Barry getting the message through to a JO that "I know what I'm doing. I don't need you to micromanage my job. It will be done properly. We need to trust each other." The officer understood completely, knowing that Barry's comment was only partly in jest.
I did, as LELT, have the opportunity to "counsel" these young officers - usually over beers - that they were not empowered by Congress to alter a log entry that was made by a watchstander (the add calc made by an ELT) even if they were authorized to review and approve that entry. I "instructed them" in the proper method of keeping themselves from looking like idiots and committing it to paper.
They almost all got the message, and we got along fine. By the time their bars turned silver, they stopped questioning us and started asking us questions. (Ponder the subtle difference for a moment.)
The officers who had a clue learned to depend on the white-hats; they learned to trust, respect, and rely on us. We gave them good reason to do so.
I learned at a young age that the duty of an enlisted man was to make the officers look like the geniuses that they wished they were. You let them take credit for every brilliant move you make, and you stop them from making blunders that will embarrass them. They, if they are smart, remember who did what to keep the CO from dumping on them. Officers who are praised by the Captain are easier to live with than the ones with his boot up their a$$.
When they became CO's themselves, they pretended that their JO's were as smart as they seemed to be.
There is a lot of "winking and nodding" involved in the politics of a boat, but none of it amounts to a lack of integrity or deliberate misconduct. It is the way men deal with each other, and it has always worked.
