From the very beginning, nukes are taught that integrity is the cornerstone, the foundation of everything we do. People aren't perfect (not even you, ELTs). People make mistakes, and by admitting those mistakes we can address the problem.
I can think of two separate incidents in which I was faced with a difficult situation. The first time, I improperly reassembled the bus rings on an SSMG. The chief didn't catch it on his closeout inspection. We started it up, and the one of the rings had a high resistance connection, causing an explosion inside the machine and about $250,000 worth of repairs.
At the critique, I admitted that it was in fact I who had messed up, as well as the chief. In the end, nobody went to Captain's Mast, and nobody got disqualified. But it was still a pretty unpleasant time.
The other incident involved me falling asleep on watch. I was the containment watch during a grueling shiftwork period, in which I had not had even close to adequate sleep. But I relieved the watch anyway. I was found, relieved, and promptly sent up in front of the Old Man. It was, to say the least, an extremely unpleasant time in my naval career.
In my statements, I was forthright and honest, claiming that I had not had adequate sleep (it had been several 16-hour days in a row). In spite of this, I was standing in front of the green tablecloth. The CO, recognizing the situation, gave me a slap on the wrist along with 45 days extra duty and a suspended bust. I have no doubt in my mind that things would have turned out very differently if I had chosen a different path.
So I'm here to tell you that your fate will be better when you admit your mistakes. Chalk one up for integrity.
But why do we have so many cases of people violating their integrity in the Navy? Are these people sleazy? Would they rather take the easy route? I don't think it's as simple as that. It's easy to say "They violated their integrity and so we should hammer them until they're a puddle of greasy black goo." And they should be punished, rightly so.
But recognize that nobody shows up to their command with the intention of cheating. Take, for example, an ELT. His job (one of them anyway) is to sample and maintain chemistry within a tight specification. That's fine, so he diligently samples the water and comes up with the results. But when he presents these results to the officer, the officer scratches his head and says "Why is pH doing this?" The ELT reaches into his magic chemistry hat and pulls out a reason. "It's because we changed flugelbinders yesterday, and so our temperature corrected barflagett, which follows this graph is higher than it usually is. It's still in spec, sir." The officer scratches his head and says "Ehhh, I dunno. Maybe you did the analysis wrong. Go sample it again." Now the ELT knows that chemistry is perfectly fine. These analysis are inherently inaccurate, but the officer won't feel comfortable unless it comes out as he expects. So the ELT can either sample the water three or four more times, or he can just fudge the numbers and go on with the rest of his business.
Now hold on a minute. You might be thinking "So what if he samples it three or four more times? It's more important to get it right than violate your integrity." And you do make a point. It is VERY important to get it right, because the consequences of getting it wrong can be dire. But this chemistry result falls well within specification, it just doesn't follow the "expected" results, because the tests are inaccurate.
On a fast-attack submarine, you are pulled in a hundred different directions. There never seems to be enough time to get it all done. There's a mountain of paperwork, field day, training, tests, corrective maintenance, preventative maintenance, standing watch, planning out schedules, qualifications, etc. And oh yeah, you're short handed. Needless to say, you're as busy as a one-armed octopus. And so it comes down to a matter of prioritizing.
In a perfect world, everybody would be able to devote adequate attention to every task that is set before them. Unfortunately, life on a submarine is far from perfect. It's more like a long series of crisis management. The most important thing on the ship was not training, not cleaning, not meals, not sleep, not quals. It was getting the ship ready to go to sea and doing whatever it took to get there.
We worked hard, long hours. We struggled to maintain a high standard of excellence. And occasionally we got a few precious hours off the boat. We tried to help our fellow shipmates. But in the end, there was simply too much work, and not enough people. And so you have to compromise. Take the most important things, and do them right. If your training suffers, so be it. If the cleanliness of the ship suffers, so be it. At least your ship is out at sea.
I don't think it's laziness that makes people violate their integrity. I've seen some of the best, brightest, and hardest-working people in my life violate their integrity again and again in the name of getting work accomplished. Should they have done it the right way? Of course. But when you're slogging through it day after day, far from the pristine white halls of Naval Reactors Offices, it's easy to stray from the path.
