Has anyone ever seen the PRECEPTS LETTER for the submarine CO/XO board? The aviators post theirs.

Concerned DH

Oh, and speaking for the people not in Navy related commands (I’m at the Army CGSC), no one told me anything about the board. I had to dig around to find the results. Luckily there’s an 112o O-5 here who got the word from some friends.

Best of luck to everyone!!

As to E.P.’s experience, few things in my reserve time have been as painful or made me appreciate not being a active 1120 as watching those boards unfold. It was a very sobering experience to see all those good, highly capable boat drivers get left behind. As I’ve said before, in my opinion there was too much Rickoverism in the boards I worked (“select X, he’s a good nuke“) and I felt that the sub force was limiting its talent and skill available for post-CO jobs. Maybe I’m strange, but in today’s military I just kind-of feel that there’s a difference in the effectiveness of an 1120 who did shore at PG, float-a-type and N87 and one who maybe has NATO experience or worked on a Unified Command Staff when you get to the O-6 level.

You’re getting a passel of good people arriving in your neighborhood from my neck of the woods in a couple of months. Sounds like a lot of fun and decent work besides. Lemme know if I can be of assistance…

On the mailing list of course!

Painfully honest? I guess some nuke did rub off.

If you’re right, I’m outed–you’re the first guy to wander over here. You on the mailing list, by any chance? Not many ex-1120s in there. You know the others in that country? Drop an email!

Blunoz and I had some good discussions about career paths based on his fears from the previous year so I had some good ideas what I wanted to do, and I had put out some feelers regarding options, possibilities and probabilities. My personal feeling going into the final screening was that if I did not screen, I wanted to lateral transfer. While there are no doubt good, important and hard jobs for 1120s who have not been an XO, my impression of them from my experience was that they were not particularly fulfilling jobs, rather jobs that ‘just needed to get done’.

When I didn’t screen my ego was bruised, but not destroyed. Was I surprised, well, mostly. I had done two shore tours that were ‘unconventional’ by nuke standards, and honestly my DH tour probably wasn’t everything it should have been. It just took me some time to get over it. I thought (and well, I still think) that I had something more to contribute to the Navy. And I thought that I could do better than the jobs I saw myself being detailed to. As you said, there are jobs that have to be filled and interesting jobs to do but you just don’t have all that much leverage with the detailer.

I opted for the lateral transfer option. So far, I’m happy, doing an interesting job, with some good prospects for even more interesting jobs in the future.

By the way, we’re likely in the same community, as we had long discussions in the office regarding the proliferation of ‘above the zone’ O-5 selections.