He has computer help, but he doesn't have time to read a tutorial on evasive maneuvers when the enemy is lining up their spinal mounts. Being able to make the right decision on the spur of the moment may be the difference between victory and death.
And for the 1700 skipper, not only knowing how to take profit from the wind while the battle was on, but to know how to navigate or how to ride a storm was also critical. Is in those matters a computer may be quite helpful (and even to take some decisions about evasive maneuvers, not giving a tutorial)
As said, things to know are different, but I guess the 1700 skipper must be quite wiser than the starship one…
Officers trusting enlisted to know their jobs? Not in my Navy. There's a whole subset of the maintenance procedures relating to spot checks where some division officer or department head will stand over the technician's shoulder and verify they did what they were supposed to do and did it right. Knowing all the other jobs means being able to evaluate the results of your crews performance in a drill and identify which areas need work. The time to find out your Gunnery officer has been phoning it in is not in the middle of a battle.
Not only enlisted men, there are other officers with fields or responsibility. But even so, if you cannot trust the enlisted men to know their jobs, your navy is doomed, and your training officers should be court martialed.
Those evaluations are the duty of each officer in charge. If the Skipper must dedicate to it, he will not make his true duty. And a good skipper is the one who makes those officers efficient. A ship must be a well-oiled machine, and each officer trustworthy, or it is doomed.
The Navigator gets the ax as well for a misjump, of course, but unless the skipper has connections, his career is done. This may have changed a bit in recent years, but traditionally, everything that happens on a ship is the skipper's ultimate responsibility. In 2017, when 2 ships got into different collisions in the west Pacific, the 7th Fleet commander, a 3-star admiral, got relieved a few weeks before his planned retirement date. The CO and XO on both ships both got relieved as well, according to wikipedia, and things rolled downhill, as they will.
Sure, it’s the commander’s responsibility, but not to check the navigator’s job, but to make sure he is up to the task.
I guess this 3 star Aldmiral was not relieved because he didn’t know how to steer a ship, but because he had failed on his duty: making the ships work together and not go in each other’s way. The fact he could or not have avoided the collision if he had been in the steer is fully irrelevant.
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