Rescue at Sea

Earlier this week, TV news reports showed footage of an Iranian fishing vessel and crew rescued from pirates near the Straits of Hormuz by US Navy sailors.

The TV report mentioned that the operation was supported by the nearby aircraft carrier Stennis. Not mentioned, but of more interest to me is that the fishing vessel had been intercepted by USS Kidd (DDG-100) and the rescue was effected by sailors from Kidd. Kidd is an Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer with the Aegis combat system. After I retired from the navy, I worked for a few years as a senior member of the engineering staff and engineering project manager on the Aegis combat system at RCA.

Also of interest is that Kidd's commanding officer is Cdr. Jennifer L. Ellinger, a 1993 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. That calls to mind a couple of other personal memories:

1. It was about 40 years ago that the navy first authorized assignment of women to ships at sea. At the time, I was Operations Officer of USS Albany, a Talos guided missile cruiser built during WWII as a heavy cruiser. When the decision was announced, there was a lot of grumbling and assertions that women couldn't work at sea. When my officers joined in the grumbling, I suggested that there was not a single job in the operations department that couldn't be performed as well by a qualified woman. I didn't mean it as a put-down, but in hopes it would open their eyes. I also knew that the policy against assigning women to ships had created some irrational situations. For example, the Fleet Programming Center, Pacific, the organization supporting Albany's tactical data system, had civilian and military computer programmers, both male and female. The programmers were often sent to ride the ships at sea when the center received computer program problem reports, in order to see for themselves what the problem was. Some of the computer programs were on aircraft carriers. The computer programmer for the carrier programs was a female Lieutenant Commander. She was not allowed to ride the carrier at sea. Instead, the center sent a female civilian to ride the carrier. The 1972 change in policy opened these doors.

2. During my subsequent tour in the Pentagon (1972-1975), my wife Elizabeth worked for the National Organization for Women and took part in a coalition effort to open up the service academies to women. This effort was successful, and Congress opened the academies to women in 1976. Four years later I was on a NATO tour and was very impressed by one of the early Naval Academy women graduates performing a job on the staff of the Commander, US Naval Forces Europe. She was doing a job normally assigned to an officer two grades senior to her, and was doing it very well. Now about 22% of entering Naval Academy plebes are women.

By the way, USS Kidd's second in command, Cdr. Gabriel Varela, of Phoenix, Arizona, enlisted in the Navy in 1987, achieved the rank of Petty Officer First Class, and was commissioned at Officer's Candidate School in 1995.

The navy assigns only its best and brightest officers to serve in Aegis destroyers and cruisers.