Navy has fired 6 commanders since January, including "Horrible Holly" aka "Female Captain Bligh"

d.gibbs

(49 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Mar-10-10 09:40 AM
Original message

Navy has fired 6 commanders since January, including "Horrible Holly" aka "Female Captain Bligh"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/05/AR2010030504326.html

Navy has fired 6 commanders since January, triple its usual monthly rate
By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Navy has fired six commanding officers since the start of the year -- triple its usual monthly rate -- including a foul-mouthed captain who was dismissed for subjecting her crew to "cruelty and maltreatment" aboard a warship in the Pacific.

Capt. Holly Graf, commander of the USS Cowpens, a guided-missile cruiser, was relieved of duty Jan. 13 after an investigation found she cursed so much at her 400-member crew that even the sailors -- no strangers to four-letter words -- were intimidated. According to the Navy inspector general's report released this week, officers complained that their captain humiliated them in front of the rest of the crew by calling them "idiots" and "stupid" as she spat a stream of obscenities. One noncommissioned officer said Graf treated him like a toddler, forcing him to take a "time out" by standing alone in an empty watch room.

Although verbal abuse would hardly put Graf among the worst tyrants ever to command a ship at sea, her former crew members have been exacting mutinous revenge in recent weeks by posting hundreds of anonymous comments on the Internet that describe her as "Horrible Holly," as well as a modern-day Captain Bligh. Graf's has been highlighted in much of the criticism. One Web site, www.militarycorruption.com, called her "an incompetent and unstable 'politically correct' poster girl for all the super feminists at the Pentagon and the U.S. Naval Academy." ....

------------------

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1970226,00.html

Complaints About Female 'Captain Bligh' Began Early
By Mark Thompson

Navy Commander Maurice "Mo" Kaprow was stunned to watch then Commander Holly Graf in action. He saw her for the first time after arriving aboard her ship, the destroyer U.S.S. Winston S. Churchill, in Italy just before the Iraq war began in 2003. A Jewish rabbi and a Navy chaplain, he'd been sent to the Churchill on temporary assignment as the vessel readied for war. Usually pulling out of port is a methodical and precise process. But as Kaprow recalled on Friday, "I never in my life saw such chaos as there was on that bridge � Holly Graf began yelling and screaming rudder orders, engine orders, insulting people. I'd never seen anything like this."

It got even more bizarre as the ship pulled out of Sicily's Augusta harbor. "Just after clearing the breakwater, the ship began to rumble and shake � now she's screaming even louder because nobody knows what's happening," Kaprow said. "I begin to hear young sailors' voices from the fantail, and they're singing, 'Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead.' " Kaprow remembered being perplexed by the sudden song. "Then someone came up to me and said, 'We've ran aground. She's finished' " � assuming the accident would mean the end of their commander's career. "They were jumping for joy and singing on the fantail," he said. Actually, one of the ship's props had broken, but the crew's reaction still amazed Kaprow. "I was flabbergasted," he said.

Kaprow left the Navy last month after a 20-year career and visits to some 200 ships. Morale aboard the Churchill, he said, was the worst he ever saw � even on the eve of war with Saddam Hussein, when the Churchill launched Tomahawk missiles from the eastern Mediterranean toward Iraq. "I think the lady is mentally unbalanced," Kaprow said. "I don't believe she ever should have had command."

The Navy removed Graf from command of the guided-missile cruiser U.S.S. Cowpens in January for "cruelty and maltreatment" of her crew. But Kaprow's account makes clear that such conduct also occurred on the first ship Graf commanded. His tale is noteworthy because, unlike most others who witnessed Graf in command, Kaprow was an independent Navy outsider not subject to Graf's orders. Questions continue to swirl about how Graf not only retained her command but kept getting promoted despite reports from eyewitnesses like Kaprow.... The man known as the "combat rabbi" aboard the Churchill found the environment aboard the ship to be "weird, absolutely weird." Graf would talk to some of her officers but not to others. She would show up at the daily morning intelligence briefing in apparel that Kaprow had never seen on a Navy warship before. "She'd be wearing black slippers," he said, "with one fuzzy ball on each one." Then there were the tirades. "She would argue with the briefers, belittling them," Kaprow said. "Just absolute vile stuff that I had never heard from a C.O. before."....