Denting the Featherbed

To change anything in the Na-a-vy is like punching a featherbed. You punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted, and then you find the damn bed just as it was before you started punching. --F.D.R., as quoted by Marriner Eccles

Into an auditorium filled with some 4,000 Navy and Marine officers marched spray-fresh Navy Secretary John B. Connally Jr. to punch at the featherbed. Connally had called the meeting of every officer in the Washington area, including 65 admirals and Marine generals, to inform them that the Navy must scrape off its barnacles and gear for space-age change.

Connally, a Texas lawyer and a World War II lieutenant commander who won a Bronze Star, was dissatisfied with much that he found in today's Navy. Officers, he said, are too defensive when new ideas are proposed, too enamored of their technological feats, too obsessed with costly, complicated craft when simpler, smaller vessels would do as well. The time has come, Connally said, to put progress above tradition. Other Connally observations:

ON INTERSERVICE WARS. Connally demanded an end to the interservice bickering so often characterized by leaks and background statements. Said he: "The Navy's top civilian and military leaders cannot effectively fight for the kind of Navy we all want if they must be forever explaining away or defending some counter-policy utterance made by a well-intentioned but irresponsible officer." His instructions: "Recognize and accept your responsibility by insisting on being quoted by name, rank and billet."

ON PROMOTION. Bright young officers should get faster promotion, with less stress on seniority. Said Connally: "Could we not make changes in our selection system to permit earlier determination of an officer's ability to command, and thereafter be able to use officers in billets of great importance for longer periods of time? Officers should be promoted not on their ability to keep their finger on their number, but on past and present demonstration of initiative and courage."

ON FLEET MODERNIZATION. "We cannot go on hoping that someone is going to wave a magic fiscal wand to modernize our aging fleet. We must find ways to build ships more cheaply, while at the same time expressing our needs more clearly. Perhaps the answer lies in less sophisticated ships--or more ships of exactly similar design. We cannot hope to embody in each ship and aircraft all of the improvements that our technical laboratories can dream up. If we did so, a ship would never go to sea, because our technical progress is neverending. We must consider the cost of sophistication." One sign of the Navy's new times: its fiscal 1962 budget includes no funds for construction of new nuclear surface ships.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Navy's brass liked what it heard, responded to Connally's speech with warm applause. If, as his speech suggested, Connally was going to be a salty and vigorous leader, the Navymen seemed happy to have him at the helm. And he might even make a dent in the featherbed.

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