5 Months at Sea
What I learned on deployment, and some other updates and one-sentence book reviews
Hello!
The point of this newsletter was to force myself to write something once a month. I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to keep up with it once I started my division officer tour out here in Hawaii, but I underestimated how difficult it would be to sit down and do this.
It’s not that I don’t have time — I actually do have time — it’s just that the discipline required to write down long-form thoughts every once in a while is usually out of reach. But as often as I’m able, I’d still like to try, if for no other reason than just to keep up with all of you!
At the end of March I got back from a partial deployment aboard my new home, the Virginia-class fast attack submarine USS MISSOURI (SSN-780) a.k.a. the Battle Boat a.k.a. best boat in the Pacific Fleet. I met MISSOURI at her first port call in October, two months into what would become a seven-month deployment. MW my Submarining Wife was temporarily assigned to MISSOURI last year, and Guam is where we swapped places. From Guam, we went underway for another few months, pulled into Yokosuka, Japan for another port visit, and then went back out to sea for our last mission before returning to Pearl Harbor.
My time on deployment was, to put it mildly, an insane learning experience. As a brand-new junior officer with no useful knowledge or skills, I joined a motivated, seasoned crew operating at peak proficiency in terms of their tactical and engineering readiness. Thankfully, I got to work with a very supportive and enthusiastic leadership team, most of whom were willing to set aside large amounts of their own time to mentor and teach me and the other junior officers onboard.
I spent most of my time underway helping compile the ship’s “Basic Mission Report,” which is a record of what we did and observed during our missions. That was my primary watchstanding responsibility and also my primary administrative job. I would wake up, eat breakfast (which could be lunch or dinner, depending on the meal rotation, so sometimes one would wake up and eat fajitas or steak), and then go type at a laptop in the ship’s control room for eight hours. Then we would eat again and do other “off-watch” tasks, like typing reports or making charts, for the next eight or so hours. Doing the BMR was mostly pretty fun (for me) and it afforded a good opportunity to understand what we were accomplishing in each of the mission periods, and to help craft the narrative about those missions for distribution to outside entities. Probably can’t say anything more descriptive than that.
With most of my remaining time, I studied technical manuals and books and talked to people about what I studied. Every junior officer has to become qualified in a series of watchstanding roles, from Engineering Officer of the Watch (supervising the nuclear propulsion plant underway), to Contact Manager (locating and tracking other ships’ positions using our ship’s tactical sensors), to Officer of the Deck (driving the ship). Each of those roles has its own qualification “card,” which is a list of 40-250 “checkouts.” To get a checkout, you study some topic listed on the card, and then go discuss it with a qualified watchstander, and if you display sufficient understanding, they sign off on your knowledge of that topic. At the end of each card, you have to pass a series of interviews or boards, and after you’ve finished all the cards, you get your submarine warfare pin, or “fish.” I have a ways to go before I get my fish, but being on deployment was a great opportunity to make progress towards a lot of those qualifications.
I wanted to write about “what I learned” on deployment. But I don’t know if that’s really possible without oversimplifying things too much. Like any worthwhile institution, the military does a great job breaking down, rebuilding, and shaping people in accordance with its values. Deployment is a formative experience for everyone involved, especially if you’re a brand new JO like me. It was five straight months of watching and absorbing things, isolated from any human interaction or influence outside the pressure hull of the ship. That daily continuous formation and development, the consistent observation and instillation of the wardroom’s values, matter a lot more than any catchy leadership insights or maxims that I could articulate based on the experience. But when I reflect on the deployment, there are several basic themes that come to mind:
The importance of staying positive — being able to absorb bad news and keep a positive attitude
The importance of “owning” an assignment or job that I’m given, even if I’m not ready for it or have to fake it for a while
The value of deep understanding (as opposed to cursory, bare-minimum knowledge)
Learning how to communicate — not just words, but intentionally considering setting / body language / demeanor for important conversations
Enforcing deadlines and commitments, and finding ways to hold myself and others accountable to commitments that are made
Just before we returned home I became the ship’s Reactor Control Assistant (RCA), working with the 15 or so nuclear electronics technicians who operate and maintain all of our nuclear instrumentation and reactor safety equipment. I’m one of five engineering division officers and we are the five newest junior officers onboard. The ship keeps us in engineering jobs for at least a year before we go “forward” and start working with the tactical, navigation, or weapons-related divisions.
Maybe someday I can write about what I have learned, and am learning, as a division officer, but I’ll give it a few years. For now I’ll just say that I never would have expected how much I would enjoy working in an engineering role — not only in my capacity as the RCA but also when I get to stand watch every few days as the Engineering Duty Officer. The sailors who keep our propulsion plant operational are truly extraordinary people — the type of men (it’s all men, for now) who will simply carry out any task that is asked of them no matter how tedious or complex. Their intellectual capacity is astonishing, and more importantly they all have a deep sense of pride in the demanding nature of their work and a drive to become masters of their various roles. It’s not uncommon to walk into Maneuvering (the control station for the ship’s propulsion plant) and find two 20-21 year old sailors intensely and voluntarily quizzing each other on nuclear engineering systems and procedures. They are all part of a winning team, and they understand the importance of building upon prior successes to improve their performance in the future. It is an amazing culture to be a part of.
I know that is probably more than anyone wanted to hear about work. If it wasn’t, I am always happy to talk about it more or answer questions about life on a submarine. I am really enjoying this assignment so far and I’m excited for the rest of my time with MISSOURI!
Remembering Aaron
A few weeks after returning home, I got a heartbreaking phone call from my friend Bryce. He was calling to let me know about the death of Aaron Fowler, our close friend from the Naval Academy and a member of Bryce’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit in San Diego. Aaron died in a training accident at Marine Corps Base Kaneohe Bay, just a few miles from where I’m currently sitting in my and MW’s apartment.
Aaron was originally two years ahead of me at USNA, but ended up in our class after going on a two-year mission trip abroad after his sophomore year. He was in the company adjacent to ours in Bancroft Hall, and I met him through our friend Jon. Aaron quickly integrated into our group of close friends, and I also got to know him further through USNA’s “SUKISP” (grad school preparation) program. I hadn’t seen Aaron since 2019, when he was at Georgetown and I was visiting D.C. from Chicago, but we spoke on the phone occasionally and we had plans to meet up during his training exercise in Hawaii.
I’ve tried a number of times to sum up my thoughts on Aaron, but it’s still not easy to wrap my mind around it. There is nothing I can say here that could possibly be worthy of him. Aaron was a really, really good man who deeply loved and cared for those around him. He was unimpressed by worldly credentials, unmoved by lofty rhetoric, and could not be fooled or blown off when he trained his attention on something. He was an intellectually curious, logic-driven, and studious person too, not just in his academic pursuits (which were amazing) but in his interactions with people. He paid careful attention to things and remembered small details long after most people would have forgotten them. He was in general a quiet guy, but was also capable of the most interesting, searching conversations. Aaron was one of the first people — maybe even the first person — who identified MW and me as a potential couple, even when we were still just friends.
More importantly than all that, Aaron’s most defining trait was his faith in God — followed closely by his love for the church. That has been the common theme in every tribute or obituary that I’ve read about him, and it was certainly my experience of him. It was impossible to come into contact with Aaron and not be somehow challenged or inspired in your faith. I will always be grateful to him for his influence on me and I’m looking forward to talking with him again someday.
Reading Recently
One awesome thing about deployment was the lack of phone service and internet onboard. Clear downside: impossible to communicate with MW or any other family/friends for months at a time. But other than that, only benefits. No notifications, no social media feeds, and long breaks from the 24-hour news cycle. My attention span, which has been decimated by technology just like everyone else’s, went way up while I was on deployment. I was reading multiple books at a time on my Kindle and didn’t bring any other forms of media onboard, so if I ever got bored of a certain book, my only alternative was to read from a different book. There were a few times — on Sundays or holidays — when I read rotating books for five or six hours. It was great.
When I got home, I went right back on the internet and my attention span went back to goldfish levels. But I’ve tried to keep a decent reading habit, even if it’s just a few pages before bed. Here are some of the books I read over deployment and since, along with my one or two sentence review. Let me know if you’ve read any of these or if you’d like to hear more about any of them.
There is Nothing For You Here, Fiona Hill (2021). Unique perspective on economic anxiety and change in Europe and the U.S., informed in large part by Dr. Hill’s remarkable personal story. Really good.
Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War, August Cole and P.W. Singer (2015). It was fine. I think I have had enough of this genre for a while though.
It Worked For Me: In Life and Leadership, Colin Powell (2012). Read this after he died last fall. Fun, easy read with lots of good stories. Basically the whole book is just folksy and helpful anecdotes.
Grant, Ron Chernow (2017). Still only halfway done with this, but really good. Epic Civil War stories and I’m just getting to some of the post-Lincoln political intrigue. I hope they make a musical of it.
To Rule the Waves: How Control of the World’s Oceans Shapes the Fates of Superpowers, Bruce Jones (2021). Fascinating and really well-written and engaging. Everyone in the Navy should read.
Going There, Katie Couric (2021). Pretty interesting, if you are interested in media and news and how it gets made.
Where the Light Fell: A Memoir, Philip Yancey (2021). So good. Amazing story of God’s grace in one family’s wreckage and the good that came from it.
Jesus and John Wayne, Kristin Kobes Du Mez (2020). Interesting examination of evangelical subculture that mostly made sense but some arguments and connections were pretty tenuous, in my opinion.
Annapolis Surprise
The biggest recent happiness for MW and me, other than finally living together again after a little over a year apart, was getting to go to her sister MB’s commissioning from USNA at the end of May! We did not think we would be able to go due to MW’s ship’s schedule. At the last minute — literally the morning of the day we needed to leave — everything worked out and we bought tickets and got out there. No one knew we were coming so it was a giant family surprise. It was great to be with the family and really fun to be back in Annapolis for a few days.
What makes it even better is that MB is going to be a submarine officer too! Can’t wait for her to make it through the training pipeline and join us out here in the Fleet.
That is all for this edition of the newsletter. Please write me back, if you want! I just scrolled through the list of people who are subscribed to this, and there is not a single one of you who I would not really enjoy hearing from. If you reply to this email I will get it. Thank you for reading and I hope you’re doing well.
Sincerely,
TK
P.S. I have not forgotten that I never wrote about Big Idea #3. I underestimated how weighty that one was going to be. I will get to it.