Re: am I liable
Certainly Bob if you care to read the whole story. You can read my terrible memory
I was the Chief for the Electrical Repair Division on board a Submarine Tender. We had a 400HZ MG set that had to have the rotor pulled cleaned and dipped was all it needed. I did a bunch of pre arrival work getting rigging gear prepared and tested and rigging instructions put together for the work package. I will say right now those with any experience in this field will find this hard to believe that the people could do this but they did.
OK back to the story. Once the Sub pulled in I did a quick pre check of the situation, got everything ready to go to start working the next day. My guys got all the certified rigging gear down to the MG and had it lock out and tagged out that night. Came in the morning and the CO of the Sub said my plan was rediculously over done and the entire job could be done much simpler and quicker if we did it his way. I went to several people to show them the prepared work package, rigging instructions per Sub Rigging Manuals (by the way in a Navy Nuclear Power Sub there are rigging procedures for almost every piece of equipment). I took all my stuff up to well the top of the ladder. By the end of the day, I was told by my Commander, "You will do it the way the Captain want's it done!" I said "No I won't!" and not in a belligerent manner, just "No I won't Sir!" I went down got my stuff, told my crew we were of the job and went back to my office on the Tender. They decided to force one of my First Class Petty Officer's to do the job as directed by them.
To keep an even longer story short it took about a day and half before it happened but, as they were rigging the rotor out of the MG set, OOPPSS! could be heard all the way to the beach. They had the MG suspended in air by four comealongs and pulling the rotor by yes dragging along the stator. No biggy they had said, well as soon as the AC end cleared the stator coming towards the DC end of course. The entire thing shifted and well now not only was the Rotor in need of a cleaning but now a rewind, and the stator would require it also. When the MG shifted it barely missed one guy that was underneath it for some reason and the rotor swung and came just short of impaling the guy working the comealong. How do I know this, since I had walked of the job and refused to go on the Sub, well those familiar again with Chief Petty Officer's know that we can find things out (besides I had told one of my guys to stay in the upper level to watch and tell me everything that happened
).
As I said they did not do anything at first because they wanted to do the job and make me look real bad so they could really hammer me. After words what are they going to punish me for when I was right. But of course in the military you can't make a mockery of the upper echelon so as I stated they hid me in a little office accusing me of being a poor leader because I didn't speak up loud enough to stop something I knew was dangerous, since it obviously happened and I was told to keep my mouth shut. The Sub CO transferred right away, my Div. Off. transferred right away, Commander that had ordered me to do well lets just say he made it to retirement, but there were no openings for him at the 20 year mark so he sort of retired. Me, I was told nothing would happen, yet a little letter made it into my record that said I couldn't manage people and amazing enough this didn't show up until I was eligible for Senior Chief. Now How many Chiefs are going to make Senior Chief with something like that in their record. Yes all sorts of procedures to fight it but I was just tired, so basically my fault for letting my career get screwed up.
Thanks for your time if you read this. Have a nice day. SAFETY FIRST, you'll stay alive, your guy's will stay alive and once again I will say, to this day I do not regret what I did.
