Before my ship was decommissioned someone set up a web page for it. When I was on board the crew were all men, a destroyer, a fighting ship. In the 90’s women were allowed on board for certain jobs. Instead of a cohesive crew it became a soap opera. Young men and women confined on a ship at sea? It literally became the “love boat”.
Women are capable of doing many jobs on a destroyer, that’s not my point. I’d hate to go into a battle at sea when 30% of the crew is more concerned about their lover than doing their job! From the posts I saw on that website I know it would have been less effective as a fighting ship.
I agree completely, no fighting unit should ever be a social experiment. The goal with any fighting unit is to combine people and equipment and train them to be more efficient/effective and any unit they might face in combat, not to meet some PC standard a liberal dreamed up.
I remember reading several years ago about marine artillery unit efficiency reports being squashed because they indicated that mixed sex units weren't as effective of as all male units.
My first ship...the Mighty USS Independence, was all guys, and one experimental female flight surgeon that was very nice on the eyes....
No problems, guys acted like the rough sailors we were, and got the job done. Had the usual dirtbags but they got sorted out as needed. the gays kept to themselves and worked just as hard as the rest of us.
It just wasn't advertised like it was their full time job to do so like it is today.
Second command, shore duty, Had females...lots of TAD pregnancies in the base club partying it up because they arent underway...
Had problems with the usual small town high school issues you find on any shore station, but I was shore duty in Japan and in my 20's....
I was living life....
Last command....LCC-19....Hotel 19 USS Blue Ridge....
at any given time 20% of the females were pregnant and missing deployments, or flown off during deployments because pregnancies,
I was the Chief of the guard for our ships security force watch section, had two females in my section... one was a 1st class that had no clue what was going on at any given moment and a black E4 that cried because she thought we were discriminating because she had to do a 0000-0600 watch...with an M14 that everyone else had to carry as well. She got pregnant soon after....
(have a hilarious story about the 1st class and an incident in-port Brunei)
We never seemed to have the budget for range time or proper training, but always had the budget for sexual harassment/rape, alcohol, pregnancy and the multitude of special race months....
The mess decks underway...dating game and love boat all in one...
My Chief who was the best chief I've had and we would go through the 7th gate of hell and back for...got sent to Mast...for sexual harassment....walking into the division office and saying "good morning ladies!! lets get to work! " while there was 3 females and the rest of were guys...
I got out at 11.5 years...I had enough after that command and the 7th fleet in general...