Mother of All Hooks: The Story of the U.S. Navy's Tailhook Scandal

Mother of All Hooks: The Story of the US. Navy's Tailhook Scandal, by William H. McMichael. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997. (377 pages -- $32.95 cloth)

Although eight years have elapsed since Tailhook '91, the reverberations have yet to die away. The effect of the scandal and its investigative aftermath have had a devastating influence on morale in the U.S. Navy. The initial report on the incident was broken in the San Diego Union-Tribune by reporter Gregory L. Vistica at the end of October of that year and later reported in more detail in his Fall from Glory: The Men Who Sank the US. Navy (Simon and Schuster, 1995). In short, he reported that a female helicopter pilot, Paula Coughlin, was pawed, groped and otherwise mistreated at the annual symposium in Las Vegas of the Tailhook Association. Many of the attendees had just returned from the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein's "The Mother of All Battles," leading one of the organizers to dub the symposium "The Mother of All Hooks." Hence the title of the book.

Naval aviators, especially carrier pilots, are a different breed from surface sailors and submariners. The breakdown in discipline and morals experienced at Tailhook symposiums would not be seen at gatherings of the other two branches. Some of the off-duty aviation culture, albeit greatly watered down, comes through in the old Tom Cruise movie Top Gun. The propensity of navy pilots to act in a juvenile manner (which I have observed) also stems from a certain arrogance common to all combat jet pilots, from a disdain for surface sailors and submariners as well as from the danger inherent in trying to land a heavy high velocity missile on a heaving deck. It also stems from the insularity of the trade; aviators have little contact with the other branches until they reach senior rank.

In an unprecedented action, the investigations carried out by the two naval services by-passed the chain of command, employing "consolidated disposition authorities" (CDAs). The Marine Corps CDA performed quite well, but in McMichael's words "the Navy had royally screwed up the Tailhook investigation. One Secretary of the Navy [Lawrence Garrett] and three admirals had gone down in flames and its nine-month, multi-million dollar investigation had produced all of three suspects." As the attempts to bring Tailhook investigation unfolded, it became evident that the Chief of Naval Operations and Acting Secretary of the Navy, Admiral Frank Kelso, was himself involved. While his aides testified that he was not present near the "scene of the crime" on Saturday night, the witnesses who so testified against him were quite credible. As a result of these charges Kelso was forced to retire two months early in 1994, barely emerging with his four stars intact. He was replaced by the ill-fated Admiral Jeremy "Mike" Boorda.

The effects of Tail hook did not end here. Commander Robert E. Stumpf, former commander of the Blue Angels and an officer whom everyone expected to rise to three or four stars was denied promotion to captain simply because he attended the symposium. Thoroughly investigated and cleared of all charges, Stumpfs promotion, already approved by the Senate and Navy Secretary John Dalton, was blocked by Senators Sam Nunn and Strom Thurman. The former claimed to possess secret information not available to the public but he never made a convincing case. Lurking in the background, however, was steady invisible pressure to introduce women into combat units. Actions like that against Stumfp served to blunt the resistance.

McMichael, a senior reporter for the Newport News (Virginia) Daily Press, has written an account that is by far the most accurate and fair of any produced to date. The failure, indeed the outright incompetence of the Navy and Department of Defense investigators is fully documented. That said, the book's organization makes its first half somewhat difficult to follow. The author unfolds the scandal in completely chronological order with the result that so many characters appear so rapidly in the Byzantine labyrinth of investigation that the account becomes confusing. As the investigations settle down under the CADs, the chronological style becomes easier to follow. He also draws an erroneous conclusion from the results of his work -- that women are fully qualified to serve in combat units. The Navy has been sending women to sea since before the Gulf War, first in fleet auxiliaries and more recently in combat ships. The outcome has been less than satisfactory, the primary reason being pregnancy -- female sailors must depart for shore duty after the 20th week of pregnancy, creating monstrous problems in staffing the fleet. That said, I strongly recommend the McMichael book to all who are interested in the sociology of the armed forces.

Reviewed by Robert C. Whitten1

1 The reviewer is a commander, U.S. Naval Reserve-Retired, a national director of the Navy League of the United States and a research scientist, NASA-Retired.

Copyright Dr. George Kourvetaris Summer 1999
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