Gear Up, Mishaps Down

Less than five years after naval aviation led the forces that defeated Imperial Japan that very organization was in serious trouble. The force had been drastically reduced and, despite the Korean War, growing sentiment supported by no less than the chairman of the Joint Chiefs argued that the new Air Force could do anything naval aviation might be required to do. Meanwhile, the naval aviation mishap rate soared. The very survival of naval aviation was at stake. It took fifty years to turn this around. Today, in spite of hot wars, cold wars, contingencies, and peacetime operations in support of friends and allies, the Navy and Marine Corps accident rate is at least as good as that of the Air Force, and it approaches that of commercial aviation. Gear Up, Mishaps Down explains that this accomplishment was achieved through dedicated and professional leadership, a focus on lessons learned from mishaps and near-mishaps, a willingness to learn from other enterprises, and by better leadership, training, maintenance, supply and more. The place of Human Factors was recognized and contributed significantly to the remarkable downtrend in the numbers of Naval Aviation mishaps. Simulator training became increasingly important as did the more recent disciplines of Operational Risk management and Crew Resource Management. From the 1950s to 2000 the number of Navy/Marine major mishaps fell from a high of 2,213 in 1954 to 29 in 2000. Even more impressive, the number went As low as eleven in 2010 and continues to fall. This book tells how all that came about and more. It’s a recipe which might be followed by any high risk enterprise seeking to reduce accidents and improve readiness. That’s exactly what Naval Aviation has done since 1950.