How A Carrier Fire Led To A Career-Defining Tour In Japan

A single phone call can reroute your entire life, especially in the Navy. We share the true story behind how I got handpicked orders to the USS George Washington, the forward-deployed nuclear aircraft carrier in Yokosuka, Japan, and why the road there started with a major shipboard fire and a deep-dive investigation. From my years at Afloat Training Group San Diego, I learned how carrier readiness really gets built: damage control training, firefighting standards, drill packages that actually work, and the uncomfortable truth that complacency can hide inside “normal” until it doesn’t. 

The investigation introduced me to Master Chief Damage Controlman Mark Weathers, a mentor who shaped how I think about accountability. Instead of chasing pure punishment after a casualty, he pushed for learning the full chain of causes and fixing culture, training, and leadership expectations. That perspective matters later, when I’m asked to bring a training framework to Guam and help align how a forward-deployed team supports a carrier. 

Then the career opportunity collides with family reality. My wife Erica is dealing with the strain of a newborn, sickness, and sudden trips, and I’m weighing an overseas move we didn’t plan for. When the detailer calls early and the George Washington wants me as their next Damage Control Chief, we have to decide fast. What I walked into onboard was even wilder: leaders rotating out, a thin bench, and a training program that needed a reset right now. We talk through taking ownership, fixing admin before ATG arrives, pushing back professionally when standards drift, and rebuilding manning by growing our own junior sailors. 

If you’re into military leadership, Navy Chief Petty Officer stories, damage control culture, and what it really takes to lead on an aircraft carrier, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share it with a shipmate, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

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Transcript

Welcome And Sea Story Setup

Gary Wise 0:28

All right, everyone. How are you doing? Half a day, Ohio, uh, Kanichiwa, good morning, good evening, all of the things. Uh, not sure what time of you're listening to the sound of my voice, but once again, it is me, Gary Wise. This is the Words for the Wise podcast. And thank you so much for spending some time with me today. Um, you know, today's episode of the podcast is gonna be another context builder. It's gonna be another sea story from the Master Chief's closet, right? And I want to talk to you all today. I want to tell you, share the story with you about how I got the orders to the USS George Washington once upon a time. And we're gonna talk about a few of the things that I experienced when I got the chance to serve on board that mighty ship forward deployed out of Yokosuka, Japan, right? Um, you know, in my past life, before I was a command master chief, I was a damage controlman. I was a damage control master chief. And then, of course, many, many years before that, 2006 to be exact, I was a damage control chief petty officer. Uh, you guys heard I did a previous podcast with Brian Nelson. We talked about our time at a float training group San Diego. And a float training group San Diego, my job, our job as an organization was to go on board surface ships of the Navy, assess, inspect them, right? Inspect for me was damage control, so shipboard firefighting, shipboard pipe patching, shipboard plugging, pretty much any emergency response, and then give them an assessment and tell them how we can improve their ability to be what we would call certified, so they can go out and then do the thing, right? So when I got to the float training group, uh Brian gave

ATG Carrier Team And Mentors

Gary Wise 2:10

me some advice and he said, Hey, if you want to find success here at ATG San Diego, you're gonna want to be on the aircraft carrier team. And I said, Well, why would I want to be on the aircraft carrier team? I've never been on an aircraft carrier before. I was an amphibian sailor, I'd been on the USS Bellowwood, I'd been on the USS Ogden, never been on a carrier. And he says, uh, well, carrier team gets the most visibility and they get the most days underway, which is why not a lot of people want to do it. And it will prepare you for if you go to an aircraft carrier in the future, and that's where you're gonna want to go ultimately to try to make senior chief or master chief. All of that made sense to me as a young chief petty officer. So I said, Man, sign me up, brother. Like, sign me up. And of course, he put me with Chief Greg Green, who was a phenomenal mentor, and I got the opportunity to be on his aircraft carrier damage control training team, his assessment team, I guess you could call it. And four or five months later, I was actually slated to become the next leader of this team. And so during the majority of my time at a float training group San Diego, working with uh a Naval Air Forces specific, I was the leading aircraft carrier assessor with a team of 10 to 11 damage controlmen. And I'm giving you that context because that's going to help highlight how I got orders to the USS George Washington, right? So we're out doing an assessment on a ship once upon a time. I believe it was the Carl Vinson, it's an aircraft carrier, West Coast deployer. Um, my team is on the ship, and we get the word that there was a fire on board the USS George Washington. And this fire was a big deal, right? And of course, none of us had any idea how big of a deal it was. Uh, we we just we knew there was a fire, and of course, we're always interested because there's in the Navy, we love we we love to learn from our casualties, right? We like to learn from how things went wrong or things went sideways so that we could best apply the lessons learned to all of the other ships in that class or all of the other ships on that waterfront. And a fire is applicable to every ship, it doesn't matter, it's it's always applicable, you know. How did it start? How did they put it out? What were the lessons that they learned? And out of the George Washington fire, which was a huge fire, I mean, it it crippled the ship. They were able to make it to San Diego, but they were gonna be in San Diego in need of some significant repairs. And part of this whole after-action process for the Navy in particular, I mean, every organization does this, but the Navy does it very well, is there's going to be an investigation, right? They're gonna have subject matter experts come onto the ship and investigate what happened, how did it go, how could they have done things differently, all of those things, right? And so Aplote Training Group San Diego was tasked with providing some subject matter experts to support the investigation. And of course, me being the aircraft carrier team leader, I got tagged with the opportunity to go over there and to be a part of this investigation. And this was actually really, really cool for me because number one, I got the chance to go on board a ship that had had this major fire. Number two, I got the chance to meet my first ever Master Chief Damage Controlman. I had never met a DC Master Chief until that time. Ever. Never, I had never met a DC Master Chief. So, I mean, I've I've been a damage controlman for, you know, since 2000. Let's see, I joined the Navy in 1997, I put on damage control in about 1999 because I was undesignated for a few years. But on my first ship, the Bellow, no DC Master Chiefs. Um, go to a recruiting tour, come back to the Ogden, DC Chief, no Master Chiefs. Get to a float training group, San Diego, a couple senior chiefs, never met a master chief. So when I go to this investigation, I get to meet not just a DC Master Chief, but one of the most important Master Chiefs in that whole community, a man by the name of Mark Weathers. Mark, if you ever listen to these videos, I want to get you on this podcast, bro. You're an amazing human being. You changed my life. This was the beginning of our relationship. And man, you were an important mentor to me and my journey. And Mark Weathers was coming out of Naval Air Forces Atlantic, where the George Washington had come from. They had been over in Norfolk and they were going to Japan. That was their job. They were going to replace the USS Kitty Hawk. And so they certified in Norfolk. The fire had happened as they came around and the investigation was happening in Pacific, and there was this energy of like finger pointing, right? Pacific was saying how Atlantic did things was wrong. Atlantic was saying Pacific doesn't know. It was just this whole big mess, right? And of course, FDF, which is the Ford Deployed Naval Forces, one of their aircraft carrier, the Kitty Hawk crew

The George Washington Fire Aftermath

Gary Wise 7:20

was upset because they were getting delayed on their crew turnover and their plans to go back home. And so there was just a whole bunch of energy and a whole bunch of emotions around this thing. And then not to mention just this huge fire, right? So Mark comes out from Norfolk. I go over to do the investigation and just get the opportunity to see what happens on the inside of one of those uh major investigations. And of course, of course, you know, I I hate just throwing people under the bus after a major casualty like that because there's always things you could have done differently. There's always things you wish you could have done. You know, again, complacency is one of the worst human challenges. And unfortunately, complacency, if if I can almost take any casualty on any ship and I can find a link to complacency, probably. Right? There's probably gonna be a linkage to complacency in there somewhere. Sure, there could be mechanical failure, sure there could be training failures, but I'm also gonna probably find a link to complacency. I'm gonna find a link to people not doing things the way they're supposed to be doing them in accordance with the book, or whatever the flavor of that variation, whatever the flavor of that is, right? But as we were finding those things, and starting to feel like almost, well, how can we just fire people to send a message? And I remember Mark uh kind of doing a good job putting down uh the parameters to the investigators, like look, hey, look, I'm not just here to fire people, I'm here to figure out what went wrong so we can best train people. And if people if they purposefully did something wrong, that's one thing. But if it was just or if it was a commit culture, or if there was a climate of complacency, or whatever else this is, then then maybe we should address that as a whole. And I really respected that about Mark because I felt like as a master chief, we own not letting our team be complacent, we own keeping that edge. We have got to do better at keeping people focused as to what's going on, and when we fall below that standard, the chief's mess, in my opinion, that's our responsibility to get it back above that line. And I would like it to live in a world where people don't just get fired, but they get the chance to course correct. But of course, after a major fire, it's a huge problem. Anyway, I'm doing this whole investigation. We get through the investigation, they get everything fixed up on the ship, they're getting the ship ready to go to sea. And Mark and I had had a really good relationship, and my team was going to be the team that went back over to the ship to help train them up and to recertify them to go out to sea. And of course, my process was much different than how the process was happening on the East Coast, right? I had a lot of data points, had a lot of variables, had a lot of metrics that I learned the aviators really liked. Right. I could show to them the man hours of training, I could show to them the things that were not in accordance with the different drill grading criteria we were given, but then how we could we could correct them and fix them in with the crew as a team to best provide to the captain and to the admiral a certified ship, right? And that's what I was providing to them as an end-of-mission report, plus material discrepancies. Well, they really liked that. That was a big plus up for what we were we were already doing that in San Diego. I just kind of turned it up a notch or two, right? Because I learned for all of the people on my team, the better I could quantify what we were doing out in the waterfront, the better I could help it. All of my people put together better advancement packages and things like that. Plus, I could better show value to the crew because they would get the same benefit by taking my verbiage and using it for all of their stuff. Right. So we're gonna do the work. Why not figure out the best way to communicate what we're doing with the world as well? What that does is at least for me and my team, was we build a really good synergy with the crew because we all end up on the same team. Ultimately, when we get the certification, everyone's high-fiving, go team, and we're flying off. We did a good job. Okay, so now the ship goes to Japan after we certify them, and I get a phone call from Mark a couple months later, says, Hey, Gary, we want your team to come out to Guam. We want you to meet up with the ATG Bubas from Yokosta, and we would like for you to teach them how to run your training style, your training methodology, your training framework, I guess you could call it, for an aircraft carrier, because they only will have one. They will just have the George Washington, which is a nuclear aircraft carrier. Prior to the GW, they had a steam aircraft carrier, the Kittyhawks. So there's some differences there. A lot of differences, actually, when it comes to damage control. Because you don't run something that like the main space fire drill will be a lot different on a steam aircraft carrier versus on a nuclear aircraft carrier. That's just one example. And so I said, hey man, it'd be an honor to. Me and my team would be happy to fly to Guam, supplement their team, right? Because you need like 11 people to do an aircraft carrier team. I would bring out four or five of my guys, have four or five of their guys, and we could give them some training. It happened to be that I knew the senior chief that was their lead guy out in Yoko. I'd inspected him when he was on a ship in San Diego. So no problems there, right? And we could we could figure things out. And that's what we did. We flew my team out to Guam, we did a training assessment, we did training with all the ATG Bubas in Westpac and Yokusuka so they could best take care of the aircraft carrier, and we headed back home. I remember I got back home and my wife Erica and I were to the point where we were starting to talk about orders for the future, right? We were starting to talk about orders for the future. My son Hayden had been born. He was months old, right? Months old. Actually, the day I flew to Guam, my wife was so sick. Erica was so sick that day. The day of my flight to Guam, she could not even get out of bed. My son Hayden was like three months old. My wife could not get out of bed, and she was so sick at the time. And I had to get to a flight to get to Guam for a training op. I literally had to call a friend of when my wife and I called a friend of ours who was worked with my wife to come down and help my wife go to the hospital to get taken care of while I was going to Guam. That's just one example. I mean, unfortunately, I have several of those kinds of examples where I had to leave my, where I left my, I chose to leave my wife and my son, not in the best place to go out on mission. I didn't even find out that she was all the way good until I landed in Guam. Right. And she's she's such a hardcore spouse that she was just, you gotta go, you gotta go do what you gotta do. I'll figure this out. I remember calling my mom and dad from from LA, like, I need you guys to drive from Salt Lake City down to San Diego to take care of Erica. That's like a nine-hour drive. And they they they were they were open to the conversation, but fortunately, I was able to find out that that lady went and helped Erica and my baby, right? And she got healthy, she got well, but just as a side note, just to the complications of of that kind of a trip, right? Erica is an amazing spouse. I can do a whole show just on the times she had to do crazy, amazing things in support of our family. So anyway, I come back from Guang, and here we are.

Complacency And Accountability In Investigations

Gary Wise 15:10

Hayden's two, three months old. I've been gone for about a week now, underway on the ship, and Erica and I are talking about what we might do next in our future. And Erica really wants to go to the East Coast. We had come to California originally because I'd wanted to be closer to my family, because I'd wanted the opportunity to hopefully see my parents more often. And unfortunately, that had not happened, right? My mom and dad, they just they couldn't afford time off to come see me and my family. They were raising my sisters' daughters, they financially weren't to in a place they wanted to be. My dad was still working full-time, and it just we had been in San Diego about six, seven, about six years, and it just hadn't worked out. And Erica, she was ready to get back to the East Coast and be hopefully closer to her family, who all were New York City, uh Virginia, and of course down in Florida. Well, in those days, and the year is 2007, just for context, right? The fire for the J Dub was 06-07 time frame. This is now 07. We're having this conversation about where we're gonna go next. I come back from Guam with the training. And to go from San Diego to Norfolk or to Virginia was almost like not gonna happen. The detailers are basically saying there was no coast-to-coast transfers. If you wanted to go coast to coast, you might need to consider going overseas first, and then you can get a guaranteed choice of coast afterwards. So I tell Erica, I say, you know, we should consider the George Washington. That ship would be perfect. I mean, because I had a lot of friends, I'd made a lot of friends on the crew for their from the damage control training team. I had now worked with them from the investigation to the training in San Diego, now the training in Guam. So I recognized like there was a lot of opportunity on that ship. And I was just like, man, that ship would make my whole career. If I could get that ship, that would be amazing. And Erica, she got angry, she got mad at me, she started crying. She said, Stop talking like that. Because she knows Erica knows that when I start talking about things out loud, I'm already thinking about ways I can make it work. I'm already thinking about ways I can put something into action to make it happen. And Erica did not want to go overseas. She wanted nothing to do with it. She had a brand new baby, she did not want to go to Japan. And she, Gary, you stop talking about that right now. That's not what I want to do. We'll figure something else out. So, you know, a couple months go by, and I'm out on a ship one day in San Diego. And again, 2007. Oh no, it's probably 2008 by the time Hayden was born November 2007. So it's probably I'd say mid-2008, because I end up leaving ATG January 2010, right? So it's actually probably 2009 at this point since that conversation had happened. It's been a while. Um, and maybe GW Fire was an 08. Maybe, maybe that's where I'm getting my times crossed. Maybe GW Fire was 08. I mean, that sounds more about right. Either way, the fire happens, training in San Diego happens, training in Guam happens, come back home. Erica's upset about me thinking about going, us thinking about going to Japan. Anyway, I'm on this ship doing some training, and Erica calls me up on the ship. And it's rare that I'm gonna get phone calls when I'm out there working, because typically we're below decks, but just so happened on this time of the day, I was up on the ship's flight deck doing like P100s and doing like Ram fans, but they're they're running their fans, they're running their gear to show me that it works. My phone rings. I and it's Erica. So I answered the phone. I'm like, hello, hey, what's going on? Like, what are you what are you calling me for? You never call me at work, and she's crying on the phone. She's crying, and I said, Uh, what's what's going on? She said, This master chief called for you. I gave me his name and his number, and he said, The USS George Washington wants you to go be their chief. I knew you were gonna take me to Japan, I knew you were gonna do this, and I was like, What are you talking about, bro? Like, I have no, I have no idea what you're talking about, right? I haven't talked to anybody, and you know, being honest, and she's like, Well, this is the guy's number, and I was like, What who is this guy, right? And so I call up this this DC master chief on the phone, and it just so happens he's the DCG detailer, right? Who have not spoken to this guy yet. I have not talked to detailers at all. Matter of fact, I wasn't even in my window yet, so I wasn't supposed to leave ATG until I think it was the summer of 2011, right? And so this is way early ahead of my time to leave ATG. And I call this D this DC mass chief up, and I'm like, um, hey, hey man, my name is Gary Wise. I'm returning a phone call. I guess you spoke to my wife. Um, something going on. He's like, Yeah, man. Um the USS George Washington contacted me or us, and they would like to know, would you become their next DC chief petty officer? They have the chief bill that needs to be filled, and they would like for you to go be that guy. And I was just like, Shut up, you gotta kid me. And he's like, No, dead serious. Like, you we need you to go be that guy. We they want you to go there to be the George Washington sheet. And I was like, Oh my god, that's incredible. And he's like, Yeah, so yes or no, do you want the job? And I was like, Man, let me talk to my wife. Uh, let me make a few phone calls and I'll get back to you. He says, Okay, but please don't wait long. I would like to fill this billet, but I can tell you right now that you're the guy they want. I remember I called up Mark Weathers, my master's chief buddy, my mentor. He's in Norfolk. I'm in San Diego, and I'm like, Mark, man, I just got a phone call from the detailer. The George Washington wants me to become their next DC chief. What do you think? He was like, Yeah, like that's exactly what you need to do. Like, you need to pack your stuff right now and go. And I'm like, I'm supposed to be on shorts with you for like another year and another

Guam Training Mission And Family Strain

Gary Wise 21:40

year and some change, bro. Like, I just like I just my kid's like not even one year old yet. And he's like, Gary, you know, and he's not wrong. My evals had I hit the tip top. I didn't have anywhere else to grow professionally at this organization. So that mattered. He's like, I've seen all of that. Right? You've you've ridden all the aircraft carriers. You now need to go to an aircraft carrier and put all of the things you've learned at ATG to work. And what better aircraft carrier than the forward-deployed aircraft carrier Seventh Fleet? And oh, by the way, your first ship was in Seventh Fleet, so you know what Seventh Fleet's like. And all making sense, right? All good things. But I was just like, bro, like, does this mean I gotta like like terminate shortly early? He's like, I don't know. You you called me. Maybe you should figure that out. Went home and I and I'm and I'm talking with Erica about it, right? And she is again, she is not happy about possibly going to Japan. She's she's she's unhappy, she's upset about it, right? And I was just like, babe, like they called me. Like, here I am, this DC chief, five foot six in San Diego, trying to be somebody, trying to grow up one day and be a big, strong DC master chief. Become a command, I really want to become a command master chief. So not everybody knew that about me at that point in time, but I was working towards being a command master chief. As a matter of fact, when I was at ATG, every ship I rode, every ship I got underway with, I sat down with every command master chief and got training and got them to sign off my CMC training charges, right? Every every ship. So I had been working on my command master chief package, but I also did not want to be a command senior chief. I wanted to make DC Master Chief and then convert over to the Command Master Chief program. That was my goal, that was my goal. And I'd I tell Erica, like, this is like an amazing opportunity. Like we need to, I need to take, we need to take this job. And she got on board. She did. She took one for the team. She said, you know, we had been through some financial craziness with the house that I'd bought in 2006. And of course, the housing bubble had burst and oh wait. So we had come through all of that. We needed to go somewhere to repair our financial picture. And I knew Japan was just the perfect place to go do that. Because having done my first ship in Sasebo, I understand, you know, it's it's it's it's a little low-key over there. You can you can live a really good quality of life while also saving up some money, paying up a bunch of bills, and getting your getting your financial situation together. So I was telling Erica all of these things. And I was like, look, and you know, I I will be within the AOR most of the time. It's not like these West in San Diego, I'd go on Western Pacific deployments where we would be gone from San Diego six to nine months at a time. Well, typically for deployed naval forces, we're typically gone three to four months at a time, but not the seventh and nine months at a time, right? Remember that because it's gonna come back to haunt me later, right? But I tell Erica about that, and she's like, Well, that's not that bad. You know, I'm like, look, you're living on base, there's a lot of support, there's a lot of the things you need are all on base, you don't gotta go very far, there's not for freeways. And she finally just says, Look, man, look, babe, if this is what you need for your career, and oh, by the way, if we can go to Virginia after we go to the ship, okay, let's go. So I call the detailer up again the next day. I'm like, hey man, I'm in. Like, we're in. Me and my wife are in. We want to go to the George Washington. What are we looking at for timeline? And he's I remember he said they need you there like in four months. And I was just like, What? Four months? Like, that's crazy. And he's like, a matter of fact, I just got my eval, so that makes sense because now I'm leaving in January. And you know, another fun fact about me, I had never been to any damage control C schools. So in the Navy, A schools are our initial accession schools for like getting your NECs for your rate, but C schools are like your higher level schools for like petty officers and chief petty officers. I was a quad zero DC chief that really should have never even been riding on the ships that I was riding on. But the reality was, I was I learned my job on the deck plates and I was really good at doing my job, right? But I had never been to any of my C schools before. He's like, I need to get you to go to Fort Leonardwood to do that school, which is our chemical biological school. Then I need to get you uh to go to the senior enlisted damage control school out of there in San Diego, and then I need you to get to the ship in January. So we're talking about four months is when I need you there, but two months is when I need you rolling out of ATG San Diego. And I'm just like, holy crap! Like this just went from me having another year and some change on shore duty or being at ATG to packing up and leaving this place in a few short months to get ready to go to this awesome opportunity. And um I'm just all about it. Let's go chop chop, right? Let's do it. Like again, like Mark said, right? I'd done everything I needed to do to ATG. Next stop, USS G Dub. And um, and that's what we did. So we got through all the training, got through all the pipelines, and I'll never forget uh my family and I flew out uh actually I left ATG in January of 2010, and we get to the GW, I feel like it was like right around March time frame of 2010. I look at my emails, but I know that I'm flying in right before they get underway for a certification ride, and right before they have ATG on board for another piece of their certification. And then what's gonna happen is they're gonna do a little certification ride, then they're gonna get underway to go on their patrol. So I know that I have about two weeks before after I get there for the ship to get underway for the first time. So I remember um I get picked up at the airport by the senior chief who's currently on the ship, the DC senior chief. He picks up me and my wife and our son. And actually, he doesn't pick us up. We ride the bus down to the base. He picks us up from the from the bus, right? And takes us over uh to our to our the Navy Lodge and basically tells me that that whole week there, that whole week um was the only time that the master chief, him, the senior chief, and one of the other chiefs are gonna be on the ship. They're all leaving at the end of that week, uh that Friday, right? And I'm like, hold on, I gotta go to the area orientation brief. I've got to be doing all this thing with my family, and all three of you guys are leaving at the end of this week, and then there's gonna be one chief petty officer who's left on the ship, right? I'm like, that's crazy, bro. Like, so the master chief, the senior chief, and the chief are all leaving, and one guy's gonna be left. He's actually supposed to leave in just a few short weeks. He got ophelled until I got there and got on the ship, and he's gonna be going away. So I'm just like, well, okay. Me and my wife get through the area orientation training, we get through the housing brief. I'm able to get us into housing by that first week, by the end of that first week, right?

The Detailer Call And Big Decision

Gary Wise 29:40

I go to the Chief's Mess Hail and Bale to talk to these guys in person who I'd spoken to all of them during previous training opportunities. So I knew all of them for the most part, but I didn't know they were all leaving. Um the second week starts, and now the second week is all about me getting my wife and my kids, my son into the housing, getting all that done, and I'm getting on board the ship. I remember uh I finally am reporting to the ship, and it's gonna be Sunday, and we're getting underway on Monday, right? And I go to the ship, and the LPO had moved all the desks from the DC training classroom into the DC L CPO's office because there had been some conversation about not having desks in the DC classroom. Mind you, I'd seen this office before, I knew what the office looked like, and again, the master chief, the senior chief, and the chief are leaving, they're going away, and the other chief doesn't work in that office space, and that was going to be my office. But when I got there for the first day, that's I went on Sunday. It's a duty day, but I went on Sunday, take all my stuff to the ship because we're getting underway on Monday for this little week underway, right? I get there and I see all these desks in my office, and I call up the DC one and I who's the duty, the duty guy, and I say, Hey, what the heck are all these desks doing in this office? And he tells me that the LPO said this is what they're gonna do. I said, negative, take all these desks out. That's not what we're gonna do. This is my office, I'll figure everything else out tomorrow, but that's not gonna work, right? And so we take all the desk, I have them take the desks out because that they just moved in the Friday before, right? Um, I get everything squared away in that office space, get my rack squared away. I'm ready to go to sea the next day. I'd gotten my family into housing and loaner furniture. My wife is gonna have to take care of the rest. We'll figure it out. We're getting underway. I come in that next morning to get underway. The LPO is is there, and I'm gonna I gotta get him on here. DC one du Till, Mr. DuTill, he's an officer now. I would love to have you on the podcast so we can re-revisit this conversation. But uh, he was very upset. I'm sure he was quite concerned with how he was gonna get along with the new chief that was coming to town. And oh, by the way, I had just reversed course on things he thought was gonna work. And my essential energy was those desks could go in the trash can for all I care. If they could not fit in that classroom, they were not gonna be in my office. That's just period, right? I just didn't care about the desks. I didn't that that was not gonna be the conversation. I found out later, of course, that the desks could go right where I wanted them. The LPO just didn't think he had the position to push back on the people that were pushing down on him. Of course, I fixed that, going getting into the job. And DC One, when I walked in the room, we had we had met briefly previously before during training visits. And um I basically just, you know, I told him, I said, Hey, look, man, you're the LPO. I don't know everything about this ship. Uh, I'm sure you're under stress having people leave. Uh, and I'm the new guy here. I want to work with you, but let's go ahead and just get a few things clear. I'm gonna be the chief, you're gonna be the LPO, and we can get to work. And then he tells me, he says, Well, you know what, chief, that's fine. We'll work through that. But just so you know, I just got notified that I got a commission and I'm leaving in about 30 days. So I'm like, hold on, wait a second. So the master chief just left, the senior chief just left, the chief just left, and now the LPO is telling me he's leaving in less than 30 days. And oh, by the way, the other chief is leaving in less than two weeks, three weeks. He's out of here. He's like, Yeah, how many other first class petty officers do I have? Now, let me tell you, so on an aircraft carrier, you're supposed to have a master chief, you're supposed to have at least two chiefs, right? If not a senior chief and two, a chief, right? You're supposed to have six first class petty officers. So I asked him, how many other DC ones, how many other first class petty officers do I have? He said, Well, two, right? I said, Hold on, there's three, right? So we're at 50%. He said, and you're leaving in a month, right? And one just made DC one. So he wasn't even there as a DC one billet, he was a DC two that put on DC one. He says, Yes. It's like okay, well, how many DC twos do I have now in the Navy? DC twos on an aircraft carrier. You're supposed to have 10 to 50, 10 to 12, 10 to 14 of those guys, right? These are the guys that are out there making things happen. You know, you tell me how many details you have zero. I've got zero I'm not like no, I had one DC two, and she was leaving within the next month as well. Because everyone was leaving because of the deployment that was coming up under the patrol. I was like, oh my god, like I have no DC twos, two DC ones, and myself. Now, mind you, I was supposed to have a master chief coming in. The map is a master chief on the East Coast. He had contacted me when I was going through my senior list of damage control school. And he had called me up, said, Hey, Gary, I'm coming to the George Washington. You and I are gonna be a tag team, it's gonna be amazing. We're gonna have so much fun, it's gonna be great. So I'm like, great, bro. Like, you're you're gonna be the top cover. I've got everything. I just need you to help, you know, keep people off my back. I got you. And then I get the word through my chain of command when I'm on the ship that he fails to oversee screening and he's no longer coming. So now here I am, dolo, and the chief engineer tells me he says, Hey, so okay, we just back that up before I even get to that conversation. So we get underway, and a float training group uh is not on the ship yet, they're coming in. I think it's two weeks. So we're gonna get underway for a week, knock some rust off, we're gonna pull in for like three days, and then we're to onload the air wing or whatever it was, and then we're gone, right? So we get underway, and I had checked in with the chief engineer, and he basically says, Hey, you know, I want you to get situated, get things figured out. We're really excited to have you on board. You're the guy that we think we need for our damage control organization. And I'm just like, you know, okay, I'm looking forward to being a part of the team, looking forward to doing the best that I can do. I remember I uh I swung by the CMC's office. My my second, or we're underway. I think it's Monday or Tuesday, two days underway. And I swung by the CMC's office, and I'm wearing a red hat, and he I knock on this door real quick. I'm like, hey, Master Chief, I just want to introduce myself real quick. And he's like, You're that Jack Wagon from ATG San Diego that we got here handpicked. Um that's not really what he said, even he he he said it a lot more direct than that. I was like, Yeah, I guess so, man. Happy to be here, brother. I mean, I'm looking forward to being a part of the team. He's like, I hate ATG. I was like, Well, I'm not ATG anymore, I'm team GW. Uh, you know, just looking forward to being a part of the team. And he's like, Well, you got a lot of work on your plate. Good luck to you, right? And I'm, you know, thank you very much. It was not the kind of conversation I was gonna ask for very much more, even though he actually becomes one of my favorite mentors. Love the guy to death. He did a lot for me in my career, right? But he was he he definitely was a huge impact on my role, not only as a chief petty officer, but how I became a command master chief. And I'm trying to get him on the podcast because Marty, you would be an amazing guest to have on the podcast, bro. I'd love to

Reporting Aboard With No Bench

Gary Wise 37:50

see you remember that first conversation that we had, right? So we're we're underway and we're gonna run our first general quarters of the underway. And so we do the brief. The brief is where you bring everyone together, and the the chief is basically telling everybody what they're gonna do using the drill package. Here's how it's all gonna work, and here's what we're gonna do going forward. Now, mind you, I had trained these guys leaving San Diego, I had trained these guys in Yokos in Guam, right, with Yokosuka people. So I knew the standard of what was expected. I knew it. And I was the aircraft carrier team leader from San Diego that was training aircraft carriers on the West Coast. I had done all of them on the West Coast, so trust me, I I came with all of that data, all that information with me, right? So we're going through this brief, and it's not it's not good. It's not good, right? The paperwork's not good, the pack, the team is not good, it's just not good. And I'm but I'm sitting there brand new. I'm not trying to be the bad guy, right? I'm just trying to learn how to how to get in with the team. Oh, by the way, the master chief that was running the team, gone. The senior chief that was running the team, gone. The chief that was running the team, gone. Like the chief that was there, he had already told me he was never the guy running the team. He just kind of got to be the last guy standing holding the bag as he's waiting to get the heck out of there, and he's burnt, he's cooked, he's he's tired. I'm just like, all right, brother, well, a couple more weeks and you'll be gone. But I need a couple, I need some time to figure things out. And so we do the brief, get through that, it's painful, and then we run the drill that night, that GQ. And after the drill's over, right, we come, we all come together to do a debrief, right? Where everybody comes down together to the wardroom three. That's where we all did our debriefs on that aircraft carrier. And so the team is there's a lot of people not there. It's not very many people. There's a lot of people, just it's the debrief is not good, right? A lot of people are not there, people are falling asleep, people are not paying attention, people are talking, and this chief is trying to do this debrief, and he's not projecting his voice. Well, he's not carrying the energy that he needs to carry to get the point across, and the XO is sitting right here. The ship's XO. Because for an aircraft carrier, the ship's executive officer is the damage control transiting leader, right? The ship's chief engineer is right behind uh the DC chief that's talking. The end the master chief is down there for engineering, the command master is down there. All those people are down there, and this debrief is just not going well. And uh the chief gets done and he says, Hey, to the chief engineer, sir, do you have anything you would like to say? And and the DCA, I think, said a few words, and then he asked the chief engineer, Sir, do you have anything you'd like to say? And the chief engineer was like, Hey, I'd like to introduce Chief Wise, uh Float Training Group San Diego, used to be with them. Now he's here with us. He was a George Washington crew. Uh Chief Wise, is there anything you'd like to say? And I should have, I probably should have said no, but I did it. I was furious. I was furious with how everything had gone for the day, and I just could not let wrong go past me that bad. I calibrated the entire room on that drill brief, the debrief, just everything, right? Again, I knew a lot of these people from my previous training visits, and I let them know that we were going to fix this. It was not gonna continue on this way. And uh, I get through that, and the chief engineer is just grinning, smiling, cheesing, so happy. We get through with the debrief, and he says, Hey, you get two more GQs than it's yours. You own it. And I was like, Got it. Check, Roger, that, sir. Told the chief, I said, Hey man, check this out. Give me all your drill packages. I got it from here on. Don't even worry about it. Matter of fact, stay in your rack. I don't, I don't, I've got it until you leave. Don't worry about it, I'll take care of it. And and uh, and away we went. You know, I remember um so that next week underway, uh, not only did I have to run damage control training trainings to get them where I wanted them to be for briefing and debriefing and drill packages and train the crew up with different things, but I had to also redo all of the admin because ATG was coming on board, and I was going to be damned if they came on board and looked at my admin before I looked at my admin, right? And I was gonna be damned that I was gonna do my very best to find every problem that I could find so I could tell them, hey, I found the problems, I know what's wrong. This is my plan to fix it. I'll take any if you find something I missed, let me know. Great. And if you have any advice of what else I could do, I'll take it. But this is where I'm at, this is where I'm going, and this is what I want, this is the plan for the long run, right? So then I'm working on all of that. And then I bring down the XO and the my channel, my chief engineer, and I say, Look, sirs, here's how those carriers have gone over my last two years at ATG San Diego. And I brief them on the common trends I had found throughout my tenure as a damage control trainer and assessor. And I said, and this is where we're at. So here's where we're gonna go. But I just want you to understand that it's not the end of the world, but we've got to change some things. And I need you to give me the trust and the ability to do this. And they both said, You got all of that, right? You've got all the trust, you've got all the ability, you got everything you need, just make it happen. And when when ATG got out there, these are the guys that I had trained when they got out there. They were upset. They were not happy with the things that I had done to change the training, to change the briefing, to change the things that they had wanted the ship to do. So what I had found out was some of the changes that were made were changed by Westpac ATG Western Pacific, right? From their trainers. And I wasn't going to do that. As a matter of fact, me and the DC senior chief that I had previously trained, same guy, right? Now I'm ship's company. He came to the ship and got very combative very quickly because he did not like the way I was doing my brief. He wanted me to do a brief with everybody in the room. Well, that's not how I'm going to do it on an aircraft carrier. I'm going to do an executive level brief. I'm going to do executive level senior descent brief. And they're going to brief their people in their different geographic locations. And that's just how it's going to go. Right? That's we're not a destroyer. We're not a cruiser. We're not one of those small ships. And that's just how it's going to be. And if you don't like that, well, you can go sit up in your conference room and drink some coffee and we'll run jokes without you. That was my energy, right? Because I had been doing this for a long time. And I'd I had assessed ships not only on the West Coast, but also I'd gone to Norfolk and assessed aircraft carriers. And I knew that's exactly how they were doing it in all those other areas. And then so there's just no way you're going to make me do something that just doesn't make sense. And by the way, is not standard, right? It's not the same. Well, that started off a very, very uh very, I'd say really some serious friction with them, right? But it's exactly what my my leadership wanted. My leadership was tired of getting just gutted, they felt like by the training team that was coming out, just kicking their butts all over the place. And they wanted someone that could professionally push back and argue that look, there's the there's the black, there's the white, but then here's the gray, and we get to determine what's going on right here. And no, by the way, here's the standard around the fleet. So, for example, uh I told the senior chief

Resetting GQ Standards And Pushing Back

Gary Wise 46:10

that the way he wanted me to run a certain drill was not going to be effective, and that wasn't gonna work for me. And he pushed back on me. Well, by the next morning, I had emails from a float training group Atlantic and a float training group Pacific, so Norfolk and San Diego both concurring with me as to how to run the drill. So I was like, hey man, I really don't care what you're gonna say, the world is not that big. This is how we're gonna do it. And that was the beginning of my tenure on board the US of George Washington. And oh, by the way, okay, I have no fellow DC Chiefs. I have three DC ones, but one's about to leave because he uh he's gonna commission as an officer. I get told that I have to send an E6 ashore. Well, I have to send an E I have to send a sailor ashore to teach basic damage control at our shore deck, right? Well, my one of my E6s has a family problem where a spouse needs her husband, or it's going to be a significant problem. So I'm just like, look, man, I'll just send you ashore. You can be gone, and now it's me and the last DC one. It was me and one DC one, my first 14 months on board that ship. That was it. Me and one DC one. I didn't get another chief until 14 months later, I finally got a chief petty officer, right, to be with me. Um DC twos. I ended up getting one DC two, right? And I ended up getting, I think about eight months into it, I got a second DC two. But I knew that being four deployed seventh flea, one of the most important strategies is growing your own people. You get what you for what you lack, and maybe getting the correct flavor of pay grade, they make up for by giving you people and the lower junior pay grades. So I may not get a lot of the right the E5 or the E6 or whatever it is, and maybe they fixed all this now, but I'm talking like this is back 2010. That was the same thing when I was CMC on board actually, right? We had the same problem 2015, 2018. Um, but what I learned was hey, I get all of these E1 through E3s, I'm gonna train them all up to be the best we can that we the best we can we need them to be. And then two years later, I'm gonna have a whole bunch of DC twos that can do everything. And that was our strategy, right? I got together all of my people and basically said, you know, you're gonna rotate throughout shops, you're not just gonna get compartmentalized, you're gonna learn all the different things, and I'm gonna work my best to train you guys. And a couple of years from now, you're all gonna be second-class petty officers that can do everything, all right. And that was my real goal. And then as we got in new DCFNs, DCFAs, DCFRs, we had real good training within our team that we would do that with them, and that's how you would grow your own. Uh it was such a tough year, first year. I remember uh, so I was up for senior chief that year. I was up for senior chief that year. So I must have gotten there around March, and the results were delayed uh because there was a some sort of a casualty in Millington, right? There was like flooding or something, and we were underway, deployed. And mind you, I had told Erica we only do like four-month patrols. This first underway, we were gone for six months. We were gone for six months, right? We were gone for six months, and my wife she did it all. She had all the household goods delivered, she bought a car, she learned she learned Japan on her own with a baby who's barely a year old, right? She figured it all out on her own. I was out in the middle of the ocean trying to figure out how to keep up with this with this fire nozzle on my face that was the damage control division for the G Dub. Um, but I remember uh the chief engineer called me down and he said, Hey, uh I know you're the only chief in DC, and I've had up to this point, I've had four in there, right? He's like, I've got other people that want to become the L CPO for damage control, and they're senior to you because I was junior, I was only in the Navy 12 years at this point in time. Uh he says, they want to come in and be the L CPO. I'll put them in as like the master chief billet, and then you'll work with them. What do you think? And I said, sir, I don't need a person who doesn't know damage control to come in and be my boss, right? I don't need somebody because they've just been on the ship longer than me to come be my boss. I need help. I need a chief that wants to come in and be a DC man. That's what I need. I said, but here's the deal the senior chief results are gonna come out any day. If I make senior chief, then I'll take that master chief billet, okay? And how about we then hurry up and get me a DC chief? Mind you, right? Like, how are we not already working this? But the master chief had just failed overseas screening, right? But okay, whatever. And he's like, Do you think you're competitive for Senior Chief? I said, I think so. I think I got a fair shot, right? Well, I don't know. I've never I missed it last year, but you never know. I mean, I'll only be the Navy 12 years, but you know, here I am. And he says, Okay, I'll make you that deal. Let's see if you can, um, if you can, we'll see what happens, what happens next. So I went back and I was talking to my LPO to my first classes. I was like, you know, they're trying to think about putting another chief in the division. And they told me, they said, Well, before you got here, that was already discussed, and people have been talking about they wanted to take over DC division before you even got here. So that wasn't a new conversation. I said, Well, I'm not a fan of it. I didn't come here to work for Machine is made chief or whatever it is, right? I'm I'm a damage, I'm proud damage controlman. This is who I think needs to run the shop. I do eventually mature past that stage later on in this tour. But at that point in time, I'm thinking I need to be the one that runs the show. Uh-huh. So then about a month or so later, we're underway, and I'll never forget among rack asleep, Ty Giles, some naval career counselor, retired now command master chief, did an episode of the podcast. Ty Giles slept right across from me in the birthing, right? So I slept right here. Ty slept right across from me. He comes down, my boy Al. They pulled me out the rack. I'm Gary, you wake up, you made senior chief, bro. You're a senior chief now. And it's like two o'clock in the morning, right? In our time. Ty had made senior chief. I had made senior chief. It was super exciting. I couldn't go back to bed. I was wild, wide awake. Oh my gosh, I made senior chief. Just got to the ship, only been there for like two months. This is going to be perfect, right? This is exactly what I needed because I have to have these other people playing Game of Thrones, trying to get position over me and my people. And I'm I'm one of those guys that I take my people very seriously. They're mine. I'm not, uh I'll share with you, but ultimately I want to have a leading say in what we're doing. I want to take all I have no problem taking ownership at all. Right? At none. I used to tell people on board the GW, if you had a problem with the damaged controlman, you could expect a short ball headed guy with a red hat to hit your door because I'm coming. Right? I'm not we're not just talking about the phone. If my people did wrong, I want to hear about it in person. And if I want to make sure that I know what's really going on. I'll never forget that morning I went to quarters for the engineers.

Making Senior Chief And Looking Ahead

Gary Wise 54:20

And how they used to do it was uh all the engineering khakis would meet up in the machine shop, right? This is for all the engineering chiefs and officers to go to the machine shop, and uh the LCPO is currently on travel, he's gone somewhere, so somebody else is filling in as the LCPO. A bunch of chiefs were up for senior chief in that room, right? But I'm the only one that made it now. Mind you, I have not been on this ship long. I I have nothing to do with whether they're competitive or not competitive for senior chief, right? I have no none of that. That's not my problem. I just got here, right? Matter of fact, I was trying to get my qualification done for my engineering watch supervisor, and these guys were giving me the Heisman on my watch calls because they didn't want me to qualify. At least that's how I felt. They they were trying to slow me down because they felt like I was moving so fast. I'd only been there two, three months. I'd already restructured the damage control training team or already restructured the damage control division. Like I was chopping wood, I was chopping wood. I I went there to work. And oh, by the way, we're underway. What I get to work 18, 19 hours a day. Love it, right? I was standing at watch whenever I could get down there because I wanted to get that watch qual done as fast as possible. Get me on the watch pill, man. Right, get me on the watch pill. And uh these guys were like, oh, you know, Gary, you need to slow down first. You need to worry about getting certain things done. You'll get qualified someday. No rush. That's what I'm telling me. So that morning we're in the we're down there at the engineering uh tacky called, and they do all they put on everything, you know, A gang got anything, e division, you got anything, R division you got anything. All right, everybody, uh, engineering department attention to work to quarters. Uh and well, attention to work, and I'm sitting around like looking around, like, are you serious? And then they said, Oh, and by the way, congratulations, Chief Wise, for making a single chief post. And I was just like, What? That's a everybody already knew. They were just they were just not in the mood to be very happy. Oh man, what a day. I never forget I I got the chance to swing by the CMC's office later on that day, and I knocked on his door, and I was like, Hey Marty, bro, I picked up Senior Chief, and he was like, God damn it, Skittle. He used to call me Skittle. He was like, You didn't tell me, you're gonna tell me you just got to the aircraft carrier, make senior chief, and now you got three full years on this aircraft carrier. I was like, Yep. He was like, get out, bro. Yeah. And you know, guess what? Nobody came to help me run my division. None of those chiefs offered to come work for me, to come work with me in the DC division, with me being the LCPO. But you know what? I didn't care. Me and my guys didn't care. My guys were just thankful that they had me. They liked my energy, they liked what I was talking about, what we were doing, we were changing, right? You know, I had a very good fire marshal, had a very good ADCA, had a very amazing DCA. Mr. Martinez, I'm still trying to get you on the podcast. It was an amazing opportunity, and this was exactly what I had hoped for. You know, I got the chance to become a singer chief. We get through the ATG training cycle. It wasn't all the most funnest time in the world, but we got through it, you know. Uh, George Washington was an amazing tour. Uh, I got tons of stories for the GW. And I think for this story, this this time period, I'm gonna go ahead and wrap this up here. Uh, I will tell you that I thank you all so much for listening to the to the stories that I share. Thank you for spending time with me and the people here on the podcast. Uh, I really do enjoy getting the opportunity to hopefully provide some lessons learned and and just sharing some context with who I am and kind of some of the things that got me to where I am throughout my career. Um, if you have any questions, if you have any concerns, if you'd like to share anything with me, please shoot me an email. Uh, go ahead and give me a you know a message. I read all of the messages, I read all the all the comments. Thank you so much for everything. Um, you know, that was the beginning of my George Washington adventure. That was my first couple of months. Uh I definitely need to tell the story about Tomodachi, right? I did it with Thai a little bit, but I definitely can tell it to you from my perspective, especially because we had an alcohol-related incident that day. So it's a good story. I definitely need to tell you about getting opheld on board the G-Dub, making mask to you on board the G-Dub. And just, you know, it was a phenomenal three-year tour for me and my family on that ship. Uh, without further ado, thank you all very much for listening to the sound of my voice, sharing the energy and the love. And I hope you guys all have a great day out there and continue to keep watching, subscribing, and thank y'all. Bye-bye.