As the Commanding Officer of USS Hammerhead (SSN-663), Powell Carter was a terrific leader, teacher, and mentor, and he accomplished this by bold example. He set very high standards
in all areas, which he expected would encourage his men to emulate. One of his prime methods for inducing this performance was his sa- gacious use of delegation. He knew his people, and recognized their strengths, as wells as their limitations. When there was a tough task ahead, he could articulate the results he expected and then stand back and let the crew accomplish it. Only on rare occasions did he intervene
– his confidence in his mentoring and understanding of people produced outstanding results. This turned hard work into fun, because those to whom the task had been delegated got the joy of figuring out how to do it themselves, rather than simply by following orders.
One example of his ability to empower and inspire high performance occurred during Hammerhead’s Arctic deployment in Fall 1970. Among the many missions assigned, the ship was to conduct an accurate bottom navigational survey of an important Arctic area. The ship was fitted with the Navy’s newest Ship’s Inertial Navigation System (SINS), as well as a satellite navigation system tied to the SINS computer. However, there were no spares for these systems available in the Supply system. As fate would have it, eighteen days after sailing, the SINS computer failed, dis- abling the SINS and the most accurate means for navigating, the satellite navigation system. Without these aids, it would have been considered impractical to conduct the survey.
However, as a backup measure, the ship had also fixed the ship’s po- sition celestially 2-3 times daily, using the periscope sextant and manual nautical almanac calculations to generate lines of position. These po- sitions correlated very well with the corresponding satellite fixes. After the ship informed headquarters of the SINS failure and was notified that SINS spares were still not available, Powell reviewed this alternative navigation data and elected to proceed to the survey using celestial fix data, telling his navigation team to keep doing what they were doing. This method was used for the remaining 44 days of the voyage, and established the ship at 0.9 miles from the North Pole in early November. The survey was evaluated as a complete success, and was accomplished without the Captain intervening – a testament to his confidence in his ability to inspire high level performance in others.
