My next assignment was to the destroyer USS Harry W. Hill as the combat systems officer, which made me a department head and also the tactical action officer in charge of running the combat information center. It was a good ship with a good commanding officer, but the executive officer (XO) was the most command-and-control officer I’d ever experienced in the military. Three weeks after I got to the ship in 1987, the XO called me into his stateroom when we finished the first exercise and told me flatly that I was the worst tactical action officer he had ever seen in his life. I think his
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