Back in the days of PARKHILL there was a problem. HF encrypted was voice attenuated. When the voice was in the upper registers, female, it dropped synch. It always dropped synch. Within a word or two it dropped into garble and you were left there in CIC saying again and again, "dropped synch." As I think about it now I'm pretty sure that this was assumed as sexism and yet nothing could be further from the truth. When PARKHILL dropped synch you didn't get almost english, what one got was pure garble. HF was an unforgiving medium for voice. Anybody in the early days of radio knew that. Encrypting it just made it profoundly worse.
ANDVT and VINSON was a lot clearer but then, it wasn't HF. Once we all started talking on satellites and gave up HF it became easier to talk to people with somewhat higher pitched voices.
On the other hand........ who on a ship at sea wants to have some tool tell them what to do? I watched, in akin to awe as a CDR CSO in the Blue Room, In the Bunker at COMROKFLT told his lackeys that the 2 ships under his control were not to so much as put a boat in the water without his approval. He'd have lasted about 2 seconds with any of my five favorite MSO COs. I enjoyed LCDR command a lot even when some of them proved to be less than worthy. It was fun and sometimes, it is good to be the king.
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