However stormy the Navy's military and financial future may be, it now enjoys smoother sailing in one important area: morale. Though there are still some problems with drugs, alcoholism and a high desertion rate, the service has recovered smartly from the troubled early 1970s, when a series of violent racial clashes revealed an armed force at war with itself.
Today's vastly improved mood is the result of the determination of Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, Chief of Naval Operations from 1970 to '74, to bring the life of young sailors into line with that of their civilian contemporaries. He radically changed the service's restrictive...
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