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Eroded Authority. Word of Arnheiter's aberrations quickly reached higher headquarters—most likely via the chaplain corps. Three months after he assumed command, the Vance was ordered to Manila for refitting and Arnheiter was summarily relieved. After a subsequent hearing, at which the "Mad Log" was rewritten into 38 pages of anti-Arnheiter testimony, Vice Admiral B. J. Semmes Jr., chief of naval personnel, declared Arnheiter guilty of "a gross lack of judgment and inability to lead people." Arnheiter now holds a minor post in San Francisco; Hardy, 32, is a lieutenant commander in Key West, Fla.; Generous, 27, is studying for a Ph.D. at Stanford in U.S. diplomacy; Belmonte, 26, is in the San Francisco stock market. There it might have ended, save for Arnheiter's barrage of letters to the Navy Department demanding a rehearing (the file is nearly three feet deep), and the powerful endorsement of his cause this month by Captain Richard G. Alexander, 45, a hot-shot line officer who will take command of the U.S.S. New Jersey when it comes out of mothballs next year to become the world's only operating battleship (TIME, June 9). It was Alexander who recommended Arnheiter for command in the first place, after they had worked together in Washington.
Warning that Arnheiter's relief at the hands of junior officers would erode authority throughout the service, Alexander brought his complaint directly to Navy Secretary Paul Ignatius. "Mr. Secretary," the four-striper argued in his statement, "what all of your officers will demand to know is just how in hell this could happen in the United States Navy."
Ignatius agreed to re-examine the case, but last week concluded that there was "no valid reason for altering the decision." Marcus Aurelius Arnheiter, 42, was thus finished as a career officer. Alexander, Semmes and the other senior officers involved in the case on both sides may also find their careers in jeopardy. If there is anything the Navy abhors, after mutiny, it is bad publicity. "We all have a little of the Captain Queeg in us," admitted one officer. "But Arnheiter had more than his share."