I think both the Royal Navy and US Navy long maintained the practice of automatic court martial for captains who lost their ships, even in combat. They could be and probably were usually acquitted of course, if the circumstances were deemed sufficient. Still, that’s a pretty serious level of accountability.

Junior officers exist because that’s the best way you get senior officers. The Romans had the same two-track system–There were the Centurions, who were up-from-the-ranks sorts, and then there were the Tribunes, who were the “better sort of man” coming in from the Equestrian and Senatorial ranks. This same structure was recreated out of necessity during the first days of the Enlightenment military revolution, and it is one that’s persisted. The roles of NCO and officer appear to be natural extensions of human nature when it comes to war, and here we are, re-capitulating the same process that the Romans used to create their higher leadership. With some differences, of course.

When I was a private soldier, I observed this with regards to a particularly useless 2nd Lieutenant that our platoon had been saddled with. I asked our platoon sergeant why the Army had seen fit to inflict this useless git on us, and his reply was illuminating, something to the effect that the Army gave him a lieutenant so that when things went wrong, as they inevitably would, there’d be someone to blame for it that had a reasonable paycheck to pay for it, and no dependents to worry about. So far as he was concerned, that was the real reason for having a platoon leader–Someone else to sign the hand receipts for equipment and to pay for the gear we broke or lost. When you looked at it from his perspective, the position of platoon sergeant was ideally situated–He was supposed to be there as the “senior enlisted adviser” to the platoon leader, but on paper…? No real responsibility or accountability, whatsoever. The PL was the only one whose name was on the proverbial “blame line”.

And, in the final analysis, this is how the “Old Army” did function, from a certain perspective. At the company level, the senior NCOs essentially ran everything, and the officers were just there as figureheads that signed paperwork. Since the platoon sergeants and company First Sergeant did not and usually would not sign hand receipts, well… The only people on the financial hook when things went south were the officers, God help them. Thinking back on it, I can remember a number of platoon leaders and company commanders who had to pay ruinously steep charges for lost, destroyed, or damaged gear when they changed command–And, none of the senior NCOs were ever so much as chastised for allowing it to happen! Nice scam, boys… Sergeant Bilko was real, back in the old days.

When I finally achieved the exalted rank of platoon sergeant, I tried not to fall into this moral hazard, but there were times when I was tempted, especially when I spent many an afternoon getting my ass chewed for things my PL did against my best advice. Under the old system, those PLs would have likely suffered great financial losses, among other petty revenges inflicted by the actual institutional custodians, the senior NCOs.

Like as not, the same dynamic took place between the Roman centurions and the tribunes… I do wonder who had to sign the hand receipts, there. Nobody seems to have bothered to record that little detail, but I’d be willing to bet money that the centurions weren’t the guys who were on the hook for lost items. “Going down with the ship…” has antecedent reasons going back a long, long way–And, not just at sea. Ships sink, and the chief petty officers are gonna unass those buggers in a heartbeat, because they’re not signed for squat. Captains? LOL… Care to imagine what the statement of charges would look like for a destroyer, let alone an aircraft carrier?