It is also important to keep in mind that at the start of the war, all the submarine captains were peace time captains.
How does a peace time captain keep his job or get promoted?
1. Not making mistakes
2. Making sure the boat passes all the inspections
3. Making sure that the crew does getin to trouble
4. Score high on exercises meaning do exactly what the exercise designers think you should do -- predictability.
5. Don't make organizational waves or take political chances.
6. Maintain your boat within the budget allotted to you
You can't blame the peace time captains from acting like peace time captains. That was how the Navy rewarded them. Those captains that did not act like peace time captains either never got promoted to captain or they were removed.
In peace time there are no ships to sink, no chances of heroism except for instances of accidents and then the captain would probably be fired anyway. Little chances to shine other than better inspection and exercise scores.
In peace time all you have is peace time bureaucracy. That was the "enemy" that our captains had to "fight". And our peace time captains did rather well operating in the hostile bureaucratic theater of operations.
7 Dec 41, a day which completely changed everything. Suddenly we needed a different kind of captain. Literally over night.
One who recognizes appropriate risks, ones who are aggressive. Perhaps even a little nuts helps. Probably not a captain that would have had a stellar peace time career.
It is only with a little hyperbole that I say that, in the context of 1940, a good war time sub captain is the exact opposite of a good peace time sub captain. But unfortunately, all we had were good peace time sub captains... who did the best they could.
Blair wrote of several good peace time captains who were so dedicated to their country that they voluntarily resigned their commend because they recognized that while they were good peace time captains they sucked at war time. That is a pretty heroic thing to do in my book.