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an assignment system that pointed graduates away from sea duty. She cautioned that a large class action lawsuit could be the alternative. She also has 13 years of sea duty.

To pursue her Navy career, Loewer chose to forego family life and children.   Although she does not regret her decision, she feels the Navy needs to do more to accommodate women wanting to have a career and a family.
According to her subordinates, "she really knows her stuff".  "Don't try to blow smoke her way". When she is really angry, she has been know to chew people out in German.
Among the 565 crew members, 10 percent are women. This has caused some changes. Capt. Loewer banned pornographic movies from the shipboard TV system. Also banned were movies depicting sexual violence. Slasher type movies can still be shown, but only sparingly.
There have been changes in the galley as well. More fish and less red meat is served. Recently  a salad bar was installed.
Now sailors are being warned about too much sun while on liberty and are given sunscreen.
As Captain of the Camden, Loewer had the same challenges as Captains of other Navy ships. Old ships (the Camden is 35 years old), young crew (more than 300 of her crew is under 22 years of age) and tight budgets.

They kept silent for 23 years. But recently, members of a U.S. submarine crew finally told about a top-secret mission that some believe may have hastened the end of the Cold War.
In the 1978 mission, dubbed Operation Evening Star, the nuclear-powered fast-attack submarine Batfish detected a Soviet sub armed with 16 nuclear missiles and bound for America's East Coast.
The Batfish tailed the Soviet submarine for 50 days without being detected, collecting valuable information on how the Soviets operated, said the Batfish commander, retired Rear Adm. Thomas W. Evans.
"It was tedious at times," Evans said of the mission, which left South Carolina on March 2, 1978, and lasted 77 days.
Although it was not the first mission to follow the Soviets, or the last, it was one of the more successful, and information on it has been declassified by the Navy.
"We knew exactly where that submarine went on an hour-to-hour basis," Evans said at a news conference at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. He said the mission tracked the Soviet sub's route and mapped the area the Soviets were patrolling.
The news conference was held by Smithsonian magazine, which publishes in its March issue the first story of the Batfish mission.
In the article, "Run Silent, Run Deep," author Thomas B. Allen says the mission was intended to supplement air and other methods of tracking at a time when the Carter administration's detente with the Soviets was wearing thin over concern about Soviet missile subs cruising off both U.S. coasts.
The Batfish was 300 feet long and 32 feet wide and could dive to a depth of more than 800 feet.
Evans attributed the success of the mission to the experienced crew; to the Batfish design, which made it "extremely quiet"; and to a new, extra-sonar system that was dragged behind the American sub, making its sonar detection superior to the less-advanced, noisier Soviet sub. The Navy named the Soviet submarine a Yankee class.
The Batfish could get close enough to hear the Yankee but not close enough to be heard by it, Evans said. He usually hung back four to 51/2 miles.
Fifteen days into the mission, on March 17, the Batfish detected the Yankee at the north end of the Norwegian Sea about 200 miles above the Arctic Circle, Allen said.
Evans said the Batfish lost track of the Yankee only twice. Once was during a bad storm. Another time, Allen said, the distracting noise came from a fishing fleet that passed overhead with its rumbling diesel engines and whining hydraulic winches.

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After 60 years with little change in their uniforms, the United States Navy will now move ahead with several significant alterations in the department's program.
Perhaps most notable is that bell-bottoms are out. The wide-leg denim utility look--which the Navy invented for sailors--and the civilian world copied for years--is scheduled to be replaced with an updated, straight-leg version. The pants, commonly referred to as dungarees, will resemble a blue version of the khakis worn by officers and chiefs, with the traditional flared appearance giving way to a tailored, straight twill trouser.

Other welcome changes will come in the form of slash front and back pockets and permanent creases.
In addition, the long-standing chambray shirt sailors have worn will give way to a light blue shirt fabricated in a 65/35 percent polyester cotton blend.

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