This reminds me of a story my Dad told a few times. He was an electrician at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, and spent a lot of his time working on subs. Well, one boat was in there getting some work done on it, and apparently the chief of the boat was a complete jerk. He criticized constantly, and none of the yardbirds wanted to work on the boat. The chief was ripping into my dad about something one day, and dad got fed up and replied, "But, Chief, that's not how we did it on the Thresher". Dad said the old chief turned white as a sheet, and within an hour he had been kicked off the boat and assigned to work on something else. Quite tasteless on my Dad's part, but he was happy not having to deal with that guy. Given the fact that my dad was former Navy, I don't doubt that saying something like that was of the last resort. He really thought the chief was crossing lines on a regular basis, and felt enough was enough.
Well it depends on the era. In the late 70's through the early 90's it was a common practice for CPO's to flame spray everyone on the boat. We use to also beat the crap out Sailors that were lazy. However as time passes those practices have fallen to the annuals of Navy history.
