As a civilian I can understand how a submarine officer might become very “by the book” as a result of being trained on all the safety procedures around nuclear reactors and submarine operations in general, where the consequences of doing things in the wrong order or missing a step in the procedure can be extremely dangerous. The classic example is the sinking of the German U-boat U-1206 due to an officer failing to follow the proper procedure for using the toilet. But I don’t understand how an officer with submarine training ends up in the posting described by Jeff Coulter which appears to be totally outside his specialisation. Could any of the commenters with military experience explain to us civvies how that works?