Originally Posted by
aeroengineer
Or any military leader for that matter. It could be argued that the world in general and Curtis Lemay in particular were lucky some of his advice wasn't followed. Captain Crozier's diagnosis probably made the whole question moot in the end. Certainly he'll have enough TIG to retire as an O-6. For that matter he may have intended to call it a career at the O-6 level anyway.
He already has the TIG.
CVN CO selection involves a very long pipeline (10-ish years) including the full navy nuclear power program, which is pretty gruesome with high attrition for new college grads with engineering degrees. Pilots only do that training after squadron command, about 20 years after college. Few people would subject that themselves to that if they didn't intend to serve as a flag officer afterwards. A carrier CO who didn't screw anything up is about about the safest bet you can find for flag selection, not 100% but pretty close.
Which only compounds the mystery of his actions, he was giving up a lot, unless he had previously decided he'd rather be an airline pilot than an admiral anyway.