When two junior sailors were caught fudging their physical readiness test scores on their first day at nuclear field 'A' school in Charleston, South Carolina, they had a surprising - and unsettling - explanation.

It was simply what they'd learned to do at boot camp.

Their recruit division commander had made it clear that "their partners should never fail the push-ups and sit-ups," according to a new report .

The revelation launched a months-long investigation in which over 500

Trainees routinely cheated during final physical fitness tests and were encouraged to do so by the RDCs responsible for training them, their role models, according to a newly released RTC report. Of 100 sailors surveyed by Naval Nuclear Power Training Command, 42 reported that their RDCs and other RTC staff had told them, explicitly or by implication, to cheat on the PRT.

Indeed, 14 of those students admitted they'd never passed boot camp's final physical test.

Recruits inflated the numbers of pushups and situps when reporting scores during the fitness test; there is no indication of similar cheating on the run portion, which is typically considered the hardest part of the test given semiannually in the rest of the Navy.

The investigating officer — a Navy commander, whose name was redacted in the report provided to Navy Times —

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"Cheating by recruits on the final PRT is a common practice that is contrary to the Navywide standard for administering a PRT and the RTC Maxim," the investigating officer wrote in the report. This officer's name, like nearly all others, was removed from the report by officials out of privacy concerns.

140809-N-SH953-525 GREAT LAKES, Ill. (Aug. 9, 2014) Aviation Support Equipment Technician 1st Class Justin Kramer, Maintenance and Support team member of the U.S. Navy flight demonstration squadron, the Blue Angels, motivates a pull-up participant at Captain’s Cup at Recruit Training Command (RTC) Great Lakes, Ill. Members of the Blue Angels went to RTC in support of Navy Recruit Division 940, the Blue Angels-sponsored division. The Recruit Division Sponsorship Program allows Navy commands to interact with recruits during training and take part in the “Sailorization” process of turning individuals into well-rounded members of the U.S. Navy – making civilians into Sailors. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Kathryn E. Macdonald/Released)

One of boot camp's foremost goals is to get recruits up to fleet fitness standards. Aviation Support Equipment Technician 1st Class Justin Kramer, maintenance and support team member of the Navy's Blue Angels, motivates a pull-up participant at Captain's Cup at Recruit Training Command Great Lakes, Ill., in August. Members of the Blue Angels went to RTC in support of Navy Recruit Division 940, the Blue Angels-sponsored division.

Photo Credit: MC2 Kathryn E. Macdonald/Navy

It wasn't happening in a vacuum, either. The investigation concluded RDCs encouraged and condoned misreporting test scores. Recruits' fitness scores were part of the ranking system for RDCs, leading to a perverse incentive for some to cheat.

"Some RDCs have encouraged or implied that recruits cheat on the final PRT," the commander wrote in the findings.

Statements from recruits back this up. Some were told by their recruit division commanders to ensure everyone passed the test by either counting sloppy pushups or situps, or by adding repetitions to what was completed.

"Add 15 pushups and 15 situps to everybody's score," one RDC reportedly told his division. "There is not any reason that anyone should fail the pushup/situp portion of the PFA."

Officials say the cheating was limited to the PFA's exercise portions, and there's no evidence it was directed by command leaders.

"I don't believe there is a culture of cheating that exists at RTC," said Rear Adm. Richard Brown, commander of Navy Service Training Command, which overseas all accession training into the Navy, with the exception of the Naval Academy.

"I'm also not naive, that there are not individuals that didn't live up to the core values we're teaching, both on the [recruit division commander] side and on the recruit side."

What it came down to, he said, was recruits and trainers making individual decisions to cheat or to encourage it . When leadership received the allegations of cheating, they quickly moved to get to the bottom of it, he said.

The fallout

The investigation interviewed or surveyed more than 500 recruits and sailors from multiple divisions at RTC, from the divisions implicated as well as others already in training or out in the fleet.

The report identified 59 RDC s, varying in rank from second class to chief, for disciplinary action. Of those, 20 RDC s ended up being implicated for telling or implying to their recruits that they should cheat on the final fitness tests; they were recommended for disciplinary or administrative action. The remaining 39 were cleared.

Of those 20, RTC commanding officer, Capt.W. Douglas Pfeifle, chose to take four to captain's mast, Brown said.

* One chief pleaded guilty to charges and asked Pfeifle for the chance to set things right. According to Brown, he's "leading the charge" to eliminate the practice from RTC.

* Two other RDC s taken to mast were issued letters of instruction , but were retained at Great Lakes .

* One sailor refused captain's mast, and Pfeifle declined to take him to court-martial, Brown said. Pfeifle stripped the sailor of his RTC Navy Enlisted Classification and he is being transferred back to the fleet. Another implicated sailor is set to lose his NEC as well, and will be transferred, Brown said.

* Five were given nonpunitive letters of caution.

* Ten other RDCs who are implicated for lesser offenses will have to complete a 90-day retraining program before they're allowed to train recruits again.

Brown says there's no evidence of overt encouragement by RTC leadership to promote PFA cheating. But in the findings of the report, the investigating officer listed policies that created a perverse incentive to cheat, such as a rule that docked the RDCs in terms of competitiveness for awards if recruits under their charge failed fitness assessments and other tests.

The cheating scandal isn't limited to Great Lakes, the report found. In one case, a recruit reported that her recruiter, a chief fire controlman in Baltimore, told her how to cheat on her physical tests.

The cheating wasn't discovered at Great Lakes, though. Instead, the first allegations came to light Oct. 29 when two sailors reporting to "A" school at Navy Nuclear Power Training Command in Charleston, South Carolina, were caught cheating on a PFA given when they checking into the school.

Not every Navy school gives a PFA to new reporting recruits, though by rule, any school over ten consecutive weeks long is required to administer a PFA before a sailor leaves.

Brown said that since he took command last June, he can recall about five instances in which questions were raised after a recruit failed a fitness test at a follow-on command, but never before had allegations of cheating been raised .

"They stated that their Recruit Division Commander at RTC told them that 'their partners should never fail the push-ups and situps,' The commander wrote of the two nuclear power sailors.

The school did their own investigation before handing the details off to RTC. ​

During the NNPTC investigation, statements from 100 sailors fresh from boot camp were collected ; 98 were eventually forwarded to Great Lakes.

Of those 98 students, 42 said that RDC s or fitness instructors giving the tests had "either expressly or implicitly stated or encouraged recruits to cheat or lie on the pushup or situp portion of the PRT" the report said. Fifty-six recruits denied similar experiences.

Twenty-seven recruits named individual RDCs . In the interview, Brown said all of the allegations applied to RDCs and not the fitness instructors, who are sailors stationed at Great Lakes only for that duty .

'Help your buddy'

Physical training at boot camp has transformed over the years. The amount of allowed physical training is metered and gradually increased throughout training, with the goal to condition recruits to fleet fitness standards by the time they graduate eight weeks later.

And for most this works, Brown said.

Early in the first week of training, Brown said, recruits are given a "baseline" fitness test, and roughly 65 percent fail to meet the Navy's basic standards at that time . The test is identical to those in the fleet — pushups, situps and a 1.5-mile run. Recruits pair off and count each other on the pushups and situps — where the cheating occurred. The rules demand that only properly completed repetitions, be counted.

It's virtually im possible to cheat on the run, Brown said, as recruits are tracked with electronic chips. These are tied in their shoes and record start and stop times automatically. The final fitness test comes in the sixth week of training, and Brown said 95 percent of trainees pass. Those who fail are sent to special divisions to build their fitness until they can pass.

"They get a total of 10 attempts to pass the final fitness assessment," Brown said. "But about one percent never do, and those are given entry level separations."

Recruits take the fitness test in a large gymnasium known as Freedom Hall. Fitness instructors administer the test, as well as PT at boot camp.

The 80-page investigation includes hundreds of statements from recruits alleging that they were either flat out told to cheat or told through implication that "no one fails the PRT" and to help their buddies out.

Failure to help a buddy achieve a passing score — by, say, inflating the numbers — or to go with the flow would get recruits labeled by RDC s as "Blue Falcons" who screwed over their shipmates by allowing them to fail.

The report was based upon 98 statements from Nuclear Power School, and interviews and surveys of 411 recruits at Great Lakes and 32 accused RDC s .

The report doesn't specify how many of the 411 Great Lakes recruits said they saw or knew of cheating .

Division 218, led by a chief logistics specialist, a first class information systems technician and a second class ship's serviceman their names were redacted in the report.

One fireman, whose name was redacted [name redacted]: "The day before the PRT we … were told to add 15 push-ups/sit-ups to the total and that there is no reason why anyone should fail the push-up/sit-up portion of the PRT." This statement was repeated by other seamen and fireman in the division.

One seaman, whose name was redacted, said all three of his Division 218 RDCs told recruits that the recruits were "not Navy-qualified fitness experts, and therefore not qualified to judge what was and was not a proper pushup or situp." Instead, the rule was, "If the effort was there, we should count it."

One of the RDCs, a chief logistics specialist, denied telling recruits to cheat, saying that he only told recruits what the minimum standards to pass were.

Another of these RDCs, a first class information systems technician, said her comment about "fitness experts had been misinterpreted. What she'd really said was, "Who is here to be a fitness instructor? Count every attempt, unless they're doing it incorrectly."

*Despite the RDC's denials of their intent — Seaman(name redacted) said he interpreted the comments as clearance to cheat, if your buddy isn't passing. He also said that "an overwhelmingly large amount of fellow recruits" agreed at the time the RDCs' statements were a "firm suggestion to lie."

Most of the RDC s interviewed denied encouraging recruits to cheat, and many recruits stated they did not believe they were told to cheat, either.

The scene played out in division after division with some recruits claiming they were encouraged to cheat and other recruits denying that.

In many cased in multiple divisions, recruits told the investigator that they were at once told to help out their buddies, but told that lying was wrong.

The chief naval aircrewman operator who led Division 215 admitted to scolding a recruit who had failed his partner for not doing enough proper push ups.

The chief admitted telling a recruit who had failed his buddy for not doing enough correct push-ups during the initial PFA for using correct form that he was to count them all and it was the fitness instructors job to discount any repetitions.

The chief then told the grading recruit, "Congratulations, you just earned the Blue Falcon Award for the day," according to the report.

Though the chief says it wasn't his intent — multiple recruits agreed among themselves that was an order to cheat.

Similar scenes played out in other divisions as well, with recruits saying their RDC's warned them not to "Blue Falcon" their shipmates and the usual denials from those accused of saying it.

The "he said, she said" back and forth was so prevalent that it made sorting out the mess difficult, Brown said. As a shore command, the evidence to discipline sailors would have to be solid enough to stand up at a court-martial, should the sailor request it.

"[Capt.Pfeifle] did a very good job in sorting this out," Brown said. "He was carful and deliberate in his approach."

Fixing the problem

Boot camp has initiated reforms. To eliminate the temptation to "help your buddy," recruits will no longer pair off with their own division mates for pushups and situps.

Until recently, recruit failures on the final PFA "factored negatively" into how RDC s are evaluated . Those grades determine eligibility to compete for RTC's "Distinguished Leadership Award," which annually picks the top RDC out of the more than 600 stationed at Great Lakes.

Reforms implemented Oct. 1, a month before the cheating was uncovered, eliminated the negative scoring for PFA failures. Now the division's overall fitness score counts toward the leadership competition and it only is about 5 percent of the judging formula.

The report pointed out that these reforms were already underway before the cheating was discovered.

In an email , the boot camp CO described his motivation for changing the system.

"When I became RTC CO, I reviewed the DLA instruction, and with my experience in the Navy, saw that in rewarding RDCs for low attrition, there was a potential for sacrificing quality for production," Pfeifle said. " When you reward the lack of failure instead of excellence, it is my belief that you will end up with a lesser product."

He said that there was "no evidence this was in fact the case" but as the CO, he didn't want policies that potentially risked the quality of graduates.

There are still potential problems. This includes the command's "competitive flag system," under which recruit divisions compete for honors. That could prompt some RDCs to rely on cheating among their charges, a concern among many RDCs, the report said.

Still, Pfeifle insists that boot camp is, on the whole, clean of the PT cheating.

"I do not think this is a cultural habit at RTC because of the values we teach, but because of the impact a single RDC can have on several divisions, any potential negative impact to the quality of our sailors is unacceptable."