The last thing you want to hear about someone who has A Very Serious Job is that he or she doesn’t know how to let his or her hair down during a candid interview with a men’s magazine.

At Voodoologic, we’d like to introduce you to Australian Navy Commander, Tom Phillips, who impressed just about everyone you could imagine in a recent interview with Ralph magazine by agreeing that female sailors should be required to wear bikinis to, and I quote, possibly from a third or fourth-hand source [1], “Help boost recruitment.”

It turns out that Commander Phillips is in charge of one of Australia’s cutting-edge-no-they-never-just-sink-gurgling-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean-floor Collins Class submarines, and as such is part of Australia’s silent but also very possibly deadly [2] line of defence against the threat of poorly-armed fishing vessels from small Pacific island nations.

According to the news.com.au article, Commander Phillips also went on to tell Ralph that the Australian Navy has a venerable tradition that can match any Airforce’s attempt to sex up their recruitment programs through advertising ‘Mile High Clubs’, with what is apparently known in the Navy as the ‘Going Down Club’ [3]. Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to tell from the transcript whether or not the Commander meant this in the more honourable ‘Going Down With All Hands Because We Can’t Find The Button To Make The Damn Thing Rise To The Surface Again Club’ sense.

Regardless, it’s interesting to note that the Collins Class submarines, which many Australians will remember as initially being about as effective in modern warfare as water pistols would have been during the African desert campaigns of WWII, have recently been described as among the most lethal conventional powered submarines in the world [4]. This, despite the fact that in 2008 four of our total of six Collins Class submarines were out of commission, in need of repairs, and this also amidst Australian Navy admissions that there is a real risk of further problems using the Collins Class submarines due to shortage of technically qualified Naval Personnel who are excited at the prospect of spending extended periods of their careers locked in a metal tube floating underwater.

While we here at the Voodoologic High Command have a combined total experience in the field of submarining of slightly less than zero years, we have all watched The Hunt For Red October [5], so we feel very qualified to suggest that no demented captain of a submarine attempting to defect to the other side, or hell-bent on ending civilisation as we know it [6], would be happy at the idea of a crew frolicking around in beachwear.

Also, we’d like to point out to all those impressionable young men who might be now seriously considering a career in the Navy to take advantage of all that Babes In Bikinis action, we do have these new things called beaches, where you can theoretically go to see as many people in bikinis, some of them even women, as you want [7].

So, to Commander Tom Phillips, we’d like to say, ‘Well done!’ You’ve managed to stir a force far more powerful than any standing Army, Navy or Airforce in the world, and we expect that a strike team from the feminist coalitions will be taking you out [8] very soon now.