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."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.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 Captains 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: 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.Some recruit division commanders at Great Lakes routinely encouraged or condoned cheating, according to a new investigative report. Here, an RDC marches with his division in May 2013. (Photo: Lt. Liza Swart/Navy)The falloutThe 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