Posted on 03/16/2017 10:47:51 AM PDT by pabianice
What do you do about the worker skills necessary to armor harden 18 inch thick steel, Lathe a 16in/50cal gun barrel, weld 18 inch thick armor steel plate. The guys that did this for a living are now dead. They did not pass on their skill to the follow on generations.
hit the nail on the head.
At that time we called them "fart bags" for good reason based on my observations. We also had contests to see who had the worst dried sweat stains. I'm not sure what the prize was.
When my wife got a whiff of it, she wanted to wash it or burn it. No WAY!! It is sealed on a gallon baggie but still in pristine collector's condition. I'm not sure I even have the nerve to open the seal now.
I have stolen your Mark Twain re newspapers and your Who watches the night watchman.:)
Not stolen...disseminated for the benefit of the general populance.
Thanks! Good Laughs!
“Why build a ship whose offensive capability is 24-25 miles?”
Straits of Hormuz. Dardanelles. Straits of Malacca. Impress the wogs. Look badass.
“People, unless they have been in the Navy, don’t realize that a normal work day re your skill set is a minimal 8 hours.
Then, you stand 2 separate 4 hours watches.
That is on a normal day. On other days, any problems, GQ’s, training exercises take precedence.”
Not if you were an Electronic Technician (ET)! No underway watches!
Because you were on call 24/7 when something electronic went awol or doa!
So you sail a 56,000 battleship into the straits of Hormuz, restrict it to a 4 mile wide channel with sufficient depth for her draft, and pour salvo after salvo of 16 inch projos into the sand dunes. Yep, sounds like a winning strategy to me.
Bingo. Mechanical and firearm sense are not cultivated these days.
That is what training is for. Seen a lot of young men that did not know lefty loosie, righty tighty when they were firemen, become able mechanics and capable petty officers because knowledgeable senior petty officers trained them in their rate. That is what skilled petty officers are there for, train the newbies. That is what the Navy has done for centuries.
The way things are going, we'll be training them to tie their shoes.
Give me a shade tree mechanic ...
Velcro, dude
Not if you were on my ship - everybody was on the underway watch bill, except the CO/XO. Even the Command Master Chief was a conning officer.
At that time we called them “fart bags” for good reason based on my observations.
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Back in MY Navy, the mattress cover - well some people called that 1 or 2 inch 6’x4’ pad a mattress - “fart sacks”.
except the CO/XO
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Our XO was also the Navigator so he may as well have been standing watches..
As Morse code was being phased out, we stood 8/8 in the Radio Shack....
That worked well a I was able to convince the PTB that we should have Watchstanders Libety while in port, usually ‘passing the guard’ to another ship....
shade tree mechanics have pretty much gone the way of wheelwrights and coopers. Modern automobiles seem to be engineered by designed so that the average home grown mechanic cannot work on them.
What kind of ship?
Must be the chow that demands the function.
That was a DDG.
Out of 20 years I only did 4 years of sea duty and that was on an AFS. ETs had it made.
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