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Are stories of the SWO community valid?
- Thread starter jameskalder
- Start date
It's an old naval tradition that most western navies follow, not a bad one either. Of course it was common courtesy to do that at meal tables at one time, but that has kinda fallen by the wayside for some strange reason.
When I was with the Italian Navy for my middie cruise they took that and other courtesies very seriously, including eating nothing with their hands. It remains the only time I have ever seen anyone eat a banana with a fork and knife. The three-course meals washed down with wine and drinks at the bar afterwards made up for any of the pain of the formalities
.
When I was with the Italian Navy for my middie cruise they took that and other courtesies very seriously, including eating nothing with their hands. It remains the only time I have ever seen anyone eat a banana with a fork and knife. The three-course meals washed down with wine and drinks at the bar afterwards made up for any of the pain of the formalities
.
LET73
Well-Known Member
On the carrier, we normally just ask, "Mind if I join you?" It's basically a courtesy so you're not just barging in on someone's lunch.
That said, I was TAD to an LCC. Their wardroom had long tables. I was sitting at the very end of one table with a couple people, including an O-5. A SWO ensign came up to our end of the table, asked the O-5 permission to join us, then went to the very other end of the table and sat down. That seemed a little extreme.
That said, I was TAD to an LCC. Their wardroom had long tables. I was sitting at the very end of one table with a couple people, including an O-5. A SWO ensign came up to our end of the table, asked the O-5 permission to join us, then went to the very other end of the table and sat down. That seemed a little extreme.
Reading Post #282 by Boomhower triggered a flashback of a very similar experience that an HSL Det. type had on the Boone in the mid 80's. Except we didn't call our XO by his first name- his nickname was "Booger". Nothing like watching a SWO JO getting publically admonished by the XO while said XO simultaneously picks his nose. Apparently he thought he was invisible- I need 12 beers to get in that state of mind and he was there naturally. Needless to say we (SWOJOS) quickly briefed the HSL types of all the scary SWO nonsense unique to our ship. Those pilots laughed it off and made GREAT friends both afloat and ashore.
So- it REALLY matters who your top two are. I've been on "Happy" ships and even a boderline Caine Mutiny ship. An outsider observer looking in on these different ships would think they existed in two seperate worlds.
I'm totally confident that the newest order of young officers will learn from history and make changes for the better in SWO land.
So- it REALLY matters who your top two are. I've been on "Happy" ships and even a boderline Caine Mutiny ship. An outsider observer looking in on these different ships would think they existed in two seperate worlds.
I'm totally confident that the newest order of young officers will learn from history and make changes for the better in SWO land.
Yeah, we're not the Air Force...Oh, snap!
Agree the top 2 play a HUGE role. Shit flows downhill. A CO/XO who scream at DHs...it then just trickles down to the JOs. Who of course have nobody to pass it down to, and you're an asshole if you do anyway. We had a top two that enjoyed terrorizing the wardroom and crew.
Had my longest day ever with them: Port and starboard watch WITH drills all day. One day I went through a full day of drills with p/s watches, got 5 hours of sleep from 0200-0700, woke up to conn the ship into a port we had never been to, parked the ship, then spent the rest of the day chasing down all the required messages for a casualty, took a nap from 1830-1900, and got yelled at for being late to the reception that night.
A few months and new front office later, we've seen tremendous improvement in crew performance and re-enlistments. The CO actually gives a shit about ORM (letting the helmsmen sleep before major evolutions) for one.
SWOs generally seem to suffer from aviator envy...but I think a lot of that also has to do with the status of aviation in the Navy compared to the surface Navy.
Hell, the SWO pin itself is allegedly the product of aviator/sub envy...we wanted a shiny gold pin too.
I've heard aviator lingo bleed over several times.
Complaints about training are legitimate. I was in the last batch of SWOs to hit the fleet with ZERO SWO focused training. The current ones get 1 month of training, but still arrive clueless. The SWO community, if I'm not mistaken, was unique in that it was quite possibly the only community in the entire US military without a formal training pipeline prior to operational service. Yes, we have a month long school now, and yes there is a LOT we do you can't learn from schools.
I have complaints about fleet training in general as well, but that's a bigger and more complex problem.
The SWO DH community appears to have an unusually high proportion of prior enlisted officers. Which by itself isn't really a problem, but it's disproportionate to the number of JOs who are prior enlisted. Which should be an indicator to somebody that the SWO bonus is only really functioning as an incentive to those who could feasibly retire with 20 years following their DH tours.
Out of the DHs onboard my ship, 3/3 CHENGs were prior E, 2/3 WEPS/CSOs were prior, 2/3 OPS prior, and 1/2 SUPPOs were prior.
2/2 XOs were priors. Only the COs are not.
Ironically, our best CO was a SWO nuke. As much shit as the nukes get for being "weird," they produce some smart officers, and it's a real pleasure to get to work with some real smart people.
The SWO pin and JOs...definitely also a huge impact on JO quality of life. It's not so much that you quit getting shit on, but you become a lot harder for the DHs to fuck with. Non qual JOs live in constant fear of how they're perceived by the DHs...it's probably where a lot of the buddy fucking reputation comes from as well. Nobody likes the JO that puts on kneepads and puts a senior officer's #### in his mouth anytime a "training" (aka Show the senior officers how smart you are) session comes up.
Boards are pretty much the only opportunity to really break out from the crowd FITREP wise. It's the only time every body senior in the CoC gets together and gets to find out what you really know. Ace it, and you're a friggin rockstar for months. Doing well on my board took heat off me for a long time.
This may piss people off, but the SWO pipeline probably needs a filter, and the fleet shouldn't be it. Theoretically, flight school keeps people who lack the competence to fly planes out of cockpits. Same goes for nuke school and reactors.
Had my longest day ever with them: Port and starboard watch WITH drills all day. One day I went through a full day of drills with p/s watches, got 5 hours of sleep from 0200-0700, woke up to conn the ship into a port we had never been to, parked the ship, then spent the rest of the day chasing down all the required messages for a casualty, took a nap from 1830-1900, and got yelled at for being late to the reception that night.
A few months and new front office later, we've seen tremendous improvement in crew performance and re-enlistments. The CO actually gives a shit about ORM (letting the helmsmen sleep before major evolutions) for one.
SWOs generally seem to suffer from aviator envy...but I think a lot of that also has to do with the status of aviation in the Navy compared to the surface Navy.
Hell, the SWO pin itself is allegedly the product of aviator/sub envy...we wanted a shiny gold pin too.
I've heard aviator lingo bleed over several times.
Complaints about training are legitimate. I was in the last batch of SWOs to hit the fleet with ZERO SWO focused training. The current ones get 1 month of training, but still arrive clueless. The SWO community, if I'm not mistaken, was unique in that it was quite possibly the only community in the entire US military without a formal training pipeline prior to operational service. Yes, we have a month long school now, and yes there is a LOT we do you can't learn from schools.
I have complaints about fleet training in general as well, but that's a bigger and more complex problem.
The SWO DH community appears to have an unusually high proportion of prior enlisted officers. Which by itself isn't really a problem, but it's disproportionate to the number of JOs who are prior enlisted. Which should be an indicator to somebody that the SWO bonus is only really functioning as an incentive to those who could feasibly retire with 20 years following their DH tours.
Out of the DHs onboard my ship, 3/3 CHENGs were prior E, 2/3 WEPS/CSOs were prior, 2/3 OPS prior, and 1/2 SUPPOs were prior.
2/2 XOs were priors. Only the COs are not.
Ironically, our best CO was a SWO nuke. As much shit as the nukes get for being "weird," they produce some smart officers, and it's a real pleasure to get to work with some real smart people.
The SWO pin and JOs...definitely also a huge impact on JO quality of life. It's not so much that you quit getting shit on, but you become a lot harder for the DHs to fuck with. Non qual JOs live in constant fear of how they're perceived by the DHs...it's probably where a lot of the buddy fucking reputation comes from as well. Nobody likes the JO that puts on kneepads and puts a senior officer's #### in his mouth anytime a "training" (aka Show the senior officers how smart you are) session comes up.
Boards are pretty much the only opportunity to really break out from the crowd FITREP wise. It's the only time every body senior in the CoC gets together and gets to find out what you really know. Ace it, and you're a friggin rockstar for months. Doing well on my board took heat off me for a long time.
This may piss people off, but the SWO pipeline probably needs a filter, and the fleet shouldn't be it. Theoretically, flight school keeps people who lack the competence to fly planes out of cockpits. Same goes for nuke school and reactors.
Although the old SWOSDOC was 2 months of meaningful work stretched out over 6 months, SWO leadership made a mistake in getting rid of the course. Those were funded billets as well. Now, there is no way to find funding for the billets required to re-instate something like the old SWOSDOC and we have to make Temdu options work (like the 1-month course now).
The organizational inertia at play involves two schools of thought:
1) There is no better place to train new SWOs than on a ship. Ships are not unsafe with newby Officers like an aircraft. An unqualified Ensign reporting to the ship is not mission critical in the same way a LTJG pilot is to a squadron. There are plenty of more senior, qualified Officers who can mentor and teach.
2) The burden placed on qualified Officers in training newbies is substantial and degrades overall effectiveness of the ship. Therefore, instruction needs to be provided so an Ensign reports aboard a ship and can contribute to the organization from day one.
I think a 1 to 2 month course be a good middle ground as long as meaningful instruction is provided. Slapping a number of power point briefs together won't cut it.
SWOSDOC was a good deal - nothing too difficult, impossible to fail unless you really tried, in a good drinking town. Good training? Not so much. As Bubba says, two months of good training spread out over four months. Some stuff was good; the time in the shiphandlng sims was useful and educational, especially recreations of real world collision scenarios without telling you beforehand...good ol' sailor stuff like signal flags and how to find Sirius or use a sextant for range-finding. But I also remember a three-hour training on cable runs - how they're put together, color codes, all the rules on the max number you can have bundled together - which concluded with, "But you can't do anything about a cable run once it's put together anyway, so you're never going to need to know or use any of this."
I was there for five months. Two months of it was useful training, another three weeks was good prep for my SWO and OOD boards. The rest was just waste of good drinking time.
I was there for five months. Two months of it was useful training, another three weeks was good prep for my SWO and OOD boards. The rest was just waste of good drinking time.
johnritenour@co
Registered User
"Lean Maning"...
I can say this about that..."ie Lean Manning".....
As long as folks on who are on shore duty and who are clueless about the "real" numbers it takes to run a ship, you are :icon_rage! Sure - XXX numbers of sailors is enough to run the ship...if everyone is there and up and running...But sailors, like equipment, sometimes break....sometimes folks are unplanned losses due to accidents, injuries, illnesses, etc...Please don't even get me started on what happens when a sailor and countersunk sailor... "read female"... use the duty lifeboat
for something other than a man overboard drill
), and she winds up in a family way...Can you say unplanned loss....? (well can you...
)...When you are in port....Things need fixing, there are requirements for training, schools, etc...Time spent away from your loved ones onboard and spent with the family is a big plus as well...Start factoring in the "real life" requirements of human beings...and your..."lean manning" concepts go out the window like decorum in a room full of drunken, lecherous, junior officers....
When deciding how many folks need to be on a ship...we need to get input from people who are in the loop...Not someone who is working on their Master's Thesis, deciding how to apply the rules of corporate America to the Navy....For Pete's Sake - we are supposed to be a fighting force...not a system for experimentation in theories of human behavoir...
I can say this about that..."ie Lean Manning".....
As long as folks on who are on shore duty and who are clueless about the "real" numbers it takes to run a ship, you are :icon_rage! Sure - XXX numbers of sailors is enough to run the ship...if everyone is there and up and running...But sailors, like equipment, sometimes break....sometimes folks are unplanned losses due to accidents, injuries, illnesses, etc...Please don't even get me started on what happens when a sailor and countersunk sailor... "read female"... use the duty lifeboat
for something other than a man overboard drill), and she winds up in a family way...Can you say unplanned loss....? (well can you...)...When you are in port....Things need fixing, there are requirements for training, schools, etc...Time spent away from your loved ones onboard and spent with the family is a big plus as well...Start factoring in the "real life" requirements of human beings...and your..."lean manning" concepts go out the window like decorum in a room full of drunken, lecherous, junior officers....When deciding how many folks need to be on a ship...we need to get input from people who are in the loop...Not someone who is working on their Master's Thesis, deciding how to apply the rules of corporate America to the Navy....For Pete's Sake - we are supposed to be a fighting force...not a system for experimentation in theories of human behavoir...
Iemoticons!!!:icon_smil
It would seem that fiftycal is off his meds again- though I actually agree with him for once.
Good post .50! It's even worse, though. Instead of an operator type working on Masters Thesis, the decisions about shipboard manning have been made by HR Officers at NAVMAC and within the various N1 organizations. Sure, there is oversight from SWOs, but very few SWOs understand the manpower and personnel system. The SWE (Surface Warfare Enterprise) is tyring to correct the policies over the last decade that are hurting us right now. It will be a slow turnaround.
jameskalder
New Member
to uncle fester...i have bad vision so i doubt i can fly navy. what other ratings can you suggest if not swo?