DSK wrote:
Sort of a fore runner of the technician class.



Steve Thrasher wrote:
Hey I resembled that! As an ET (electronics tech to the non-Navy folks)
I didn't stand watches while at sea.

If your ship was at all like the tin cans I rode around on,
you were probably too busy fixing stuff 24/7. A shipload of
20yo electronics, all built by the low bidder, and 3 or 4
ETs (one of whom was a chief, who was slowed down in his
technical work by having had a coffee cup welded to his hand).


.... Unless of course you're an ET on a
tender...then you get to stand radar watch while at sea, because there's
no radarmen assigned to the ship that stand watches, and hang around at
the head of the pier with a .45 pistol and no bullets waving to trucks
and cars. Ahhh...the good old days of the late 60's...pulling into the
mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and trying to track a pile of targets using
a repeater designed sometime in late WWII, but only recently (as in the
Korean conflict) built...wonderful green blob on the screen and the bozo
officer saying "give me a range on Bravo Sierra". At least on the
second ship they let us have bullets, I stood quarterdeck watch while in
port for it.


I'm trying to remember who carried 45s for stateside in-port
watches... there was usually a watch at the entry to Fox D,
I think for the missile magazine; and there was a guy with a
45 at the door to the pursers office when it was open
(ship's safe). The messenger of the quartedeck watch had to
sign for a 45 but it was usually locked in either XOs
stateroom if not down in the the GM's shop. Overseas it was
a different story, we usually had a security detail with
M-14s. As an engineer I rarely stood quarterdeck watches but
one time when I did, I checked the clip for one of the M-14s
and GM1 came by and said "What the %#&@% do you think you're
%#&@%in' doing?" IIRC that was in Sicily.

Regards
Doug King ex-BT1(SW)