Simply a crew member who does not stand a watch!

Tradesmen usually Sailmakers and the like

Tony R

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)

Bart Senior wrote:

Correct. An idler is someone who does not stand a watch.

Idlers are carpenters, cooks, etc, as you stated.

They are also responsible for swapping the decks in the
morning and the ritual of holystoning the decks.

"DSK" wrote


When swapping the decks, they are supposed to put out decks of non-skid
material in bad weather.

Jim

So, did it have any bullets?

"DSK" wrote

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)

DSK wrote:
DSK wrote:

If your ship was at all like the tin cans I rode around on, you were

As I told Larry once upon a time the first ship I was on was a Destroyer
Tender...most of the ships I worked on were WWII DD's, and the DE's were
the same age.

I'm trying to remember who carried 45s for stateside in-port watches...
there was usually a watch at the entry to Fox D,

The second ship I was on was a brand new DEG, I joined the crew at
Newport RI prior to commissioning. I stood quarterdeck watch, a junior
officer, a junior enlisted as the runner/messenger and me the ETN2. We
got to have ammo, and would count the rounds to log that none were
missing. And sometimes about 1 or 2 in the morning...take the pistol
apart and put it back together :-) Sometimes they'd have some sort of
ASROC test and guys would run around with M14's or something. Rumor had
it that we carried nukes on board for them. That was the only place I
never got to see...the ASROC area, well that and large chunks of
officers country. Heck, once while in dry dock I managed to get down to
crawl around on the sonar transducers. One of them crapped out or
something and I went down into the bulb on the bow when the guy swapped
it out. What can I say, I was bored. Did my 4 years and got out,
1965-1969.

The first ship and the bottom half of the second ship are razor blades.
The upper half of the second one's now beer cans.

Bart Senior wrote:
So, did it have any bullets?


Yes. Don't recall how many.

We had several incidents where the OOD told the messenger &
the security detail to stand-to. Never had to fire any
warning shots though.

Another incident which was a big deal at the time, we were
in the Persian Gulf and had Iraqi jets flying overhead with
their fire control radars on... occasionally they would lock
on to us. A few of them we hit with the SLQ-32-V5 which was
a very powerful active electronics countermeasure
transmitter, a few times the Captain ordered the AA missiles
run out. I thought of this when the Stark got hit a few
years later.

DSK