The Steve Wilkins Memorial Surface Warfare Officer (SWO) Thread

[Uncle Fester]

I see your point, Wink, but I disagree. If it were just me having a bad experience, then yeah, maybe I'm just a disgruntled asshole or I had the one bad ship. But that is most definitely not the case; your mileage may have varied, but I've never ever spoken to any other aviator who's spent time working around and with Shoes (HSL, Shooters, etc) who has said anything like "Oh, the SWO Navy's not all that bad." After I left my ship and rolled to Pensacola, the invariable IP response to seeing my SWO pin was, "Oh, your poor bastard. Glad you escaped."

Believe it or not, my purpose is not to make the poor SWOlet hate life. I just don't want him to walk into traffic thinking that getting hit by a truck can't be as bad as they say. I want him to be ready to dodge and weave.

 

[MasterBates]

We have a SWO to FO at 120 now, and as painful as 120 can be for the SNFOs, he is WAY happier here than in SWOland.

Believe it.
(get a couple beers in him and see the SWO hate come out.. It's entertaining to those who have lived with SWOs)

 

[Uncle Fester]

Tell him how much fun it'll be the first time he's on the boat and can sleep through General Quarters. THAT'S super bitchin' cool.

 

[MasterBates]

I thought GQ meant "Pilots hide in stateroom, and keep the XBoX turned down"..

 

[Uncle Fester]

I thought GQ meant "Pilots hide in stateroom, and keep the XBoX turned down"..

Oh, yes...yes yes indeed. Heeheeheehee

That's worth the price of admission alone. SWO: GQ means two or three hours sweating in flash gear in a repair locker. Brownshoe: hide in your rack, or at least turn down the volume on the "My Name Is Earl" DVD marathon.

The first GQ on our first underway workups, Skipper tried to play the game and had us all in the Ready Room, doing training. Guy doing the lecture pulled up his flash hood to adjust the PowerPoint; within seconds, some DCTT asshole stomped into the middle of the brief to chew out the briefer for relaxing flash gear without permission.

Says Skipper, "Okay, I tried. Fuck this Shoe bullshit. Man your racks."

 

[MasterBates]

I never was issued flash hoods.. But I was yelled at numerous times for not tucking my flight suit into my boots. I tried to explain that's not how zoom bags saved you from fire but they wouldn't listen.. I broke out 18" jump boots to be able to tuck my flight suit in.

They tried doing the stateroom checks for pilots after a while (no fly days, so couldn't pull "Crew Rest") but I discovered they would never check 1 or 2 places, HCO tower or LSO shack.

We would just sit in the LSO shack and play cards or watch movies on laptops until the stupidity went away.

 

[HH-60H]

Oh, yes...yes yes indeed. Heeheeheehee

That's worth the price of admission alone. SWO: GQ means two or three hours sweating in flash gear in a repair locker. Brownshoe: hide in your rack, or at least turn down the volume on the "My Name Is Earl" DVD marathon.

The first GQ on our first underway workups, Skipper tried to play the game and had us all in the Ready Room, doing training. Guy doing the lecture pulled up his flash hood to adjust the PowerPoint; within seconds, some DCTT asshole stomped into the middle of the brief to chew out the briefer for relaxing flash gear without permission.

Says Skipper, "Okay, I tried. Fuck this Shoe bullshit. Man your racks."

That's why you need the "Classified Brief in Progress" sign on those off chances that you are/need to be in the Ready Room.

 

[ZekeBathory]

Okay, so this is kind of a threadjack of a threadjack, but here goes:

Can any mustangs provide perspective on how enlisted bullshit differs from officer bullshit?

Frankly, my company was prone to overreact at any available opportunity. Mind you, we were in D.C., so the leadership should have been somewhat desensitized. But if a general's wife were to decide she wanted to visit the barracks for some retarded reason, they would have us field day -- even if field day already took place for the week.

There was the typical postponement, shortening of, or outright elimination of chow time. Some weeks we'd have fifteen hour workdays, so I'd just shower, put on new skivvies and go to sleep in my cammies to save time in the morning. I had a hard time separating what was bullshit and what was hardships a Marine should be expected to deal with. Especially when they guilt-tripped us with "You could be in Iraq or Afghanistan right now," or "This is what you signed up for." It worked until some Iraq vets came to work with us and hated the place just as much as we did.

I think I just got dealt a shitty hand of cards. Am I to understand the same happens to officers?

 

[Flash]

......the invariable IP response to seeing my SWO pin was, "Oh, your poor bastard. Glad you escaped."

Believe it or not, my purpose is not to make the poor SWOlet hate life. I just don't want him to walk into traffic thinking that getting hit by a truck can't be as bad as they say. I want him to be ready to dodge and weave.

A couple of weeks ago an active duty SWO LT relieving me on watch showed me a brief on the NPC site, I looked but can't find it. It showed a projected shortfall for SWO DH's of about 40% for his YG and after, 03/04. Hardly any of the active duty SWO LT's were I drill are staying, the one I know who might is trying to go FTS since they hardly ever get sea duty apparently. The guys getting out are getting calls from several ADM's asking them to stay in, but none of them want to endure going out to sea again.

In all my time in the Navy I have known more than a few SWO's and while they were all proud of their service, their pin and the sailors they led I have only known one that enjoyed it and wanted to go out again, a pretty good guy as a matter of fact. That has not been the case with any other Navy community in my experience. Come to think of it, I only know one other military community where almost every member I knew didn't want to go back to their old job, USAF ICBM missileers. And they get to wear flight suits, and sleep.

 

[nittany03]

I recall seeing an ENS getting interviewed on one of the ubiquitous Discovery Channel shows on the Navy, and specifically on the surface fleet. She said something about how she was glad her time at Annapolis had prepared her for the surface fleet by having to deal with lack of sleep, stress, etc.

I'm sure Mom and Pop in Tulsa saw that and thought "Oh, we're so proud of our military, working around the clock on a tough job, etc. etc." But seriously. WTF?

Does no one in the surface community see the blatant ORM issues involved in sleep-depriving the very people who are in charge of keeping 9,000 tons of steel off the rocks and combat effective? We have crew rest in aviation for very good reasons; i.e. not planting jets in people's backyards due to stupid sleep-deprived mistakes. Yet it's acceptable to stand OOD on no sleep . . . why? Because you're going slower? Is the theory that because you've got ten people on the bridge, that statistically they won't nod off at the same time? Throw me a line here, because this makes absolutely no sense.

 

[Pugs]

The SWOs I knew would not hesitate to confirm it is more work then a typical operational tour as an aviator. That comes as no surprise to those of us that have been around.

But does it need to be? I saw it in Naval Air as well, the “martyr syndrome” i.e. Look how hard we are working, yea it involves creating self-licking ice cream cones and shelfware reports that no one will ever look at again.

Busy work because “we’ve always done it that way” irritates the crap out of me and was a prime factor in me leaving AD. Are our sailors really any better sailors with all the mandatory training and evals and counseling? How about the whole ORM thing? Another good idea ruined by more layers and more reports. Heck I thought TQL was a good idea at some level but it too was sold as the panacea to all our ills. I missed it in my career but this whole drive towards the ill named "professionalization" of the officer corp with postgrad education and requirements seems ill advised to me. More time in cockpits/sims/tactics puts fused ordnance and trons on target on time = job 1.

Just my 2 cents worth if rant on a Monday am on the first cup of coffee.

 

[Uncle Fester]

There's a HUGE amount of ridiculous self-generated pain, busywork, and bullshit tasking in the SWO side. I once spent an hour and a half with my OPSO digging through pubs trying to find something because the Captain demanded to see "where that's written out." And it was something fairly trivial anyway - as I recall, whether there was anything that said there couldn't be somebody on the flight deck taking pictures during flight ops (Capt was a big shutterbug). I said I didn't think it would be a problem (I was First Lt and HCO), but he wanted to make sure it didn't say somewhere tht he couldn't first. So, yes, two officers spent a chunk of their working day underway trying to prove a negative.

That goes into the lack of sleep thing, since often it's the silly nonsense that is keeping you from sleep. The Surface Navy acknowledges that it's dangerous (or at least, a bad idea) to have their watchstanders so sleep-deprived, but in an abstract way. "Yes, it's important to get enough sleep before taking the watch. But it's your fault if you don't work smarter not harder and get enough sleep." It was routine on my first deployment to go 36 hours without sleep, 48 wasn't unocommon.

 

[Flash]

The Surface Navy acknowledges that it's dangerous (or at least, a bad idea) to have their watchstanders so sleep-deprived, but in an abstract way. "Yes, it's important to get enough sleep before taking the watch. But it's your fault if you don't work smarter not harder and get enough sleep." It was routine on my first deployment to go 36 hours without sleep, 48 wasn't unocommon.

And they wonder why they have problems with retention.......

 

[Uncle Fester]

Does no one in the surface community see the blatant ORM issues involved in sleep-depriving the very people who are in charge of keeping 9,000 tons of steel off the rocks and combat effective?...Is the theory that because you've got ten people on the bridge, that statistically they won't nod off at the same time?

Let me tell you about the time that the entire bridge watch did fall asleep at the same time. My first midwatch as OOD, too. You get into the "midwatch body wedge" in some likely corner of the bridge, 0200, steaming in circles in the literal middle of nowhere...next thing you know, you come to with a start and as you look around, grateful the Captain didn't decide to wander up just then...and realize every man jack on the bridge is out cold. Holy balls. "Messenger! Coffee NOW!"

SWO's are like doctors when it comes to sleep deprivation. Docs will tell you that of course it's a bad idea for someone to be on call and sleepless for 36 hours, "But of course, I did it when I was a resident; I guess we were just tougher then and better doctors with manlier constitutons..." You hear the same bullshit from SWO's. "Certainly you should get some sleep before standing watch. Although, I could go a week without sleep when I was an Ensign and still get all my PQS signoffs done early and had all my E-3 and below evals in to XO a week before they were due...you pussy."

 

[wink]

I can't deny SWO life is hard and frequently ridiculous, from our perspective. I am not a SWO for a reason. We all chose aviation, if some belatedly. We rejected SWO. So guys that chose aviation don't recommend SWO, stop the presses, there is news? SWOs that changed to aviation are the career version of a transsexual, an aviator stuck in a SWO body by accident (sorry for the imagery Fester). They are predisposed to find every fault with SWO. SWO life is not in their DNA. While not useless, don't you think that if every SWO you talk to about SWO was getting out, or changed designators, your view would be biased by their decisions? Thousands of guys stay SWO for a reason and it isn't all running from an ex wife, or inability to find a civilian job. Of those thousands some unknown percentage are good leaders who see the necessity of the hard work required to crew a navy vessel and appreciate the value of their subordinates hard work and dedication. We don't know if a future 'good' career SWO is reading this thread. What value is there in discouraging an idealistic young leader from a community that so badly needs them? Are we really lacking in hard charging JOs and enlightened leadership in aviation so badly we need just one more convert from SWO? We certainly don't need to validate our own decisions. We all know naval aviation is/was a good place to be, for us.