The Bureau of Naval Person1 Il Career Publication
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
*All HANOS* THE BUREAU OF NAVAL PERSON1 IL CAREER PUBLICATION c APRIL 1967 J APRIL 1967 NUMBERNav-Pers-0 603 VICEADMIRAL BENEDICT J. SEMMES, Jr., USN TheChief ofNaval Personnel . REARADMIRAL BERNARD M. STREAN,USN TheDeputy Chief of NavalPersonnel CAPTAINJAMES G. ANDREWS,USN AssistantChief for Morale Services TABLE OF CONTENTS Features Cream of the Crop: Who's Whoof Top Enlisted Personnel ____ 2 Golden Ships of the Sea: Top in the Fleet ______-_-_--____-_ 7 A Destroyer's Album: First Tour ......................... 12 PacFleet's Supermarket-NSCOakland -_-_-_-__-__---__--_ 14 From Factory toAMHS You, Via 17 MemoriesSunnyvale of oftheBirds Big 18 NavyHospitals on the Move _-______-_______--_________ 20 Look Ma, Wings Look No 31 Th e Littlest Jet Littlest The 35 Centerspread Feature Awards and Trophies:The Mark of Excellence ________-____ 32 Trophiesin the NavalReserve .......................... 34 Departments Letters to the Editor ___________--_---__________________ 26 Today's Navy ........................................ 36 Servicescope: NewsServices of Other 42 Th e Word The 44 Heroes and Leaders: Decorations and Citations _-__________ 58 BookReviews ________---________-___________________ 63 Bulletin' Board Transient Accommodations: Washington & Elsewhere ________ 45 Briefing: Medical Care for Dependents and Retirees 46 NavalPrep School and the Naval Academy 50 Tax Roundup 52 Pan-American Games: Application Procedures ____________ 53 of AFEMs for Vietnam forLatest .. AFEMs List of 54 Dlrectlves inBrief __---_--------_-_--_________________57 Taffrail Talk Taffrail 64 John A. Oudine, Editor Associate Editors G. VernBlasdell, News Don Addor, layout & Art AnnHanabury, Research GeraldWolff, Reserve FRONT COVER: LINES OF COMMUNICATIONSare an importantpart of shipboardlife. Anintegral part of thoselines ore thetelephone talkers, whomust be always on the alertto pass onaccurate information assoon as itis known. Drawing by staffartist PeterSargen, DM3, USNR. AT LEFT: ATOMICLINE UP-An A4DSkyhawk comes infor a landing aboard nuclear. poweredcarrier USS Enterprise(CVAN 65) asatomic powered USS Bainbridge(DLGN 25) and USS Long Beach (CGN 9) follow. CREDIT:All photographs published in ALL HANDS Magazine are officialDepartment of Defense photosunless otherwise designated. Master Chief Aircraft Maintenanceman Master Chief Boatswain’s Mate Harold D. Noe. USN Calvin 1. Baker, USN Chief of Naval Personnel based their selection. These included total years’ experi- ence; range of duty assignments at sea and ashore, and whether or, not the individual had seen duty in both oceans; combat experience; back- ground in relation to education and extra community activities over the years; physical appearance and bear- ing; comments from various com- manding officers. A well-adjusted family life was of primary im- Master Chief Gunner’s Mate portance. Peter De Hart, USN In each of these categories, all the candidates excelled. Master Chief Hospital Corpsman Combined, these men’s service ex- Frederic H. Andrews. USN perience provide a list of excep- tionally interesting statistics, which tell a story. To begin with, there were seven ratings represented by the SEA candidates. Latest figures show that the three master chiefboatswain’s mates led in a field of 121. The two master chiefgunner’s mates repre- sented their field of 53. And the two master chief hospital corpsmen were chosen from a field of 51. The remaining four menrepresented their respective fields accordingly: Master chief aircraft maintenance- man - one of 314, master chief avionicsman - one of 124, master chief sonar technician - one of 55, and master chief torpedoman - one of 33 men in the top E-9 grade. APRIL 1967 HE TOTAL YEARS’ navalservice among thecandidates comes to 288. This is 119 more years’ex- perience than is recordedin our Navy’s history which began only 169 years ago. The average age is 46 (the young- est is 42; the eldest, 52). Some are tall, some arenot so tall, but their averageheight and weight are 177 poundsand 5’-10”. All aremarried andhave totala of 17 children among them’ - nine boys and eight girls. Four of the candidates were born in the Eastern United States, one in the South, three in the Midwest and threein the West. According to i recordsavailable, the father of one man, Chief Abbey, retired from the Navy as a chief boatswain’s mate. As for therange of duty assign- mentsboth at sea and ashore, rec- ords also show everyman has averagednine tours each, with a tury.Take thetop SEA candidate, combined total of nearly 200 differ- for example. ent duty assignments. These as- Master Chief Gunner’s Mate Del- signments have taken them to almost bert D. Black, the Navy’s first Senior everyshore of the world - from Enlisted Advisor,was among the Australia, Japan, Turkey, Africa, and youngest of the SEA candidates. He Europe to South and North America. joined the Navy in 1941 at age 17. Along these routes, the group has In the 26 years that have followed, servedin 86 ships (23 different he has served on board the battleship types) and flown with more than uss Maryland (BB 46), threeair- 20 naval air squadronsand wing craftcarriers, three destroyer-type organizations. ships, a frigate and a cruiser. Chief Most of their careers began before Black‘s shorebillet tours have the start of World War 11. ranged from naval air stations over- At that time seven of the 11 men seas to recruiting duty in Tennessee, were on active duty. Three had not as well as a tour with the Ceremonial yet joined the Navy, whereasan- Guard in Washington, D. C. otherhad, two years earlier,re- He has seencombat aboard two turnedto civilian life afterserving ships - Maryland during WW 11, a four-yeara enlistment aboard a andthe carrier uss Independence battleship. (CVA 62). Maryland, the chief‘s Three of the seven men on active first assignment andin which he dutyfelt the immediate effects of servedthroughout World War 11, the war with Japan. earned seven battle stars. Chiefs Black and Andrews were He was a messman onboard at Pearl Harbor while Chief Bledsoe Maryland, tied up along battleship was in Manila Bay, P. I., on 7 Dec row, when the first enemy planes 1941. came out of the sky over Pearl. The ship was damaged during the aerial THESTORY OF THESE ELEVEN Navy- attack, but survived tofinish the war. men is also, in part, the story of As a seaman and young petty offi- the Navy in the pastquarter cen- cer, Black saw combataction in landing on Iwo Jima USS Solace (AH 5) Navy PB4Y-1 liberator of WW II ChiefNoe joined in June 1942, gether, he flew with four bomber Chief Candland enlisted in August squadrons throughout the South Pa- that same year, and Chief De Hart, cific. the veteran sailor who had previ- At about the same time, Chief ously served four years aboard uss Noe, with 25 combat missions to his Zdaho (BB 42) from 1936-40, re- credit, received his DFC while also turned to active duty in June 1943. serving with a bombing squadron. The average age of these men, by As a tail gunner and mechanic the time all 11 were on active duty, with VB-144, he flew on missions was 22 years. against Japanese forces in the Caro- Withinsuch a mature group, line, Marshall and Gilbert Islands. backed by a variety of talent, it was During these same flights he was only inevitable that their experiences awarded four Air Medals. would result in several acts of hero- A fifth Air Medal was awarded to ism in combat. him for missions flown in the Korearl crisis during the spring and summer AMONG THE 200-plus medals, rib- of 1951. bons and awards received by In this action, Chief Noe’s squad- these 11 veterans there are two Dis- ron, VP-28,flew over 75 combat tinguished Flying Crosses, two flights during which flares were Bronze Stars, a Navy Commendation droppedto light enemy targets for Medal with combat “V”, at least 10 U. S. night fighters. More recently, Air Medals, andthe Purple Heart. the chief aircraft maintenanceman In addition, nearly all the men participatedin the Cubanquaran- wear one or more Presidential Unit tine on 23 Oct 1962 as a crewmem- Citations or Navy Unit Commenda- ber with Patrol Squadron Eight. tions, togetherwith numerous The two SEA candidateswho awards for various campaigns rang- wear the Bronze Star medals are ing through World War I1 both in Chiefs Bledsoe and Baker. the Atlantic and Pacific, Korea, and Vietnam. S A FIRST CLASS TORPEDOMAN The Distinguished Flying Crosses A aboard the submarine uss Torsk and Air Medals belong to the two (SS 423), ChiefBledsoe was members of the Navy’s air arm- creditedwith maintaining the sub- Chiefs Candland and Noe. marine’s torpedoes in a high state of Chief Candland received his DFC readiness which enabled Torsk to and Air Medal with four gold stars sink two enemy frigates and two as a member of Patrol Bomber cargo vessels totaling 6000 tons dur- Squadron 117 in the Pacific during ing her second war patrol. This pa- the latter part of WW 11. Alto- trol took thesub into the Sea of USS Zeilin(APA 3) USS MountKatrnai (AE 16) which fought off 30 attacks by Jap- anese aircraft launched against Oki- nawa. OF ALL THE SEA candidates, Chief Boatswain’s Mate Smith holds the record for continuous sea duty. From July 1942, when he arrived atthe Naval Base Tutuila, Samoa, until September 1963, when he be- came an instructor atthe Fleet TrainingGroup in San Diego, he had served more than21 years in overseas and sea duty billets. Chief Smith‘s overseas shore bil- lets havebeen primarily inHawaii where he served with the Pearl Har- bor ASW Defense Force, the Navy Communications Station, andthe Hawaiian Armed Services Police. Amonghis varied shipboard as- signments, which include a fleet TRANSFER-Jet‘s oxygen converter is filledwith LOX at NAAS.