In a male-dominated field, these female naval mechanics made history in their own right, servicing the aircraft used in the game's first all-female flyover
I know that the chief petty officers and other highly positioned enlisted personnel are for all practical purposes the people who keep a ship functioning but I had never heard of Chief -- even a Command Chief -- taking command of a ship. It was my understanding that only commissioned officers can be in command. They tell the chiefs where the ship is to go and the chiefs make sure it gets there in time and in one piece. And in the unlikely event that the ship is involved in a collision at sea, it is the commissioned officer who takes most of the heat. At least that is what they taught me back in 1969-70 when I was a NROTC midshipman. That was the year that draft "lottery" numbers were assigned and I had made it a point not to know mine. But I was on my 3rd Class Cruise on a destroyer that was using Her Majesty's Royal Dockyard in the Firth of Forth to effect repairs on the 3 boilers which had become inoperable and I was sitting in the "Combat Information Center" (which was shut down) and looking at an old copy of Newsweek where I learned that my draft number was over 300. One of the crew members asked me "So what the "f" are you doing here?". Unable to come up with a good answer over the remainder of my cruise, I resigned my scholarship and went into debt to pay tuition.
I'm not very familiar with the Navy, the ranks etc. My mother was in the Army like my uncle, and her oldest brother the marines. I learned a lot working on this. About the seamen and women, and it was very exciting to learn something new about a branch of service I wasn't as familiar with. As my 13 year old gets older, service is something I'd like him to think about although I have no idea where we will be as a country or world in five years, unfortunately. I could see him as a young skip. He loves to travel, he can say hello in 25 languages. He's good with accents and teaches himself Arabic, and Chinese. I think he'd make a great sailor and mix serving the country with his desire to see the world. That is a wild story Donald, lol. There don't seem to be many NROTC programs, at least I don't know of any. My mother was an Army ROTC teacher for 10 years after retiring as a First Sergeant, and then going on to be the Commandant at a Military Academy in North Carolina.
Just found this article, thanks for the shout out for military maintainers!
I learned the first female CMC of the USS Theodore Roosevelt was an Aviation Structural Mechanic, like me. To answer the question above about her role, there is a Commanding Officer over the ship but the highest enlisted person is the Command Master Chief of the ship so while she wasn’t the Commanding Officer, she was the most senior enlisted person in charge of that ship.
I know that the chief petty officers and other highly positioned enlisted personnel are for all practical purposes the people who keep a ship functioning but I had never heard of Chief -- even a Command Chief -- taking command of a ship. It was my understanding that only commissioned officers can be in command. They tell the chiefs where the ship is to go and the chiefs make sure it gets there in time and in one piece. And in the unlikely event that the ship is involved in a collision at sea, it is the commissioned officer who takes most of the heat. At least that is what they taught me back in 1969-70 when I was a NROTC midshipman. That was the year that draft "lottery" numbers were assigned and I had made it a point not to know mine. But I was on my 3rd Class Cruise on a destroyer that was using Her Majesty's Royal Dockyard in the Firth of Forth to effect repairs on the 3 boilers which had become inoperable and I was sitting in the "Combat Information Center" (which was shut down) and looking at an old copy of Newsweek where I learned that my draft number was over 300. One of the crew members asked me "So what the "f" are you doing here?". Unable to come up with a good answer over the remainder of my cruise, I resigned my scholarship and went into debt to pay tuition.
I'm not very familiar with the Navy, the ranks etc. My mother was in the Army like my uncle, and her oldest brother the marines. I learned a lot working on this. About the seamen and women, and it was very exciting to learn something new about a branch of service I wasn't as familiar with. As my 13 year old gets older, service is something I'd like him to think about although I have no idea where we will be as a country or world in five years, unfortunately. I could see him as a young skip. He loves to travel, he can say hello in 25 languages. He's good with accents and teaches himself Arabic, and Chinese. I think he'd make a great sailor and mix serving the country with his desire to see the world. That is a wild story Donald, lol. There don't seem to be many NROTC programs, at least I don't know of any. My mother was an Army ROTC teacher for 10 years after retiring as a First Sergeant, and then going on to be the Commandant at a Military Academy in North Carolina.
Just found this article, thanks for the shout out for military maintainers!
I learned the first female CMC of the USS Theodore Roosevelt was an Aviation Structural Mechanic, like me. To answer the question above about her role, there is a Commanding Officer over the ship but the highest enlisted person is the Command Master Chief of the ship so while she wasn’t the Commanding Officer, she was the most senior enlisted person in charge of that ship.