denbeste@spdcc.com (Steven Den Beste) (02/18/91)
From: denbeste@spdcc.com (Steven Den Beste) OK, folks, I'm a bit of a lightweight, so don't snicker too loudly if I get a lot of the terminology wrong. Last fall some time there was a TV documentary talking about "our brave service-people and how they live" while waiting for the shooting to start, and they profiled several specific service-folks at ranks ranging from the captain of a carrier right down to a junior electrician on that same carrier. A carrier is a humongous hunk of metal, and those of us who've never been on one tend to think of the flight deck and the hanger deck and the tower and forget all the rest of it. On the documentary what they said was that most of the people assigned to a carrier literally go weeks between times of seeing the sky. Apparently those allowed to go up top are by far the exception, not the rule. My question: How true is that for a battleship? What proportion of the crew go below and STAY below for weeks at a time, and never even get near a porthole?
cga66@ihlpy.att.com (Patrick V Kauffold) (02/19/91)
From: cga66@ihlpy.att.com (Patrick V Kauffold) > . . .. On the documentary what they said was that most of the > people assigned to a carrier literally go weeks between times > of seeing the sky. On any ship, you can stay belowdecks if you WANT to, but there is, at least to my knowledge, no practice that keeps people belowdecks (except on a sub). On a carrier, there are portions of the hanger deck where you can get a breath of fresh air; during operations, you stay at your station, or at least out of the way. But there are relatively few locations topside that are completely off-limits. If you are standing deck watches, you are somewhere in the super- structure area, so you see plenty of sea and sky. Ops types are usually located in the superstructure (radio, radar, etc.). On a carrier, the flight crew operates on the flight deck. I think the TV show may have featured some snipes who may have exaggerated somewhat; if you stand an engine room watch during the day, then shower (yes, snipes shower!), eat, catch the movie, hit the pit, up for the next watch, (repeat endlessly), you COULD go a day or two completely belowdecks. Voluntarily, though.