Jeremy emailed me some pictures.  He said to mention he’s been stationed on the USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81).  It is the only ship in the US Navy to have a British officer permanently stationed aboard.  He adds that he can give us a few hundred other facts about the ship if we would like.  I bet!

Edited to add: If you click on the pictures, they will open up bigger.

Reading the Certificate

Getting Pinned

“Congratulations.” Note the shiny new pin above the “U.S. Navy” on the upper left of his uniform. (his left)

Jeremy’s new certificate.

In case you don’t know, the uniforms he and the officer are wearing are coveralls.  They are a one-piece uniform that is very comfortable and durable and is the standard underway uniform.  You can tell officers and chiefs because of the rank on their collars and the khaki belt they wear. (Yes, Jeff, he’s an O-5, but we call him Commander.)

The pinning took place in the ship’s wardroom, which is the place where the officers eat.  It is usually decorated very nicely, and as you can see this one is no exception.  Normally enlisted sailors aren’t allowed in there.  So it was special for Jeremy to get to have his ceremony in there.

Congratulations, Jeremy!

I am pleased to announce that Jeremy is now Surface Warfare qualified. 

Yay, Jeremy!  (Insert huge round of applause here.)

You may remember from my earlier post about it that he had a whole series of things he had to do to get this qualification:

• He had to complete some books
• And then take a test.  The test was hard, but he passed it.
• Then he had to do some walk-throughs, where he visited each department and demonstrated to the chief in charge of it that he knew about their department.
• Then he had a First Class board, more commonly called a Murder Board.  A group of First Classes (E-6) quizzed him about all the knowledge he was supposed to have about surface warfare and particularly as it applies to the specific ship he was on.  The reason it is called a Murder Board is because it is their job to determine who is ready to go to the real board, or the Chief’s Board.  It wouldn’t do to waste the chiefs’ time by sending them candidates who weren’t ready.  He passed this board “very well.”
• So finally he went to the Chief’s Board.  These can be grueling.  I don’t know how long his was, but I’ve known some boards that were three hours long.  Three hours of being asked any and every question concerning the mountain of information you had to learn about how to fight a ship.  That’s every system on the ship, every department from Operations to Weapons to Engineering to Supply, everything about a ship.  And you only have 15 seconds to answer.  If you take longer, that means you don’t know it.  So this can be very hard.  But Jeremy passed this, and he was told he did very well at this too.

Edited to add: Jeremy’s First Class Board was an hour long and his Chief Board was 45 minutes.  But he did his boards alone, so that means he had to answer question after question for the entire time.

So now he’s official!  He made it!  He can put (SW) in front of his name now.  Yes, the parenthesis are included.  It’s called a designation, as in Rate, Designation, Name.  (Jeff, rate is the same as rank–it’s just the Navy doesn’t call it rank except for officers.)

From the time a sailor enrolls in the surface warfare program he is given twelve months to complete it.  Most people take the whole twelve or close to it.  Jeremy didn’t have twelve months.  He did his in five.  And he did it “very well.”  That’s amazing!  It’s very hard to earn a pin in such a short amount of time.  There’s a huge amount of information to learn and then there are the hands-on stuff where you have to demonstrate proficiency in various things.  And then, of course, you have to coordinate with other people’s schedules in order to get signatures.  So it can be very time-consuming and why the Navy gives people a year to do it.  It is very amazing that Jeremy was able to complete it in so little time.  He worked very hard at it.

Correction:  Jeremy did his in three, not five.  That is even more amazing.

Today he will get pinned.  He gets an actual pin.  And he will get a certificate.  This is a great accomplishment, especially since people in his rate (job) don’t often get the opportunity to earn warfare pins.

I’m very proud of you, Jeremy!

Hoorah!