Steering the Ship

Overwhelmed

5-Year Member
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Jan 3, 2018
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How does the Navy teach their personnel how to navigate/sail a 1000 foot warship? Is there a school? On the job training?
There are plenty of threads on flight training but I find this just as impressive.
 
How does the Navy teach their personnel how to navigate/sail a 1000 foot warship? Is there a school? On the job training?
There are plenty of threads on flight training but I find this just as impressive.
Incremental learning is the key. Classroom study, simulators, hands-on with more qualified people, learning tasks and skills that build on each other, practice/practice/practice, get feedback, make mistakes, get feedback, try again, do it at one level, start the journey to the next level, teach others!
 
I had a CO who said "Driving is easy. The hard part is being able to get underway".
 
Q .. How do you eat an elephant ? A ... One bite at a time.
As CAPT MJ describes, incremental learning, which started at USNA with Sail Training and Motor Launches during Plebe Year (more recent grads can chime in, do they still have the motor whaleboats during Plebe Summer ?), graduating to YP's during Plebe Year, a YP cruise during Protramid, bridge watches on Midshipman cruise, then OJT once you get into the Fleet. I'm sure the simulators are a lot more realistic and relevant now..but there is no substitute for sea time.
 
It’s the large-scale version of learning to drive the car. Understanding the Rules of the Road, what your vehicle can do in terms of stopping/steering/maneuvering a big metal mass, figuring out how to get from A to B, “parallel parking” at the pier, learning your vehicle’s systems, technology and capabilities, safety practices, emergency skills, and so on.

Driving the ship is just one element. Surface Warfare officers learn to fight the whole ship as a weapons platform, bringing the totality of its capabilities to bear on mission execution, while leading sailors to work in concert to operate the complex systems that propel the ship, operate the weapons systems, analyze the data and produce solutions, communicate with other military elements, and much more, all blue ocean thousands of miles from shore or homeport.

The Ensign standing his or her first Officer of the Deck Inport watches under instruction will eventually progress, through ship tours, shoreside training, multiple exercises and deployments, the formal Surface Warfare qualification, and countless hours of OJT, through increasingly larger roles on the ship, to XO and then CO. That is the way of command at sea.

Watch “Master and Commander,” with Russell Crowe.
 
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