Combination covers, combined
October 8th, 2009 | Foreign navies Officers Uniforms | Posted by Andrew Scutro
MC1 Tiffani Vanderwyst, Navy
When admirals from 100 different navies gather, they need a place to stack their covers. This was the pile-up outside a meeting of the International Seapower Symposium at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. on Oct. 7. Scoop Deck usually has a sharp eye for detail but this one is a tough nut. Good luck placing more than three on a map.
Paint your own cammies
September 21st, 2009 | Life at Sea Uniforms | Posted by Andrew Scutro
A sailor with paint-spattered coveralls (right) compares his trousers to the new Navy Working Uniform. //Photo by Sheila Vemmer, Navy Times
Check out this photo taken aboard the cruiser Anzio in the Middle East. Good to know that if you can’t afford the new Navy Working Uniform (which was designed to hide grease and paint), a bucket of paint and a set of blue coveralls will do the trick.
So wait … the Navy spent $226 million to field a new uniform, just to have it look like another uniform it wants to hide?
A horse sailor
September 2nd, 2009 | The Middle East Uniforms individual augmentees | Posted by Andrew Scutro
Navy leadership says IA tours will be a fact of life for some time, even with the expected withdrawal of forces from Iraq.//Photo by Sheila Vemmer/ Staff
Here’s one that might throw you off. From a distance you’d think “soldier,” but in fact Scoop Deck found this sailor in Kuwait turning in gear after an individual augmentee assignment with the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division.
According to the latest information from 5th Fleet, there are 4,950 IAs throughout the Central Command area.
‘Unchallenged at sea’
July 16th, 2009 | Foreign navies Uniforms | Posted by Andrew Scutro
Destroyer Arleigh Burke alongside South African Navy corvette Amatola in the Indian Ocean on July 15. //U.S. Navy photo by MC2(SW) David Holmes
With the destroyer Arleigh Burke recently in port in South Africa, Scoop Deck got to learning about that nation’s navy. Check out the website. Of particular interest to those sailors who think the U.S. Navy should allow beards again, look at uniform regulations, under the “about us” section. Not quite ZZ Top, but not nothing either.
And the South African Navy slogan: Unchallenged at Sea.
Squared away or sloppy. You decide.
June 26th, 2009 | Chiefs Officers Personnel The deckplates Uniforms | Posted by Andrew Scutro
U.S. Navy
A year ago, then-Surface Force Master Chief (SW/AW) Michael Schanche put out a message (second item) about a trip to the waterfront in San Diego that left him “professionally embarrassed” for the first time in his career. He expressed dismay at an overall lack of military bearing, courtesies and good appearance.
A year has passed and Navy Times decided to see if anyone got the message. We’ve collected a bucketful of responses, most very thoughtful and expressing the same dismay as Schanche.
We’re wrapping up the project and will publish the results soon. But if you still have thoughts on the issue of “sloppy sailors,” e-mail reporter Andrew Scutro at ascutro@navytimes.com.
SecNav answers the question on everyone’s mind
June 18th, 2009 | Officers The deckplates Uniforms Washington | Posted by Phil Ewing
Then-Lt. j.g. Ray Mabus of the cruiser Little Rock, wearing a beard that now-Navy Secretary Mabus called "the bane of my captain and my XO's existence." // USS Little Rock Association
As he introduced Navy Secretary Ray Mabus on Thursday, Defense Secretary Robert Gates wasted no time getting to the topic we’ve all been dying to learn more about.
During Mabus’ time in the Navy, as an officer aboard the cruiser Little Rock, then-Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Elmo Zumwalt relaxed some of the service’s attitudes about appearance, including facial hair, Gates said — “something Ray took great advantage of, at least according to a photo I saw.”
Yes! He said it! He talked about it… The Beard!
(Springboard, who may’ve been the first to find The Beard, has the actual text of Zumwalt’s rule.)
Mabus must’ve known about the public interest on this topic, so he mentioned it early in his own remarks. As a young naval officer, he said, he never would’ve dreamed that one day he’d be taking the oath of office as secretary of the Navy. He was, he said, “a very junior surface warfare officer on USS Little Rock — the facial hair, mister secretary, was the least of it.”
When Mabus spoke briefly with reporters after the ceremony, we put our digital voice recorder in his face and, in the best tradition of hard-hitting journalism, asked him for the full story about this beard. How did it compare with his shipmates, we asked. Did he have it his entire time in the Navy? How representative was the now-famous photo?
“It was worse,” he said. “I just cannot grow a beard very well. It had some big gaps, and it was bright red. It was the bane of my captain and XO’s existence. I kept trying to trim it, I kept trying to make it grow, and I had it the whole time I was in, much to the chagrin of my mama.”
National Dolphins Day?
June 12th, 2009 | Submarines Uniforms | Posted by Phil Ewing
Rear Adm. John Bird, then deputy commander of Pacific Fleet, presented dolphins Dec. 18, 2007 to Lt. j.g. Tyler McDonald aboard the fast-attack sub Bremerton. But would the fish look as good with a suit and tie? // MC2 Michael Hight/Navy
By way of Bubblehead comes a campaign from a self-described “old boomer chief of the boat” to create a Wear Your Dolphins To Work Day, on which everyone who’d ever been submarine-qualified would sport their coveted “fish“, even in civilian attire, and represent the sub force.
For current submariners, every day is Wear Your Dolphins To Work Day, just as every week is Navy Week here at Navy Times.
Writes OldBoomerCOB:
On 9 April, 2010, all of the SubQual folks in the US of A should wear our Dolphins to work. I figure that if we each know 2-5 other submariners, and pass the word along for the next 10 months, we can get a pretty good number of fish in the workplace. Tell a few sea stories, let the skimmers and NQP’s know how special our lives were, maybe just remember how smart and young and good looking we once were.
The Silent Service takes pride in its ultraquiet culture; will it embrace conspicuous displays of submariner elan? Have you worn your dolphins with civilian attire, like OldBoomerCob? If so, send us photos and we’ll put ‘em up on the blog. We’ll put some up next April, too — but we’ll remind you again before then.
Speaking of, what’s a submarine officer doing as an individual augmentee in Afghanistan? Find out.
But will it fit under a cranial?
June 5th, 2009 | Aviation Carriers Uniforms | Posted by Andrew Scutro
Dude, I know this sounds strange but I think I found chief's missing headgear.
According to a little known section of the uniform regs, wigs for women and men are OK in the Navy as long as they don’t clog a spinning turbine or get sucked into any rotor blades.
No joke.
“Wigs or hairpieces shall be of good quality and fit, present a natural appearance and conform to the grooming standards set forth in these regulations. They shall not interfere with the proper performance of duty nor present a safety or FOD (Foreign Object Damage) hazard”
Please send any photographic proof.
Sloppy or squared away?
June 5th, 2009 | Officers The deckplates Uniforms | Posted by Andrew Scutro
A few weeks ago we began asking for opinions and observations from throughout the Navy with an eye toward sailors, chiefs and officers who do not seem to care about fitness, their uniform or simple military courtesies. The curiosity was inspired by a message sent a year ago by then-Force Master Chief (SW/AW) Mike Schanche of Naval Surface Forces, expressing his dismay at what he witnessed on a visit to the waterfront. And did we ever hit a sore spot. Most replies have been from active duty sailors and chiefs appalled by a seeming lack of respect for a crisp military appearance among their shipmates. But a handful of responses have been from those sailors who value their own seagoing abilities over how the uniform fits or if the ensign gets a sharp salute. What do you think? Send it in: ascutro@navytimes.com
…speaking of uniforms
June 2nd, 2009 | Photos Uniforms | Posted by Andrew Scutro
An assortment of war suits here. Send us your best guess of where on the earth a purple pattern was found to be effective.