Nope. Seabees didn’t do command ball caps. We wore green utility uniforms with a hat similar to what the Marines wore, but it was starched using an eight-point metal gadget called a hat block, rather than the “jarhead” look the Marines used to do. I think the Bees have gone to camo now.
I did have a command plaque from almost every unit I was in. I sent them all to one of my kids some years ago. The battalions always did cruise books, much like the fleet Navy does.
I always starched mine with a form…what’s the “jarhead” look of which you speak?
There’s a Navy training video from the mid-70s on the Melbourne-Evans collision (a destroyer got cut… not exactly in half, but into one-third/two-third portions in a collision with an aircraft carrier) in which two separate re-enactments are performed. In the “what actually happened” re-enactment, the officers on the bridge are wearing blue ball caps. In the “what should have happened” enactment, they are wearing khaki combo covers. Like “proper” officers I guess. Anyway, just search for Melbourne-Evans collision and you can find the video online.
With that said… I always hated the combination cover (so-called because the fabric portion can be swapped out between khaki and white for the different uniforms). It’s too flimsy (a necessary trade off for the fabric-swapping ability, but totally not worth it in my mind) and just looked like the sort of costume accessory a wannabe “crusty” sailor (be they officer or chief) would want to wear to look cool and assert their dominance, but conferring no greater degree of competence or professionalism (and, when you start wearing things to look “cool” I’d argue it may speak against your level of professionalism, not for). I preferred to wear the overseas/garrison cover in my service khakis (as opposed to wash khakis, which were phased out a few years after I joined—in those, as with coveralls, I’d wear a ball cap, like a good, honest, hardworking sailor lacking pretenses).
I wouldn’t say I have a ball cap from EVERY command I was ever at, including TAD, but if I was there for more than six months (even for training), you can bet I have a ball cap from it. For generational comparisons, I was in from 2005 to 2019.
My last ball cap was actually coyote brown, because the Navy had just completed its transition to a woodland camouflage uniform as a “working” uniform (a working uniform which is STILL not safe for wear at sea).
ETA: Oh, and back in the days when I was still in wash khakis (a uniform which I despised) I would tie an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.
I think they just used the round metal part, or perhaps I’m mis-remembering. Seemed like their utility hats stuck straight up with no definition on the points.
This is really interesting to me. As far as you know, other than the Seabees, is it commonplace for members of the Navy to have never been on a ship?
double post
I can’t find the official list, but a good fraction (my swag is roughly a third) of the Navy’s enlisted ratings (and a similar portion of officers) either don’t go to sea on ships or do so only rarely. And that last part kind of muddies the waters, because “rarely” might make it relatively easy to do a standard four to eight year enlistment without going to sea, but somewhat harder to get all the way to retirement eligibility (20+ years) without going even once.
Examples include:
-A good portion of naval aviators, flight officers, enlisted aircrew, and maintenance personnel who work on the Navy’s land-based aircraft (like the P-3, P-8, and E-6). The officers who fly/operate those planes will eventually be required to serve on a ship for maybe two years out of every ten.
-Explosive Ordinance Disposal. They used to put EOD officers and enlisted techs on minesweepers, but since the late unpleasantness in the Middle East kicked off and they started needing EOD in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, they don’t do that anymore.
-SEALs. If they’re on a ship at all, it’s not for very long (think a Captain Phillips sort of situation, where they show up to deal with a specific crisis, do their thing, and then get out).
-Various supply and logistics types could specialize in supporting expeditionary warfare units (like SEALs, Seabees, Riverine, and so on) or land-based aviation supply.
-Cryptographers and linguists. Some might be assigned to ships, but depending on their specific specialty, they might spend the bulk of their career ashore. Ditto with certain intel types.
That’s by no means an exhaustive list, and even within some seagoing ratings, there may be some who manage to weave their way through the system and slip through the cracks by doing, say, a land-based deployment to the Middle East in lieu of a more traditional assignment to a ship (and yes, I personally would rather go boots on ground to Iraq or Afghanistan than serve on a ship again). There are also those who do spend a good portion of their career on ships, but somehow manage to avoid ever going out to sea on those ships (in the surface nuclear engineering community, this is possible by always getting assigned to the CVN that is undergoing its refueling, which requires several years to complete).