my bad…
tsfr
Hey, inspired by another thread somewhere around here, what does the Navy do in regards to Daylight Savings time? Do the ships have to adjust their clocks for each time zone, or do they have some common time they all keep? (ie: Eastern to stay in line with Norfolk or the Pentagon, or Zulu just for an arbitrary standard like pilots do?)
As the Navy changes time zones, they adjust the clocks. For DST, they adjust to the time of the next port they are headed to before they reach the port. If we were just floating in the Pacific doing exercises we probably would not adjust the clocks at all.
Jim
So, if a group of ships joined up at sea, would they then all have different times on the seperate ships, or would they just synch up with the commanding ship? I guess it’d be easy enough just to use Zulu when planning any operations in this case.
If they are heading for a common port, problem is resolved. If they will be operating in a joint exercise the ships would all sync to the Flag Ship. If it is just for UnRep*, there is no need to sync times.
- UnRep is an Underway replenishment from Supply or Fuel ship to Combat Vessel. Done by Helicopter, Lines and Trolleys or Cranes if a Tender with Destroyers or Subs.
OK, another question, inspired by a Cafe Society thread where we’re discussing how Starfleet builds their starships:
Some Navy ships (dunno, maybe most of them) have both a bridge and a “Combat Information Center”, basically a nerve center located in the guts of the ship. In combat, does the Captain stay in the Bridge and the XO in the CIC, or does the Captain sit in CIC with all the fresh info, or does it depend on the ship, or what?
I can onl speak to older Carriers. The Ranger CV61 had a Bridge, Aux Bridge and CIC. The CO did stay in the Bridge, when the Admiral was on board, which was most of the time, he usually spent GQ on the Bridge and the XO was usually in the Aux Bridge. I do not know who was in CIC, It was a senior tactical officer of some stripe. The Air Boss was I believe third in Charge on the Carriers. I could be wrong, it never really came up. I do know that the CHENG (Chief Engineer) was sometimes senior to the AirBoss, he was effectively not part of the chain of command.
Jim
A side question based on this one: Say the 5th Fleet is steamin’ like hell across the Indian Ocean, crossing time zones like I go through steaks on a Saturday night. Are they based on Zulu time?
And what are the crew shifts based on, local or Zulu time? For submariners, I don’t see this as a problem because you never see daylight anyway–but those on the surface I would imagine would want to wake up and go to sleep based on sunlight.
What’s the scoop? We Air Force types–depending on the job–usually sticked to daylight hours. As a Civil Engineer (RED HORSE, heavy engineering) it didn’t make sense to work at nighttime, so it worked out . . .
Tripler
But then again, we weren’t as mobile as the Navy.
<evil grin> I went to the goat locker and found the sound files for general quarters, reactor scram and a couple of others. WHen I have to get mrAru out of bed faster than normal I crank the volume on my computers and hit GQ… works like a charm.
For the most part local time is followed. A time zone is 900 miles on the equator, so it takes a day or better to cross a zone. It’s not a big deal. Steaming closer to the poles may be different.
Generally there’s not a lot happening on the bridge, as most engagements are over the horizion (or subsurface). IME the CO will be in CIC unless it’s dealing with a small boat attack or something similar. The guy in charge of fighting the ship in CIC is called the Tactical Action Officer (or TAO). Usually it’s an assigned watch, but in combat the CO will likely take it over.
The ships adjust their clocks to reflect the time in the time zone in which they are located. If they’re going to be entering a port in an area observing DST, then they also will adjust the clocks to reflect that.
Pilots record the times of events for any flight (or series of flights) based on the time zone for the area in which the flight originated. The advantage of doing that is to ensure there is no miscalculation of flight hours involved for either the flight crew or the aircraft.
Five years on a ship of the same class, the Mississippi, and a couple of carriers. I did two refrsher trips to Gitmo on CGN-40, one longer than the other.
What I remember from my time on two Nimitz carrier, the XO more often than not would show up in Damage Control Central during GQ, and sit next to the Reactor Officer in the Big Boy Chairs. The Aux Bridge on those ships was a tiny closet accessed from DCC.
On my last tour (USS Truman) I spent time in both Repair 4 and Repair 5 lockers as a DCTT (Damage Control Team Trainer). I still have my yellow ball cap.
In my experience we (submarines) stay on homeport time unless we actually expect to pull into a port in a different timezone. If we’re going to be doing a lot of random ports in different timezones, we’ll switch to Zulu while we’re skulking about and shift clocks to local time of the next port about a day before pulling in.