enlisted 1983, boot at Great Lakes [where all boot is now] in the winter. The russian tundra would have been warmer. The time temp sign at the fed cred hit bottom at 20 below zero … it didn’t get any lower than that because it was the lowest it would register, and stayed for a month. You shatter bones if you fall outside in that sort of weather. After boot was a school still in great lakes. Then was a school that no longer exists [naval nuclear power school, orlando. they closed it. it is now in charleston.] he was nuke fall out thanks to illness, he understands that the school is now kinder and gentler whic would mean it was not designed by a combination of the Marquis de Sade and Beria. He then went to sub school here in groton. That process lasted from Sept 8 1983 through june of 85 when they kicked him onto the USS Spadefish in Norfolk. From June 85 until Nov 89 the spadefish went on 3 med runs of 6 months, 1 northern run of 6 months and 10 months in the ship yards. There were a few shorter runs, qualifying and other training runs lasting from 1 week to 2 months. Then he got shore duty from 11/89 to 11/92, then the USS San Juan through 96. Lot fewer runs, thankfully they stopped doing the 6 month runs … they went to 5 month runs. Luckily he likes Tromso as they went 4 times … they had the usual short in and out ops, then from 96 - 99 shore again, then back to the USS Miami through 2003 and retirement. That time there wasnt the cruising, but 18 months in the shipyards kept hum out of state.
There were times when I didnt really see him more than a few days a month, and many years when I saw him for maybe a total of 3 months.
They have been making shorter and more frequent cruises lately, no idea why. They also tend to leave you in the same post and just flip you sea/shore. That is a very typical career for an enlisted machinists mate, sub service. And rob confirms that while yes they can get steak and lobster on subs, the mode of cooking is seriously lacking and the lobster quality is the dregs … and on shore the food quality is abysmal. Maybe you consider it good if you didnt have a mother that could actually cook and all you had to compare it with was public school lunchroom…but he will conceed that it is bountiful even on the sub [except for the time the officer in charge of ordering food for the cruise screwed up and they ran out of everything except peanut butter under the north sea icepack and had to stop at an ice station and hijack their supplies.]
Active duty Navy here. Second Class Petty Officer (Sergeant to Army guys…).
First, I’m going to tell you this: Every command is different. Repeat after me. Every command is different. Next, every base is different. Okay?
My first command was shore duty. For the most part, we can generalize that a new guy is going to end up on a ship (cuz that’s what the Navy’s for), but you never know.
I didn’t live on a ship but lived in a barracks on base, which is not too dissimilar from what has already been described. A lot like a college dorm, only more bare bones. You walk into a narrow point with closet doors on the left and bathroom on right (sink, toilet, tub/showever), then opens up and there’s a bed on the left and a bed on the right. Some artifacts of cheap furniture are thrown in there as well, like a desk and cabinet, fridge & microwave.
Back to the sea/shore thing: It really depends on your job and what career path you fall into. A Master-At-Arms (Military Police/Force Protection) or a Hospital Corpsman (medic) can spend a lot of time at sea, but I’ve known some who’ve been in a decade and have never been in a ship. Spent a lot of time in Guantanamo, Korea, Italy, Bahrain, but never inside a ship. Some jobs, all they do is go out to sea, so you’ll see a guy retire at 20 years with most of that out at sea. It just depends.
There used to be an old thing that the Navy’s food was supposedly better than the Army’s, like a point of pride. That’s not true. Navy chow is like any other kind of government chow.
How good or how bad it is really depends on where you go. I’ve been to some galleys (or chow halls, or mess decks, or dining facilities, or…) where the food was actually pretty good and I liked going back there, surprisingly enough. Gulfport, MS has a really good galley.
Back to the OP, tho, if you live on base you should budget for a car. I know you talked about selling your car before you left, but I’d recommend holding on to that at least until you get to your first command. You get a clothing allowance every year on the anniversary of your enlistment (“Birthday Money”), that mostly goes to beer. Haircuts aren’t free, but you can get them cheap if you don’t care how you look.
They’re trying to get rid of people, sure, but they’re still trying to get more in. The old wisdom is Army is the least selective, Air Force is most restrictive, and Navy is a step below Air Force.
As far as age limits, from what I understand, Congress passed a bill allowing the armed services to raise the age limit to a maximum of 42. The Navy set it at 34 and the Army 42, the only two I’m still young enough to join. I’m still learning though. Maybe its different for officers, or maybe each officer program has its own age limit. I don’t know. I’m pretty sure the age limit for being an O in the army was 35(55 retirement age -20) but I’m not sure if they changed this when they changed to other age limits. Anyway, if I join it will be before 35 so I think that opportunity will be available. How likely they are to take me as an officer, I don’t know yet. I’ll find out when I talk to my recruiter.
Where has my ‘gung ho’ been since I graduated? (I wasn’t going to use that word anymore, but I’ll just use it here to answer your question). That’s assuming I had any when I graduated. I never thought about where I would be in a few months, let alone making a four year obligation. It was a completely foreign concept to me. Looking back, I can imagine a world with me in the military at 23, assuming my family didn’t talk me out of it, and it would have been a nightmare for everyone involved. If I would have joined right after high school I would probably get PTS because my drill sergeant yelled too loud. I had issues in high school and was one scared kid. Fast forward to present day, and I’m an overly ambitious workaholic.
Do I want to join because of my job prospects or the economy? No. I’m not sure I would feel comfortable joining the military if I thought it was my only option. Secondly, I am gainfully employed in the operations department at a large ‘too big to fail’ bank. It’s not the most lucrative position yet, but it’s not entry level either. I remember an old commercial I loved where a kid enthusiastically exclaims “When I grow up I want to work my way up to middle management.” That’s pretty much what I’m doing, but I do like my long term prospects there. I just qualified for their tuition reimbursement program, so here in the next few months I’m going to switch my second(side) full time job to part time and start working on my statistics/actuarial sciences degree. That has been the plan anyway, until it changes.
What recently turned me on to the armed services was my cousin getting a contracting job with KBR overseas. I originally liked the idea of working like a slave(120 12hr days straight, 10 days off, repeat) and getting paid a shitload of money for it. I thought it was a perfect fit for my personality and started thinking of similar jobs, like the military. Things escalated from there.
I’m not sure I know what to make of it either. That type of juvenile fascination with alcohol and cigarettes just doesn’t make sense to me anymore. I can’t think of anything more boring to do than to sit down at a bar, drink beer and suck down cigarettes for 5 or 6 hours. I eventually realized I was the most boring person I knew, and my friends were almost as bad.
I saw a Friends episode once where one of the girls has a new boyfriend. All the guys think he’s the funniest person they ever met. Once they realize he’s just drunk all the time they do an intervention and he stops drinking. They find out he’s boring when he’s sober and they break up. I think I was a little like that in college, though I would never have a chance with one of the Friends girls.
I guess my main point is that I am not interested in paying for off base housing. I am perfectly fine sleeping on base, on a ship, in a tent, wherever. Through college I couldn’t sleep in my bed. I would sleep on the couch, sitting in my Lay-z-Boy or on the floor with a pillow. I could never relax laying down on a soft surface. In my mid 20’s I eventually learned to sleep in my bed in my quest to be more normal, but I am still perfectly comfortable on a hard surface.
When I used to go camping, I wouldn’t bring a tent. I’d just pull up next to the fire and sleep. One time I woke up with an intense radiant heat on my back. I rolled a little too close. Another time I woke up in the middle of the night with a strange dog I didn’t know going ape-shit and about to chew my face off. I slept in my car that night.
I kind of chuckle thinking about getting my ass handed to me by a bunch of kids who outrank me. I am a pretty humble person though. That won’t be an issue. I guess I spent the first 25 years of my life feeling completely socially awkward in any situation(unless alcohol was around, of course) that now I feel perfectly at home no matter how much I stick out. Go figure.
I did 8 1/2 years in the Navy, I was a nuke electrician on submarines. I did boot camp in Feb 85, it was freaking cooooold!!! Wearing a towel around your face so you could breathe cold! My first school was there too, then it was off to nuclear power school in Orlando. 6 months of There is no need to be a condescending jackass every time I post!!!"them teaching you as much as they could in a short time. From there it was off to Windsor CT for prototype training. Orlando & Windsor are closed now, but there was no base in Windsor.
Living on base was ok, the food wasn’t too bad and I always had cool roommates in the barracks. I was lucky, I guess. The food on subs was much better, it was decent on sub tenders too. We didn’t have phones in the barracks, we had a bank of pay phones. I’m sure everyone has a cell now.
IKN, the max age for Navy enlistment is, AFAIK, 35. That’s for Enlistment, not being an Officer. Each Officer program is different, and has its own age limit associated with it. Again, AFAIK, you’re way too old for any of them, but don’t take my word for it–contact an officer recruiter near you and let him/her determine your status.
Since, from my bleacher seats, it looks like enlisting is your only option, you’ll really want to take into account the pervasive atmosphere of “juvenile fascination with alcohol and cigarettes” [and I’ll go ahead and add “females” in there for ya] that you’ll be hit with if you enlist, no matter which service.
And if you don’t want to live off base… you may want to re-think that. You’ll get an allowance to live off base. No matter what the rent is, you’ll get that same amount of money. As a junior E at Great Lakes, you’ll probably get around $1100/mo for your BAH. If you choose to live in an ultra-cheap, crappy place out in town for $500/mo, you get to pocket the difference. That delta is a car payment, at the very least.
I was an OS, which is a rate with a very heavy sea rotation. Coming out of A School everyone in our class to ships except for three guys who went to overseas tours at a TSC (formerly ASWOC) supporting the P3 community.
I was one of those three guys - spent two years in Sicily. I made rate twice there, too, so when I got to my next tour (which was, of course, a cruiser) I was an OS2 with zero sea time.
That made me a very popular individual in my division, let me tell you. So much so that when our ship went into the yards and an opportunity came up to deploy to augment staff, everybody agreed that this would be a great idea.
Since the cruise was a UNITAS and they would be forcing me to basically go port to port in South America, I didn’t complain one bit.
No. As I understand it, for the Navy, it will be based on his MOS/job billet. (Unless my experience is now out of date.)
When I joined the Navy straight out of high school, I signed up to be a Data Systems Technician (computer repair guy). I was told that I would have at least 1 year of technical schools. I had to obligate for 6 years of service. I was guaranteed to be an E3 (Seaman) in bootcamp and schools, and upon successfull graduation from those, I would be promoted automatically to E4 (Petty Officer Third Class). [I made it.]
After that, promotions to higher ranks of E5 and E6 would require a minimum time-in-paygrade, passing a written exam, and adequate annual evals. Selection to Chief Petty Officer is done by a review board at BuPers (I think). [I made promotion to E5 before seperating at end of obligated service.]
There weren’t many, but there were some guys in my boot camp division in their twenties and even in their thirties. A couple were older than the drill instructors. Just don’t be a massive tool and be okay with being called Grandpa and you’ll be fine.
If you have college and/or some ROTC or JROTC you can come in as an E-2 or even E-3 these days. Otherwise, that’s pretty much how it all works now. The Chief selection board is a bunch of Chiefs that meet every year to decide who they’re going to let become a Chief. I know it’s different in the Army but in the Navy the E-7 paygrade is a real big deal.
In the Army my understanding is if you have a college degree you can go to boot camp as a Specialist, or E-4 paygrade. But advancement is much less fluid at the junior paygrades because they are bigger sticklers for time-in-grade requirements.
What’s the point in having clothing allowances, anyway? Seems a little odd for Uncle Sam to give you money just to give it right back to him. Why not just say that each boot automatically gets issued X shirts, X pants, X shoes, etc., and can only get a replacement if he or she turns in his ate-up previous issue?
Uhhhh…don’t do that. Even if your first duty station is a ship, the BOQ could be miles from the dock when in port. And I don’t care how bare bones you are - eventually you’re going to want to get the hell off base.
Also? Don’t do like some I knew in A school who gave away/sold all their electronics, CDs, and freakin’ clothes (I can only assume they thought they were enlisting in prison :rolleyes:).
I had mrAru’s power of atty, and the way the navy jag wrote it, I could have sold his house, sold his car, sold all his worldly possessions, re-enlisted him and taken his bonus … woot, slavery =)
My recollection of my paystubs is pretty fuzzy from 20 years ago. I don’t recall buying a lot of my uniform stuff, maybe a non-issue pair of jump boots (because the ones they gave me in basic sucked), I was issued four sets of uniforms (two summer BDU, two winter), all my TA-50 (which includes a ton of stuff, entrenching tool, LBE, canteen, galoshes, poncho, etc etc…that stuff you have to give back in pristine condition when your enlistment is up, or they charge you for it)…maybe I did have a uniform allowance and don’t remember.
I remember paying for badges, patches and anything over and above what they gave me…don’t remember the rest. Maybe things have changed since then.
These days they give you a uniform allowance on the anniversary of your enlistment (“Birthday Money”) that’s supposed to cover the cost of your uniform upkeep. It doesn’t, not if (as another Doper mentioned) you give a hoot 'n holler about your appearance in uniform, and you’re supposed to split it up and budget for it across the year, but that doesn’t really happen either. Mostly I takes that money and invests it in the bar.
