The recent action, by the Bureau of Naval Personnel, in clarifying the enlisted rating structure has led to the usual newspaper comments that the Navy is now in the atomic age, the age of pushbutton warfare.
It is true that the old, salt flavored ratings of Coxswain, Carpenter’s Mate, Painter, Ship’s Cook, are no more. It is true that there are now such “atomic age” ratings as Electronics Technicians, Teleman, and Radarmen. But it is equally true that the mere establishment of a rating structure, with the best intent in the world, will not assure the steady flow of trained ratings, in adequate numbers, to operate the pushbutton Navy.
The Secretary of the Navy stated, in his last annual report, that due to the inherent limitations in the speed of human reaction and perception “the use of automatic electronic devices in weapons is mandatory in order to cope with the highspeed targets of the near future.”
However, the Secretary also added the significant report that the shortage of trained electronics personnel “continues to hamper both the maintenance of existing, and the development of new, electronic equipment.” As far as the “old line” ratings of Boatswain’s Mate, Gunner’s Mate, Quartermaster, and the like are concerned, the situation as to supply of men, and of men remaining to make a career of the Navy, should be as normal as it always was, having due consideration for the financial status of the Nation.
But how about the “atom age” or pushbutton warfare ratings? What are the prospects of encouraging the electronic technicians, the fire control technicians, the aviation electronics technicians, and the other technical ratings, to make the Navy a career? There can be intensive campaigns to enlist the necessary talent. The promise of training, a trade, will help fill the quotas. The men enlist and are trained. They are eager, bright, and they learn fast. But, will the Navy get the full benefit of the training supplied? Will they make the Navy a career? “Aye, there’s the rub,” as Hamlet said.
The Navy has had the sad experience of training men thoroughly in the rating of electronics technician’s mate, a process which took a couple of years of a four-year enlistment. Add to this the time required for the “boot camp” training period, plus the time lost during transfers from training camps, schools, and duty stations, and the time left for the return of useful work to the Navy is very short indeed. If, on top of all this, the trained technician left the Navy after one term of enlistment, as usually happened, the benefit to the Navy was hardly commensurate with the trouble and expense of training the man. The Navy trains excellent technicians—for industry.
It is true that the Bureau of Naval Personnel has recently decided to split the training for technicians so that the advanced training is not given until a man is on his second enlistment. This may have a certain salutary effect; but even without the advanced training, these technicians in the Navy have completed the training for, and are gaining valuable experience in, the very lines that are in such increasingly high demand in industry.
A very large East Coast radio and television company, which maintains a very extensive servicing organization, and which has carried on several field engineering contracts for both Army and Navy, has even gone to the extreme of “proselyting” Naval trained technicians by means of letters which outlined the many personal and monetary advantages to be gained by working for the company. Salaries as high as 400 to 600 dollars per month are offered, and “officer privileges” are mentioned as added inducements. How is the Navy going to match such offers when these technicians are presently operating in existing rating structures as First Class and Chief Petty Officers?
If the present demands and needs of industry have already created embarrassing predicaments for the services, in competing for technicians, the future can only be regarded with pessimism. For the growth and multiplicity of industrial uses of radio, television, sound systems, electronic computers, radio frequency heating and cooking, radar, x-ray, supersonics, etc., are only the beginning.
As portents of the times, one has only to watch the phenomenal growth of television receiving sets. During the first four months of 1947 a total of 26,205 television home receivers were produced. For a similar period in 1948 the figures are 164,366! Yet on June 1, 1948, only 24 television stations were operating.
Television servicing is a completely big, new field that will be a “natural” for Navy electronics technicians. Sets are moving so fast that the facilities set up by manufacturers are being severely taxed even in this infancy stage of the business. A recent (July, 1948) Gallup poll indicated that a minimum of 1,100,000 families intend to acquire television receivers within the next twelve months in those eighteen areas which now enjoy television service, based on the sale of sets at current price levels. If the average price of television receivers were $200 per set (or about half the present price level) an additional 5,400,000 families would be in the market for receivers in the present television areas!
As yet there are no “Nucleonics” technicians mates in the Navy; but surely with the entire scientific and technical world agog over the possibilities of the atomic age, it can only be a matter of time before the Navy’s rating of water tender is supplanted by the Atomic-Pile tender.
This puts the finger on what is basically wrong with the present rating structure. During the Operation Crossroads bomb explosions, the men who handled the bomb, who worked on the assembly and arming of the bomb at Bikini were highly educated, advanced scientists. Can we imagine Doctors of Science employed as armorers for atom bombs launched from carriers, or for guided missiles launched from submarines? The armorers are going to have to be Naval technicians and officers. The luxury of the talent which was available for Operation Crossroads and for the White Sands rocket launchings cannot be expected at every wartime launching site.
The complex mechanisms and electronic equipments of future wars, referred to in the Secretary of the Navy’s annual report, demand highly trained, intelligent, above-average technicians. There will be computers of “Eniac” complexity, and radars, and television, and teletype, and facsimile, and telemetering, and remote guidance systems, and guided missiles, and atomic warfare. High caliber technicians are essential!
Training and experience are absolute necessities if technicians are to be effective— and experience accrues only with time. This is especially true if the equipment to be serviced is complex. Lesser skilled, lesser experienced men take much longer to effect repairs if, indeed, they are able to complete them at all. Economy of manpower will mean that more highly trained, experienced technicians are essential.
If, then, it is so important that every effort be made to hold and train good technicians, what are the reasons for their leaving the Navy? Why do they not make the Navy a career?
The terrific competition from industry has already been mentioned, and is the chief reason why men are not interested in the Navy as a career. And that they are simply not interested is borne out by the reaction to Bureau of Personnel efforts to bring back some of the 50,000 wartime electronics technicians, in order to alleviate present critical shortages. Of the 32,000 letters sent out to former wartime ETM’s, only 400 replies were received.
Some of the other reasons are the growing American philosophy of “equal pay for equal work.” Field engineers, who do the same type of work as that expected from Naval technicians, are paid much more money, and are not subject to “field days,” standing inspections, standing watches, etc. Again, it is difficult to sell a man on the advantages of making a career of a job when the selling points are all “futures.” American labor has repeatedly turned down the future benefits of retirement plans in preference for the present day in-the-pocket pay raises. As long as the labor market and living conditions are, and continue to be, inflationary, it will be almost impossible to keep highly skilled, trained, intelligent technicians in the Navy.
Additionally, there is a tendency to overwork good men. When a ship gets a good technician, he is used for practically all the repair work in the ship. Moreover, the types of men that this technical Navy needs are too ambitious to stay on as petty officers or chief petty officers. As one Chief Electronics technician on duty in an Essex-class carrier stated with some bitterness: “I’ve been to the Navy’s technical schools and studied hard to get this far. In the past year I’ve spent over 300 dollars of my own money for more courses and books to help me in my job. Yet that Chief Boatswain’s Mate over there draws more money than I do, and he can just about write his own name.”
The operation of many complicated equipments used in the Navy has been simplified, but this simplification for the operator has increased tremendously the problem of maintenance and repair. For example, the “brass pounder” who was needed on CW radio circuits is being supplanted gradually by teletype operators—even “hunt and peck” typists can transmit now. There is now pushbutton tuning for shifting frequencies of transmitters. The tendency is toward more and more pushbuttons. But the repair of these pushbutton tuned equipments is a nightmarish complexity that makes the inside of a juke-box as simple as an abacus by comparison.
What solution can be advanced for the important problem of obtaining and retaining technicians? There is an already established precedent for paying a particular group more money within the rating structure in order to meet outside competition. Such is the case of the Medical Corps wherein doctors receive 1200 dollars a year more than other comparable Army and Navy ranks by virtue of being doctors, plus another 300—or a total of 1500 dollars—more if they are specialists.
Such a bonus system might be satisfactory as a temporary expedient for highly technical ratings but it would shortly prove to be a boomerang. As these ratings were filled and continued to remain in the Navy, thereby gaining in technical knowledge and experience, there would be a tendency to overlook the cause of the “bonus” and either to abolish it, and thereby again upset the technician rating system, or to add to the expense of salaries by extending the “bonus” as a rating pay raise to all ratings.
It is here proposed that a solution to these difficulties and deficiencies lies in the creation of an entirely new, separate rating structure for the highly technical ratings patterned to considerable extent after the U. S. Technician Corps of World War II. These technicians would, of course, be part of the Navy and subject to Naval authority and discipline. Salaries would conform to the high skill required of men manipulating rockets, radar, and atomic bombs. In the sudden, searing war of the future, in the war which will be dominated by the few and not by the mass, those few must be superlative.
If this separate technician corps or rating structure is set up, with a distinctive uniform, and with pay, privileges, and responsibilities commensurate with those enjoyed by contract engineers, the Navy would have taken a tremendous step forward to the goal of immediate readiness for the highly technical war of the future.
At the present time the cost of contract field engineers to the Navy is measured not only in the cost of the individual’s basic salary, but also in the 100 per cent overhead, plus overtime pay, whenever overtime work is performed. Another distinct disadvantage of the contract field engineer system is the lack of assurance that such talent will be available when needed, especially for hazardous duty assignments. Quite recently such an engineer, the “expert” in a particular type sonar equipment, resigned from his organization because he was ordered to a submarine for the trial installation therein.
A greater evil in this contract field engineer system, aside from its expense and other difficulties, is the utter loss to the Navy of the technical knowledge and experience gained by these engineers in servicing and maintaining Naval equipment. Does it not seem more logical to keep such knowledge and experience in the Navy where they are always and instantly available without worry about contracts, overtime, travel restrictions, duty assignments, etc.? Can the proposal presented herein be gainsaid when in addition to its other advantages it can result in savings and economies, greater efficiencies, and greater technical competence for the Navy?
Because the machines of war are becoming more and more complex, and because the level of knowledge and skills required for maintaining these highly technical machines is increasing, it requires considerable time to train men to operate and service these devices.
The predictions for future wars stress the fact that time will not be accorded an intended victim. The apparatus in fighting ships must be maintained at peak efficiency at all times, day in, day out, every day, every hour. The sudden atomic, rocket, guided- missile war will not allow time for mobilizing scientists and civilian technicians. It will be too late to try to train men for highly technical work when war has begun. The best products of the scientific mind in electronics, nuclear explosives, and defenses against them, must be available in our Navy and must be maintained at the highest level of readiness. Trained, competent Naval technicians and experts must be at stations day and night to thwart the atomic age “Pearl Harbor” aggressor. These professionals alone must fend the blow and retaliate. There will be no time for mobilization. Time is running out now.
Highly complicated technical equipment which cannot be kept operative is worse than useless and would be better not installed. If this problem is not considered and acted on now, the Navy may well find itself in a pushbutton war exemplifying the words of Fleet Admiral Nimitz—by having the pushbutton only, and no men.