Navy's newest crew: 'The Three Presidents'

[Sailor]

(CNN)—The U.S. Navy doesn't just do stuff "for fun," says the command master chief of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, but what 30% of the ship's crew will be up to over the next year or so can at least be termed pretty cool. And it will certainly be unprecedented.

Some 1,200 of the Reagan's crew will be executing what the Navy calls a three-hull swap, serving aboard three different carriers in one tour of duty as the service juggles assets to meet mission requirements.

The 1,200 are calling themselves "The Three Presidents Crew," as they will serve aboard three of the Navy's carriers named after presidents: the Reagan, the USS George Washington and the USS Theodore Roosevelt.

The crew will even have its own insignia and hull number, CVN 220, the sum of the hull numbers of the Reagan (CVN 76), the Roosevelt (CVN 71) and the Washington (CVN 73).

Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class David Frederick aboard the Reagan came up with the logo.

"I am honored that my art will be a part of the legacy of this 'Three Presidents' crew, and I hope that it will bring attention to the hard work of all the Sailors who are involved in this crew swap," he said.



The swap will begin this summer. The George Washington will go from its home port in Japan to San Diego, where a crew swap with the Reagan will take place. While the George Washington crew takes the Reagan to replace the Washington in Japan, the Three Presidents crew will board the George Washington, which will be headed for Norfolk, Virginia, and an overhaul.

The 1,200 will sail with the Washington around South America, then they will fly back to San Diego to crew the Roosevelt, which is taking the Reagan's current spot there.

"Think of how difficult a three-hull carrier swap would be to carry out," Capt. Chris Bolt, the commander of the Reagan, said in the ship's publication, The 76er. "It's never been done before."

"We are just moving assets around so we can continue to meet mission requirements. That's exactly what this is all about. It's not because the Navy said, 'Let's do this for fun,' " Spike Call, command master chief of the Reagan, said in The 76er.

Seven of the Navy's 10 active aircraft carriers are named after presidents.

As one commenter on the Reagan's Facebook page said, maybe next time, the Navy could add a fourth carrier to the hull swap and come up with ... the USS Mount Rushmore.

Hmmm, the Navy does have the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72), but there is no carrier for Jefferson. So say we sub in the Reagan and come up with CVN 292.

Apologies to the USS Rushmore (LSD 47).

www.cnn.com/2015/03/04/us/us-navy-three-presidents/index.html

Back to the future? Similar moves were necessary to keep the fleet at sea toward the end of the Carter administration, and most of those "crew moves" were not at all voluntary. Often personnel in critial shipboard ratings were transferred to ships leaving on deployment from ships that were homeward bound from deployment, sometimes with little or no time at home with family. Without such drastic action some of those ships would not have been able to safely get underway, and those personnel would vote with their feet when it came time to either reenlist or get out.

What I'm trying to say is transfers like this 1200 person move shouldn't be necessary.

[101ABN]

Musical carriers?

Guess I just don't get it.

Why not keep each crew with their own carrier?

[Sailor]

Not enough people to go around 101. To crew 3 carriers you should have X times 3 of each job specialty, one competent warm body for each but when your Navy wide manning only allows for 2 or 2.5 of each to spread among 3 ships something has to give. Some can be drawn from ships like Abe Lincoln which are in overhaul for extended periods (3 year or so I think) and not able to get underway ... until THAT ship nears the end of her yard period (as Lincoln is) and needs to begin training her people up just to be able to get away from the dock and not become a seagoing accident looking for a place to happen.

Moving people from ship to ship might seem to be a good way to cover the necessities, but it can get damned tiring and even among ships built to the same plans by the same shipyard there are differences in where some equipments are mounted or even if something mounted in one ship is mounted in her sister or has been replaced by something else over time. It takes time to acclimate, and if you are a stranger joining the crew it takes time to become a trusted member of the team.

I don't know how many people it takes to form a skeleton crew for a Nimitz class ship, 1,200 strikes me as way too few to even just sail the ship for an extended period. Anything beyond that, forget it. When I was in Caron we took pride in being able to get the ship underway in an emergency with just the inport duty section or 1/3rd of the crew, just over 100 people in a gas turbine powered cruiser size ship, but that was not enough to do more than that. No sustained combat capability, what we had was ONLY because of the automation and computer direction of the guns and firecontrol systems. No sonar, no flight operations (not enough people for the ground echelon/flight deck crew.) Just move the ship from one location to another and crew 1 damage control station in case of fire or flooding.

In Washington's case there is only one route from San Diego to Norfolk, south to the Strait of Magellan at the far tip of South America then north. No Panama Canal even with the best of shoe horns and K-Y gel. The trip will take more than a month, longer if they stop anywhere along the way as they probably will.