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From: gwh%earthquake.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Ship Manning
Summary: Maintenance.
Message-ID: <1990Dec6.022923.20426@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 6 Dec 90 02:29:23 GMT
References: <1990Dec3.051029.3208@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
Organization: UC Berkeley Open Computing Facility
Lines: 31
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: gwh%earthquake.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert)

In article <1990Dec3.051029.3208@cbnews.att.com> TSOMMERS@zodiac.rutgers.edu writes:
>From: TSOMMERS@zodiac.rutgers.edu
>>Many of the descriptions of warships posted to this group read like:
>>
>>    2 engines, 4 missle launchers, 1 cannon, 1 radar, 1 sonar, 300 men
>>What are all those men doing?  The ships seem grossly over-manned for their
>>capabilities.  This imbalance appears to worsen as the ship size increases.
>
>While it is true that a merchant ship can get by with 30-50 men, all
>they have to do is sail from point to point, and they rarely stay at sea
>for more than a couple of weeks. Naval ships have much more to do, and
>can spend months at sea without seeing a port. Not only do they have to

Crew requirements are driven more by maintenance than anything else.
If a merchant ship were at sea for as long as naval ships tend to
be (months at times...) it's crew would go from 30 to 100 as the
maintenance personell otherwise left on shore were shifted aboard.
	Then, triple the amount of machinery and electronics (or more...)
and you begin to get the idea.

The other requirement is GQ manning... in damage control, everyone is useful.

  == George William Herbert ==   **There are only two truly infinite things,**
 == JOAT for Hire: Anything, ==  *   the universe and stupidity.  And I am   *
=======Anywhere, My Price======= *  unsure about the universe.  -A.Einstein  *
 ==   gwh@ocf.berkeley.edu   ==  *********************************************
  ==     ucbvax!ocf!gwh     == The OCF Gang:  Making Tomorrow's Mistakes Today


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