Command roles for engineers [SPOILER for Shadow of Victory]

Garth 2 wrote:So it doesn't seem like the RMN makes a distinction between career tracks and eventual positions

I pointed out earlier in this discussion that we are explicitly told the RMN rotates officers through command and staff, shipboard and ground-side, to keep them well-rounded.

Honor has done tours on the Weapons Development Board and Saganami Island in addition to her time on a bridge. The latter was associated with convalescence and rehab, but the WDB was a routine assignment, IIRC.

Weird Harold wrote:

Garth 2 wrote:So it doesn't seem like the RMN makes a distinction between career tracks and eventual positions

I pointed out earlier in this discussion that we are explicitly told the RMN rotates officers through command and staff, shipboard and ground-side, to keep them well-rounded.

Honor has done tours on the Weapons Development Board and Saganami Island in addition to her time on a bridge. The latter was associated with convalescence and rehab, but the WDB was a routine assignment, IIRC.

There have to be limits on that, some staff positions require true technical specialists (medical springs to mind) - you can be much more than a pair of hands cleaning bedpans without some pretty specialized training. I suspect that there are some engineering officer positions that require similar unusual specialized training.

But yes, we know that the line officers get shuffled into certain staff assignments, as well as shuffled between different departments. But I'd be shocked if every non-line specialist officer got routinely rotated out of their specialty and into line positions - I can't imagine Fritz Montoya ever got assigned out of medical to supply, engineering, communications, etc.

In the time after HAE Ginger presumably got tapped for consideration and training into the line side, and now she might get swapped back and forth between command and engineering assignments. (I doubt they'd give command of an armed fast repair ship, designed to keep up with BC raiding forces and quite possible stumbling into range of system pod defenses, to someone without tactics training. It's not like a classic repair ship which would move under escort in the fleet train to fairly secure systems near the front to patch up damaged ships - those don't have the systems to do anything tactical so the training would largely be wasted.

I wonder if Ginger ever went through the crusher. I doubt it. Her appointment to command was at a moment of desperation and came as a complete surprise to her. And even though her command wasn't a warship, it was armed.

Don

-

Weird Harold wrote:

glott wrote:I don't think Ginger had to be formally appointed acting XO. IMHO, she become the acting XO because she was next in the chain of command after Commander FitzGerald.

Actually, I think Naomi Kaplan, the Tac Officer, was next in the chain. I don't recall the full complement of officers on Hexapuma. But, IIRC there is textev that Ginger was tapped as acting XO because she was the senior healthy officer, not because she was next in the chain of command.

By the time Ginger assumed the XO role, Kaplan was hors de combat, and either had been relegated to sick bay or med-evaced back to Manticore.

Silverwall wrote:
Extending on this theme you should also note the difference between peace time policies and the reality of a knock down drag out war. The imperatives of wartime result in all sorts of folks who would never get commissioned or assigned a particular command end up high up the chain.

To paraphrase a song, "War, war changes everything..."

n7axw wrote:I wonder if Ginger ever went through the crusher. I doubt it. Her appointment to command was at a moment of desperation and came as a complete surprise to her. And even though her command wasn't a warship, it was armed.

Don

-

Since she was shocked at getting command, I think it is safe to assume she never did the Crusher.

And, let's face it, the med track is very different. The people there may be in the navy but are trained as doctors. They probably did not even go through Saganami but medical school.

And it doesn't matter whether or not Naomi Kaplan was higher on the command list, she still moved up. We know that Captain Webster was a communications track person. Tac was simply the fastest way to command.

ldwechsler wrote:

n7axw wrote:I wonder if Ginger ever went through the crusher. I doubt it. Her appointment to command was at a moment of desperation and came as a complete surprise to her. And even though her command wasn't a warship, it was armed.

Don

-

Since she was shocked at getting command, I think it is safe to assume she never did the Crusher.

And, let's face it, the med track is very different. The people there may be in the navy but are trained as doctors. They probably did not even go through Saganami but medical school.

And it doesn't matter whether or not Naomi Kaplan was higher on the command list, she still moved up. We know that Captain Webster was a communications track person. Tac was simply the fastest way to command.

Naomi Kaplan was medevaced to Manticore, Ansten Fitzgerald should have been as well.

Ginger was merchant marine that enlisted in engineering training and got a non-com rating, She was bucked up in rapid promotion because of Wanderman's buddies Stielman et al, with her knowledge of the systems and her abiityto handle those troublemakers. After her performance in damage control she was recommended for OCS.

AFAIR she has -0- tactical training. Which,I'm sure, her buddies will be quite willing and able to remedy. with their aid, I'm sure that by the end of her deployment she will be up to the crusher.

pappilon wrote:AFAIR she has -0- tactical training. Which,I'm sure, her buddies will be quite willing and able to remedy. with their aid, I'm sure that by the end of her deployment she will be up to the crusher.

I believe that was almost certainly the case when she was made acting XO of the heavily damaged Hexapuma. (Well OCS may have a 'intro to tactics' session that's given to everybody; but I'd agree likely no serious tactics training)

Whether that's still true by the time she's made captain of a (fairly heavily) armed fast repair ship / mini-CLAC is another question. I have a hard time thinking that they'd assign someone to command a David Taylor-class FSV just based on shipboard engineering experience without at least a quicky tactics training. Not even, as in Ginger's case, when the original command crew is killed and BuPers has to scramble to fill those slots to get the ship deployed.

(Although maybe I'm wrong. Ginger seemed to think she was being offered the top engineering officer slot - being in charge of all ship engineering and all repair/support work. If she'd been given a tactics course she might have been less surprised to be offered command)

ldwechsler wrote:

n7axw wrote:I wonder if Ginger ever went through the crusher. I doubt it. Her appointment to command was at a moment of desperation and came as a complete surprise to her. And even though her command wasn't a warship, it was armed.

Don

-

Since she was shocked at getting command, I think it is safe to assume she never did the Crusher.

And, let's face it, the med track is very different. The people there may be in the navy but are trained as doctors. They probably did not even go through Saganami but medical school.

And it doesn't matter whether or not Naomi Kaplan was higher on the command list, she still moved up. We know that Captain Webster was a communications track person. Tac was simply the fastest way to command.

I would think that a letter in your personnel jacket from no less than the Salamander herself (who reinvented the modern Crusher), describing how you icily, singlehandedly took command of damage control in the aftermath of a devastating ship to ship battle, and kept the ship patched up until help arrived - essentially running engineering, SAR, and damage control, both before you could get approval from command authority and afterward, may go a long way towards overlooking crusher requirements for early commands.

n7axw wrote:I wonder if Ginger ever went through the crusher. I doubt it. Her appointment to command was at a moment of desperation and came as a complete surprise to her. And even though her command wasn't a warship, it was armed.

Don

-

ldwechsler wrote:Since she was shocked at getting command, I think it is safe to assume she never did the Crusher.

And, let's face it, the med track is very different. The people there may be in the navy but are trained as doctors. They probably did not even go through Saganami but medical school.

And it doesn't matter whether or not Naomi Kaplan was higher on the command list, she still moved up. We know that Captain Webster was a communications track person. Tac was simply the fastest way to command.

Theemile wrote:I would think that a letter in your personnel jacket from no less than the Salamander herself (who reinvented the modern Crusher), describing how you icily, single handedly took command of damage control in the aftermath of a devastating ship to ship battle, and kept the ship patched up until help arrived - essentially running engineering, SAR, and damage control, both before you could get approval from command authority and afterward, may go a long way towards overlooking crusher requirements for early commands.

And, as mentioned by others earlier, it is possible to get one command without The Crusher, but not a second one. And her ship is not a combat command, but more like a CLAC, shuttled out of the way under the wing of a DD or three. She may be able to command fast supply ships or repair ships, even CLACs without The Crusher, but I seriously doubt she would avoid seek help in remedying that particular hole in her otherwise spectacular file.