Re: Worldwide Perry-gap

Paul J. Adam wrote:
hcobb wrote:
Don't bother with DC.

Oh, dear....

If you get hit and can't maintain seaworthiness then scuttle and
abandon ship.

How do you know whether you can continue to float, move and fight until you try some DC? If I shoot a BB gun into your bridge window, will you scuttle and abandon because you're "damaged" or will you do some basic assessment and almost instantly ignore the damage as trivial? How do you know whether you're seaworthy without knowledge and training to assess the damage and evaluate the risk it poses?

And how do you know whether you can maintain seaworthiness or not? Does that not depend upon the training of the crew and the ability to take off-watch sailors, add men who aren't needed right now, and go fight the fire and flooding? Otherwise, a pinhole below the waterline is fatal because nobody is available or nobody is trained.


Might as well claim "if you trip and graze your knee, don't bother with your immune system, just kill yourself on the spot before septicaemia gets you..."


You are an Elfin Safety operative! I claim my free elastoplast, and condemn you to a life of servitude to Mr Blair and his wife's law practice . . .

It's cheaper to replace the few ships that will be lost than it is to
always carry a big DC crew around plus you reduce the human loses you
suffer.

You don't have any sea time, do you, Henry?

Part of DC is saving the ship to fight on, or escape for repair, or at least to survive to be declared CTL somewhere not too hostile.

The other part of DC is keeping the ship afloat long enough to get the crew - the most valuable and least replaceable component - off in the best shape possible should the ship be beyond salvation.

And damage control isn't the task of some hulking overhead of underemployed brutes, at least not in the RN (and I'd lay money the USN converges on the same answer). It's the job of "everyone not more urgently required elsewhere" which flexes depending on the situation.

There's a training cost involved in putting everyone in the crew through at least the Basic Sea Survival Course or an equivalent (occasional seariders only have to do the shorter Intermediate SSC) but the payoff in flexibility and capability is well worth while, in the same way that the USMC's "Every Marine a rifleman" has both costs and benefits but is assessed as being a net advantage.



Briefing 110%. Audience apparently asleep, or may be off in its own daydreamworld . . .
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