US Navy is making chaplains a permanent part of destroyer crews

[OceanBonfire]

Before that, chaplains were farmed out to destroyers during workups and deployments as visiting “ship riders,” according to Naval Surface Forces.

...

Chaplains are already part of the guided-missile cruiser and aircraft carrier fleet.

The Navy is making chaplains a permanent part of destroyer crews

The effort began last month in the always-busy Japan-based U.S. 7th Fleet.

www.militarytimes.com

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Can they source enough Chaplains for this?

 

[dimsum]

The Navy is making chaplains a permanent part of destroyer crews

The effort began last month in the always-busy Japan-based U.S. 7th Fleet.

www.militarytimes.com

Hmm. I don't know how busy Chaplains are onboard ship, so I can't really comment on the usefulness of having them onboard full-time.

Can they also have secondary (non-Chaplain) duties? Obviously they aren't going to be part of a gun crew or anything combat-related.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Another officer for the OOD rotation ?

 

[Navy_Pete]

I'm good with this; we had a chaplain jump on as a rider for one of our TRP sails (think most stuff is broken, crewing below optimal levels, and out doing all kinds of trials with a weird schedule).

The feedback from the chaplain was the only thing that got our schedule adjusted a bit (from medieval to just punishing).

No idea if we have enough chaplains to support a full time permanent position, but rotating them onto ships in low readiness/trials would be huge, as that's actually the hardest part of the operational cycle for the majority of the crew. The deployment is when you finally have everything working, get full support from the machine and have all your billets filled, so it's weirdly the easiest part of the job.

 

[Blackadder1916]

So, hope and a prayer are now legitimate military courses of action.

 

[dapaterson]

If the Met Tech isn't giving you the forecast you want, "What can you do for me, padre?"

 

[quadrapiper]

I'm good with this; we had a chaplain jump on as a rider for one of our TRP sails (think most stuff is broken, crewing below optimal levels, and out doing all kinds of trials with a weird schedule).

The feedback from the chaplain was the only thing that got our schedule adjusted a bit (from medieval to just punishing).

No idea if we have enough chaplains to support a full time permanent position, but rotating them onto ships in low readiness/trials would be huge, as that's actually the hardest part of the operational cycle for the majority of the crew. The deployment is when you finally have everything working, get full support from the machine and have all your billets filled, so it's weirdly the easiest part of the job.

Would a couple of "floating" chaplains at the dockyards be enough to cover that sort of duty?

 

[stoker dave]

I have sailed with padres onboard. They were all generally likeable fellows who seemed to be able to carve out a role for themselves: addressing and solving personal issues (mostly related to problems at home while the ship is deployed) was their strong suit.

For action/emergency stations, I would vote to make them part of the medical team who address mental health issues (is "psychiatrist tech" a thing?).

 

[GR66]

Would a couple of "floating" chaplains at the dockyards be enough to cover that sort of duty?

If the chaplains are "floating" I'm guessing that the prayers didn't work

 

[Navy_Pete]

Would a couple of "floating" chaplains at the dockyards be enough to cover that sort of duty?

That's sort of what we had now, but typically they used to focus more on the deployers. Not sure if it was something specific to the individual chaplains but really made a huge difference for ships doing trials.

Not going to lie, leveraged the padre to get priority for repairs to the hot water system. That CPF system is a dumpster fire, and maintaining basic hotel services is an inordinate amount of work on that class.