3 Reasons a Shipboard Petty Officer is Secretly a Superhero
I'm Pretty Sure Petty Officers are Superheroes A Petty Officer is a strange creature. They're technical experts, junior leaders, and expert sailors. Most have been through the grinder a bit already. They've still got just enough spirit to cause trouble, with the...
Naval Air Stations: Paradise and Flightlines
Naval Air Stations: Love 'em or not, they're home. Every Naval Air Station has something amazing about it. They also always have something wrong with them. Your Flightline is your home. You can always take pride in the birds you put in the air regardless of where you...
The History of the US Navy Chief
If you're in the Navy, if you've ever done a Sailor of the Quarter Board in your life, you know the rank of Chief Petty Officer was established on April 1, 1893. This means that there's a nonzero possibility it was done as an April Fool's Prank. In 1958, the ranks of...
9/11: Fifteen Years Later in the United States
9/11: The Day of Infamy, Revisited Fifteen Years Later We all remember the events that took place that day. A day forever immortalized in the public's memory, the only day that every single American remembers specifically: 9/11. I remember almost nothing of 8th Grade,...
Navy Crow’s Sea Story Sunday: Sasebo, Japan Edition!
My only time spent in mainland Japan was in the lovely city of Sasebo. It was a lovely city, and it doesn't deserve what us drunken sailors do to it. This particular night was brought to you by an independent steaming deployment in 2010. We had already been to...
A Story of Chiefs (From a Bluejacket)
The Three Chiefs Let's get one thing out of the way: Chiefs are people. I'm not a Chief, just someone who's dealt with Chiefs, so if you disagree with anything that follows, no big deal. Still, if you're willing to take criticism onboard, this is one sailor's...
What It Means to be a First-class Petty Officer
What It Means to be a First-class Petty Officer Being a First-class Petty Officer means a lot of things to a lot of people. To your junior guys, it means you’re a subject matter expert. It means you’re the barrier between the command and them. They rely on your...
Sea Story Sundays: The Day GMSN Brown Pooped
Sea Story Sundays: The Day GMSN Brown Pooped Oh, liberty stories. Every sailor worth his salt has one. That one time a sailor got caught banging a hooker in the middle of Texas Street in Busan at 2 p.m. The time your shipmate got busted by NCIS trying to sell meth to...
Leak Classified Material, Go to Prison (or Run for President)
Leaking classified material is a long, proud tradition in the Navy. When you've got incredibly disgruntled 20-somethings right next to nuclear reactors, the odds that one of them is going to try and sell invaluable military secrets to the Chinese approaches one pretty...
Navy Purple Heart Hero: John H. Willis
Purple Heart Recipient John Harlan Willis: American Badass World War 2 is known among military enthusiasts as “that one time everybody became total badasses and fought the frickin’ Nazis.” A number of noteworthy names are recorded in the history books, but since this...
4 Ways Sailors Lead From the Front
The term “deckplate leadership” gets thrown around a lot, even more so since the advent of CPO 365. There’s a big deal made out of being an enlisted leader, and for good reason. If you think it’s a bunch of crap, you haven’t worked for a bad chief. Knowing how to...
Discover the Tradition of the Purple Heart
The Purple Heart. You've seen it on license plates, knew it was for troops injured in conflict. But did you know its history? Do you know the long, proud tradition of this great award? The History of the Purple Heart The tradition of the Purple Heart began with the...