It is time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.
Also, the USNI sale has begun, although with some different details from last year. Post coming next week.
Overhauls are Iowa part 1, The Space Force and the FAA, my review of the 45th Infantry Division Museum, Early Guided Weapons Parts one and two, Taranto and for 2023, Is This a Battleship? - A Guide for Journalists.
Comments
Something I realized I don't know: how do they set the complement of a ship? E.g., the Wikipedia page for the USS Missouri says it was designed as 117 officers and 1807 EMs. How'd they arrive at that number?
I'd guess that they got that number by the number of people they needed at general quarters and then tetrised them into required billets for normal underway operations (Hmmm, we need 1924 at their battle stations, so out of that number we need to make of them cooks...). It's hard for me to imagine it'd be the other way around. Or is there some method that combines underway and combat requirements?
@CatCube: there were lists like this or this of the positions to be filled and the skills they required.
I don't know whether the total was primarily set by the in-battle requirement (most on duty, for maximum readiness), the out-of-battle requirement (fewer on duty at a time, but needs to allow enough rest to maintain that number for longer periods), or both (if skilled labor is the limit and they require different skills). (Adding up that list won't necessarily tell you, as it's likely that some marginal duties aren't worth assigning more crew for but are better than nothing if you already have crew to spare, and hence that it makes sense to assign everyone both an in-battle and an out-of-battle duty.)
I’m honestly not entirely sure, but I suspect it was a combination of methods. For instance, engineering was probably set by crewing during normal operations, at least after the adoption of oil. Skilled gun crews and the like would be set by GQ considerations to operate the equipment onboard. Marines and DC specialists and deck apes might well have just been based on the size/type of ship. And after that, you go, “well, for X base crew, we need Y cooks, Z yeoman, and so on”. And then see if you can fill your GQ watchbill for unskilled labor. If not, add more seamen apprentices and repeat.
I also wouldn't be surprised if minor changes to complement were fairly common after the first couple cruises of a new type, even if we ignore the addition of equipment that took place during the war. (I'm not even sure how much of that was raw equipment and how much was "people are spending more time at GQ and thus have less time to do basic maintenance tasks".) Plus, you have existing ships to draw on when figuring out how many people are needed.
Related: crew size apparently depending on both in-battle and out-of-battle requirements, and ships operating below their nominal complement.