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WWII Navy / Coast Guard General Quarters Question


USAF29thINFvet
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USAF29thINFvet

When "General Quarters" was called on a ship during WWII, which sailors manned the guns / cannons? I understand that machinist types were in the engine room so which "ratings" were responsible for manning the weapons for the ship?

 

Thanks

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Gun crews (loaders, trainers, pointers) consisted of many ratings then. My grandfather (served aboard an APA and) was a ships' cook first class and during GQ, he manned a 40mm A/A gun along with other non-gunner's mates. On combatants, the same would hold true - more and bigger gun mounts required more hands to man them.

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MastersMate

Deck department on CG cutters., the senior boatswains mates were gun captains, seamen formed the mount crew. a rated GM was there for technical matters. Fire Controlmen directed the battery, Ships Cooks and some of the Stewards Dept manned the magazine spaces. Radarmen and Sonarmen the combat info center. Quartermasters and Signalmen the pilothouse. A collection of ratings and seamen manned the damage control repair lockers. Cutters were small ships with small crews.

 

The cutter I was in basically maintained the same GQ bill from WW2, just less crew available..

 

The ship is the weapon and every crewmember is aboard to make the weapon viable. That is the only reason for crew in a warship..

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USAF29thINFvet

Thanks....so if I wanted to add a jumper to my uniform collection of a sailor who would have been in a gun turret or manned a .30 or .50 caliber machine gun, I need to find one that has which rating patch on the sleeve?

 

Thanks again

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MastersMate

They would be called distinguishing marks... Most notable was gun captain, a horizontal gun barrel, then there were marks for pointers and trainers.

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The .50/.30 cal mounts would have a gunners mate. Save yourself some coin and buy a seaman, seaman apprentice.

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Salvage Sailor

The .50/.30 cal mounts would have a gunners mate. Save yourself some coin and buy a seaman, seaman apprentice.

 

S1c Seaman First Class for WWII

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Each ship had a WATCH, QUARTER, AND STATION Bill. The BILL had specific spots for people to go to for certain evolutions. GQ being one of them The point for GQ was to spread the ratings throughout the ship so that if a certain spot was hit, you wouldn't lose all of the expertise so that you could continue to fight and steam the ship.

 

Someone may have been assigned to a gun position, such as a 40mm, 20mm, .50 or .30 cal, who is not rated as a gunner's mate (who's main job was to maintain and fix the weapons), but was found to be a better shot than anyone so he would have been assigned to "fire" the gun.

 

So to answer your question, the answer is "it depends".

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Someone may have been assigned to a gun position, such as a 40mm, 20mm, .50 or .30 cal, who is not rated as a gunner's mate (who's main job was to maintain and fix the weapons), but was found to be a better shot than anyone so he would have been assigned to "fire" the gun.

 

So to answer your question, the answer is "it depends".

 

Precisely. It was about the effectiveness of fighting the ship placing the best people in the best positions to keep the ship in the fight.

 

To the OP's question and more specifically, to best accommodate the reason for his request, seeking a seaman 3/c, 2/c or 1/c uniform would be most fitting. You can safely assume that there were several on any given gun mount aboard any ship.

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