Michelson's Navy Detachment
About 20 to 25 US Navy sailors
comprised Oceanographic
Detachment Three (OCDET3). The group’s commanding
officer (CO) was a lieutenant
commander. Reporting to him was the executive officer (XO),
a junior officer. Both
were from the navy reserve. A third officer, usually an ensign, served
as electronics maintenance
officer (EMO). Eligible enlisted men with good technical
skills were sometimes commissioned as electronics
officers. Officers promoted from enlisted ranks are called "mustangs".
I don’t know why such a small group of navy men required three
officers to run it. Perhaps some matters required multiple signatures.
Most enlisted men were technical
types, electronics
technicians (ET), interior comm electricians (IC) and sonarmen
(SO). They were aboard to maintain the electronics that
supported the survey mission. A yeoman (YN),
hospital corpsman (HM), photographer (PH), a storekeeper
(SK) and one or two
quartermasters (QM) filled out the navy crew. All
had recently completed training
for the mission or had years of experience in their fields. Most were
first, second
or third class petty officers along with one or two chief petty
officers.
Navy men aboard
Michelson were treated as passengers, having
nothing to do with operating the ship. That was the job of
the Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS)
merchant mariners.
