Battle Stations

Here is a great explanation and description of Battle Stations. Patrick will go through this on Monday April 7th.

USS Trayer is the Navy’s latest training tool and part of Battle Stations 21, a culmination of basic training and a recruit's last evolution in boot camp.Before recruits graduate from boot camp, they spend an entire night on board Trayer loading stores, getting underway, handling mooring lines, manning general quarter stations, stopping floods and combating shipboard fires. It is as close to being underway as a recruit can get before they receive orders to their first ship. It is also considered the final evaluation of a recruit’s reactions in tight situations and a chance for the recruit to see how far they have come in their training.“It’s 12 hours of anything that can happen aboard a ship at sea from missile attacks that can cause fires to flooding caused by exploding undersea mines,” said McKinley. Battle Stations 21 also uses lessons learned from actual events, attacks and mishaps at sea. The 2000 terrorist attack on USS Cole (DDG 67) in Yemen, mine damage to USS Tripoli (LPH 10) in Desert Storm in 1990, and the missile attack to USS Stark (FFG 31) in the Persian Gulf in 1987 have all been incorporated into the training curriculum. The training also incorporates past and historic at-sea accidents, like the fire on board USS Forrestal (CV 59) during the Vietnam War in 1967.The destroyer simulator was designed by award-winning Hollywood set designers and has state-of-the-art special effects technology. There are scenes and flats on the pier that can be changed to make it look like the ship has pulled into a new port.Trayer also sits in a pool of more than 90,000 gallons of water and there is a lighting system to make it look day or night on the pier. All this scenery and Hollywood-style setting is the first thing the more than 80 recruits from each division see before boarding the destroyer for their “underway” time.“You actually feel like you’re coming down a pier, walking across the brow and boarding a ship. Then you feel like the ship is under attack and you have to fight the ship, stop the fires and flooding, to save the ship,” McKinley said.Trayer is outfitted inside and out with salvaged gauges, pipes and electrical gear from decommissioned ships. Inside, compartments are outfitted with berthing spaces, control rooms and the bridge. There are also special controlled areas where magazine spaces flood and compartments are engulfed in flames.“We’ll now be able to give these new Sailors a chance to see what real battle damage, real flooding and a real on board fire can do and what it takes to fix it, stop it or put it out,” said Senior Chief Quartermaster (SW) Anthony A. Kachinsky