After the Bainbridge's first refueling, we of course went through REFTRA, days on end of constant engineering drills run around the clock by the Chief Engineer and the MPA (the REFTRA engineers were not NUC rated, hence not allowed in the engine room. Boy were they ticked off). Anyway, the ship was awarded an Engineering E. Wow, after all that work, an Engineering E to sew on my uniform. But wait, ET's were not engineering ratings, so, no E for me. The reason, well it was thought that an E on a no-engineer's uniform would raise all types of grief for ET's by SP's and MP's. Oh, well, just another disappointment.
Then came the discussion of where to paint the E on the ship. At the time, an Engineering E award was to be displayed on the forward boiler room stack. What do you do if your ship does not have a stack? Well, we ended up painting it on the forward engineering space ventilation intakes, or close to it.
I guess it matters not these days as the cloth E on the uniform is no more, and I see the Engineering E's are now on the bridge wings. A bit of Navy tradition gone.
But then again, how many of you remember who was the "Oil King" and what he did? Yeh, I know, you submarine guys are now rolling your eyes.
