It seemed so much simpler 32 years ago,...
I went to the recruiter in February,...
I qualified for nuke the same day, my scores qualified me for ET IIRC,...
I went to AFEES a week later,...
I failed my Farnsworth and my Ishihara, I knew I could see colors, I asked what nuclear rate was allowed to be colorblind in the conventional Navy and I was told MM, I went in as a MM, spent about 10 days in DEP or whatever passed for DEP at that time and went to boot camp in Orlando,...
During A school I went to the nuke recruiter and explained my situation,...
The Senior Chief set me up for another test, after identifying the chartreuse, burnt umber and mauve wires in a big bundle of wiring I was declared "Passed" and my approval for nuke was started,...
I finished A school, got bumped from E-2 to E-3, got approved for nuke, got bumped from E-3 to E-4, got orders to my first sea-going command (a reserve tin can in Pensacola, Fla....sweeeeeeeet), and eventually my orders for nuke power school caught up to me and I showed up at Orlando two days before my nuke school class started up,....
The rest was pretty typical for a nuke MM/ELT in the 1980's,...
I was always happy I got to go through the self paced 1200# superheated steam A school as opposed to the 600# saturated steam A school where the nukes were driven to finish ASAP, regardless of whether they retained any useful knowledge or not,...
