I know this thread is a bit old, but I find it "fun" to add to it. Having served in both the nuclear and non-nuclear, more cleaning was done by E-5's then in the conventional navy because nukes had nothing below E-5 to do the work. The difference was that in the 'real' navy, we had striker's. Yes E-3's to do the dirty deeds. Looking back, it would have been nice to have a few E-3's to polish the brass and copper that was by regulation not be polished, or to cleaned, and to sweep and wash the mats. (fortunately, somehow berthing compartment cleaning did come for engineering "striker's".
Now as to what ET's do, a little story about McNamara and the diode.
One evening, two or three days out from port, engineering drills were being conducted. As part of the exercise on Bainbridge, the #1 plant was shutdown with everything running of #2. Not a big deal, except when the #1 reactor was restarted, it scrammed on start up.
We had an intermediate range neutron instrumentation failure. All test equipment indicate no problem with the instrumentation. Spares where swapped for the defective units, and the same result. The plant scrammed on startup.
Needless to say, the officers and enlisted were going crazy trying to figure out what was happening.
We all knew it was a instrumentation problem, not a reactor problem. I recall conversation with the Captain about that fact. The loss of one instrument does not mean there is an underlying reactor issue.
Still, as was correct, he said "Fix it". Crap, fix what? The test equipment said it worked well, yet on reactor startup, the instrument gave an erroneous excessive neutron rate of increase reading, and caused a scram.
After 36 hours of trying to find the problem, the Old Man told the Chief Engineer I will not go into port on one reactor, nor will I go in with the aid of tugs.
The pressure mounted.
After a bit of time, several ET's (not the senior), got together to try and figure out what was going on. In the end, we had to design our own test equipment, a violation of all protocols, to analyze what was going on.
Then we proved that the spare diodes provided under the McNamara regime did not meet the higher standards our intermediate nuclear instrumentation needed. The unfortunate part of this discovery was that those defective parts had been introduced into our spare equipment.
When we went to supply and asked if the old part numbers were in stock, the answer was yes.
The Captain was happy, the Chief Engineer was happy, my division officer stopped sweating as did I.
Then came the word from supply that they could not find the part. Sorry we cannot find the part was the answer the Supply Chief smugly gave me. Sorry? Well the Old Man did not like that answer.
I remember relating the supply's Chief's story to the Captain, the Chief Engineer, and my Division Officer.
Soon, the Supply Department Officer and everyone under him, including that fat Supply Chief were looking for that little pack of diodes.
Once found and installed in the intermediate range instrumentation, all was well.
Number One reactor came back on line, and we entered port.
Time to recover48~ hours, a long time for me and my colleagues.
Sometimes even ET's have a place as of course all others that make the machine work.
Did I tell you the time they lit off the aft diesel generator without permission, a generator which exhausted directly under the gangway to the aft deck? Yes, they started that beast just as COMCRUSDESPAC boarded. Not a nice picture to see an admiral and his entourage in their summer whites covered in soot. The Captain as I remember was torn between laughter and oh s**t.
Life on a nuclear cruiser had it's moments.
Then there were the ELT's who screwed up big time, so much for the 'elite', a story for another time.
The point of this story is that everyone in propulsion is important. In this case, a few ET's worked out a problem never before encountered, as did other ratings in different times.
