Friday, June 14, 2013

NOW HEAR THIS!

NOW COMMENCE THE PHASING OUT OF THE USE OF ALL-CAPS MESSAGES WITHIN THE NAVY!

OK, it made sense back in the 1850s when teletype machines were first put into use. And it kind of made sense through the Morse code and HF TTY broadcast days, for at least you knew that the way it read when you sent it was the way that it would be read.

But yeah, it's about time that the all-caps format died.

Speaking of dying an unlamented death, it appears that Aquaflage may also be doomed. Can't happen soon enough. It was a stupid uniform when it was adopted and it's only gotten worse.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I always figured it made sense that naval orders were shouted in all caps. Like NAZI SUBMARINE POD ON IT'S WAY! PREPARE DEPTH CHARGES!

Comrade Misfit said...

Back then, I don't believe anyone really differentiated between "Nazis" and "Germans".

Slybrarian said...

It's actually an important distinction. A German submarine is just a regular bog-standard U-boat. A Nazi submarine pod, on the other hand, is powered by Nazi super-science. This might seem worrisome, but given that Nazi super-weapons tended to make the F-35 look cheap and reliable. You mostly wanted to get out of the way before its highly unstable rocket fuel exploded and set everyone nearby on fire.

ASM826 said...

Blue-grey Navy camo makes no sense at all. If you go overboard, do you really want to blend into the ocean? Blaze orange and yellow uniforms for sea duty would make more sense than that.

Divemedic said...

As a comment on the Aquaflage: It certainly looks better than the dungarees and boondockers. The Navy has always been ashamed of that particular uniform, and has always been the only service to prohibit the wearing of the working uniform off base.
The asinine practice of requiring sailors to starch and press spotless working uniforms (dungarees) on board a ship, especially for engineering department personnel who would regularly be covered in grease and CHT stains (I kid on the CHT) never made sense to me.