Little ship, big job: LCUs offer opportunities - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Little ship, big job: LCUs offer opportunities

ABOARD LANDING CRAFT UTILITY 1681 — The gray hull utility landing craft cut its way through the summertime crowd of personal watercraft, sailboats and cruisers on San Diego Bay, and neared the amphibious assault ship Boxer, anchored a mile offshore in relatively calm Pacific waters.

As missions go, this day’s tasking is meat-and-potatoes: dropping off mail and picking up some 120 passengers, mostly visiting midshipmen from the Naval Academy, for the trek to Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, Calif.

To do that, the all-enlisted crew of 10 with Assault Craft Unit 1 had to get LCU 1681 into the ship’s well deck.

Inside the small pilothouse, Engineman 2nd Class Tommy Wylie and Quartermaster 2nd Class (SW/AW) Andrew Duggar, the navigator, handled controls and levers that adjusted the engines and trimmed the rudders to maneuver the 135-foot craft into position for the final stretch into the flooding well deck.

Wylie and Duggar couldn’t see directly in front of the craft because the bow ramp blocked their view, so they listened to QM1 (SW) Kelvin Nazario, who was standing one deck up in the conning tower.

With the green light from Boxer’s well deck control, the crew drove the craft into Spot 2, then waited for the eight feet of water to subside enough to put down the ramp and take on the passengers.

Nazario, as craft master, is the de facto boss of LCU 1681 and its crew. Although the job offers opportunities you can’t get in other billets, not many people know about it — a problem senior sailors and officers would like to change as they seek to fill personnel gaps.

When the landing craft deploys, Nazario has to lead the crew of 10 sailors operating a craft originally designed for a crew of 14.

Ten is two fewer than the notional manning for each craft: a craft master, chief engineer, navigator, culinary specialist, electrician, second engineer, loadmaster, quartermaster, two firemen and two seamen.

Sailors back from one LCU deployment have volunteered and crossdecked to another craft to support ACU 1’s 16 craft, including four forward-deployed to Sasebo, Japan. To fill manning requirements, unit leaders said, some sailors from its shore support have volunteered to deploy with an LCU crew, a tricky reassignment to the sea duty billet.

It’s the same situation with ACU 1’s 15 other craft, including another 16 assigned to their East Coast counterpart, ACU 2, at Little Creek, Va.

The LCU community, with nearly 300 in each unit, has only nine officers working shore duty, with crews assigned to landing craft that haul Marines, vehicles, gear and supplies along with sailors assigned to the prepositioning force and shore support. Each craft is led by the craft master, usually a chief but more often a first class petty officer.

“In Vietnam, there were officers who were in charge on these boats,” said Chief Navy Counselor (SW) Jamie Harris, ACU 1’s career counselor. Since the Navy opened craft masters to first class petty officers two years ago, “there’s a lot of capable first classes.”

‘Self-sustaining’ craft

Each LCU is like a small ship, with a galley, small laundry, two main and three auxiliary machinery spaces, armory and magazine.

Inside craft 1632, recently upgraded with modern navigation and communications, the half-dozen blue-covered barstools along one side of the long stainless steel galley give the feel of a small railcar diner. A stacked washer and dryer fill space inside the two-toilet and shower head, with pocket doors providing some privacy. Below decks, a lounge adjoins a two-person stateroom and decent berthing space. Some of the craft are being reconfigured with a compartment for female sailors.

Crews usually eat, sleep and work aboard their craft, even when it’s in a ship’s well deck.

“Think of it like an RV that takes tanks to the battle,” said LCU 1632’s QM2 Thomas Kerr. “We’re self-sustaining.”

Jobs such as fighting fires, handling lines, and treating the sick or injured fall to a crew of 10.

The duty “demands flexibility, especially when you start talking about lookouts, so if you’re short, that kind of basically puts a crimp on your crew,” said Command Master Chief (SW/AW) Billy Ward Jr., ACU 1’s top sailor. “Everyone has to work together as a team.”

To ease the load, Ward wants to see more sailors volunteering for and getting orders to the ACUs. He’s even reached out to his shore-side support to encourage enginemen to cross over and help fill billets on deploying craft. “We take volunteers first, but the mission must go on,” he said.

His pitch to sailors? “This is an opportunity to go out and get qualified” — and perhaps get promoted more quickly.

“It’s a big job, and a lot of responsibilities for these guys, and not just the craft master. It’s an all-hands evolution,” said Cmdr. Andy Amidon, ACU 1’s commander.

Sailors say they make the most of the busy duty. “Where else can you have 10 guys working together and coming together as a team?” said QM1 (SW) Jerry Tredo, a craft master who’s done three deployments with ACU 1 and is extending for two more years. “I love it.”

It’s a duty that demands every sailor have skills beyond his rate. Wylie has become a pro with communications and is learning about engines to qualify as chief engineer. “A lot of people on ship ... they don’t get their hands on the diesels. Here, we have to rebuild our engines,” he said.

Duggar is working the radios, learning how to fix what on other ships is the job of electronics technicians. “You get a better work ethic with a smaller crew,” said Duggar, who joined ACU 1 after tours aboard the aircraft carrier George Washington and three minesweepers.

Sailors find that such proficiency can enhance their careers.

ACU 1 is Wylie’s first Navy command. Already he’s earned his surface and aviation enlisted warfare pins, and he’s gunning for a chief engineer qual. “We have to be professional about what we do, because we’re in such small quarters. It’s like a small family,” he said.

ACU sailors hope their work pays off with advancements and other recognition, but they know many sailors and even officers are unfamiliar with their community and the LCU’s role as a workhorse hauler.

Harris wondered whether advancement and career boards focus only on sailors’ shipboard tours. “Not having a ‘USS’ in front, how do we compare with, say, a master chiefs’ board?” he said. “Do people understand who’s getting more experience?”