Can you choose between a SSN and SSBN when in the navy?
Before you complete Submarine School at New London you are given a Dream Sheet to pick where you want to be stationed. Picking between SSN and SSBN is easy. You also can call your detailer on the telephone and ask what is available. Most detailers are easy to talk to and will grant your request for a specific Home Port or Ship if a position is available. Do this a couple of months before you are scheduled to get orders. Each Navy Rating has a Detailer in Washington. It is an enlisted man/woman either a First Class or Chief. Find out who your detailer is. Call every time you are due for transfer. Makes life a lot eaiser.
Can I request what ship and base to be stationed at in the US navy as an E-3?
The phrase they kept using when I was in the Navy was "Needs of the Navy." Generally speaking, the Navy wants happy sailors, so they will try, within reason, to assign you to your dream sheet or something similar. But the Navy has a very specific manpower system, where each command has a slot for each person in each job (called a billet) and those billets have to be filled. There are three categories on a dream sheet, if I recall correctly: Location, Ship Class and Priority. You tell the Navy where you would prefer to be homeported, and what type of ship you'd like to be assigned to (for nukes, at the time, this was CVNs, CGNs, SSNs or SSBNs) and which of these two factors is more important to you.For example, I listed Kings Bay, GA, Groton, CT and Norfolk, VA as my preferred homeports, in that order. I listed SSBN, SSN, CGN, CVN as my preferred ship classes. And I (stupidly) listed homeport as my priority over ship class. This resulted in my being assigned to USS Enterprise, CVN-65, as she was being readied to deploy and in need of manpower (in Navy-language, she had many open billets that needed to be filled before deploying) and she was homeported in Norfolk, which I had listed as a preferred homeport. Why? Because even though I was a submarine volunteer and listed two submarine classes as my first two preferences, there were no submarine nuke MM billets open in Kings Bay or Groton, so the Navy assumed that I would prefer any ship in Norfolk over a submarine anywhere else. And the NEEDS OF THE NAVY were aboard Enterprise, so off I went, straight from Nuke Prototype to a Mediterranean deployment.Had I chosen ship class over homeport, I could have been assigned to a submarine on the West Coast. All the CGNs were being decommissioned at the time, so that was a pipedream. I like to say that Detailers have a twisted sense of humor - they couldn't get me a submarine out of Kings Bay or Groton, and the Needs of the Navy were elsewhere, so they put me on the carrier most likely to sink. Close enough, right?In retrospect, I'm glad I got surfaced. I got to see a lot of the world and served on a proud and distinguished ship. I wouldn't change a thing. And that's my advice to you - unless you have family concerns or some other overarching reason, go where the Navy sends you. Take the adventure, and let it make you a better person.
Hi. I enlisted in the navy yesterday, 20160408 as a YNS (Yeoman Submarine) and I'll be shipping out on 20161025. How is Submarine school?
Can I get information about being on a sub as a Yeoman? What is life like? Are the sea duties long? When I'm not at sea, I'll be at the place I'm stationed correct? And will I have a choice of where I would like to be stationed?