Reserve Officers Candidate School - Rocs and Shoals Yearbook (Long Beach, CA)

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explained the various characteristics that a fighting ship might have that a Sub tender might not. lt delved into the complexities of writing a military letter, the vital study of damage control and the basic principles of military iustice. The Navigator is one of the most important indi- viduals on board any vessel, for it is his job to deter- mine the position of the ship for immediate reference by any and all departments on the ship. He is the person responsible for keeping many of the ship's logs. Still his biggest iob is navigation. He must be familiar with signs of the weather and have a knowl- edge of ocean currents, tides and winds. To deter- mine his position at sea he uses such instruments as the sextant, the pitometer, the compass, the chron- ometer and of course charts and maps. With all these items he must be familiar and have a knowl- edge of how to operate them, and, most important, his work must be dependable. Therefore, great em- phasis was placed on the study of basic and ad- vanced navigation. ln all the five weeks of studying, the ROCS had to learn these things as well as many others. As empha- sized before, the ways and means of any fighting organization depends on the training and spirit of its men. The Navy is only as good as her men . . . and with the college background and the enlisted train- ing ofthe ROC each candidate left this school to be- come another well trained addition to a great fighting force, the U. S. Navy. .,.,p.- ,v-.C-'k3 L-atv-ff rf' ., .,yfWJbr ' r4tMAS.s-4 I . pm,-,s.. in 'li x- av! MV: .3 1

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Section Leaders Report , ACADEMICS The United States Naval Officer is the most highly educated military man in the world . . . and rightly must be so. His every-day contact with the equip- ment of the highest technical nature makes the edu- cation a prime requisite in enabling him to under- stand and accomplish his assigned duties. lt is the Navy's iob to maintain control of the seas . . . and to deny its use to the enemy. This is handled by the effective use of ships which involves the em- ployment, support and mobility of the floating forces. To do these iobs effectively every man must be highly trained for his work. A Naval Officer must be prepared to navigate the seas he hopes to control and be better at this than the enemy he wishes to keep from that sea. Thus, he studies the arts of navigation, its applications and theories. He must be prepared to fight the enemy to main- tain his conrtol of the seas, and must be technically more informed of the weapons used to accomplish this. Therefore, the ROC had to learn the art of war and weapons and be able to maintain, repair, and effectively use all naval ordnance. To this end he studies Naval Gunnery. No fighting operation is complete without a planned attack and preparation and no Navy can fight its battles without a thoroughly uniform and spirited organization with a history, discipline, and an understanding of the art of seamanship. Thus all men are oriented to the customs and traditions of the Navy, and to the methods and principles used to operate its ships. To learn this there was Orientation. So there were three subiects for study, Navigation, Gunnery, and Orientation. Each must be dwelt on in the light of the limiting characteristics that are imposed by the sea and its action on the ships we sail. ln Gunnery we learned to compensate for the roll of the ship on the effectiveness of our weapons on special targets. In Navigation we have no stationary landmarks on the high seas, so we learn to' navigate without them. In Orientation, the ROCS were taught the methods of building special ships for special iobs, Supply Ships or Oilers, vessels enabling the cruising range of our fighting ships to be lengthened. Weekly departmental tests, and frequent quizzes were the devices used to measure the achievement of the students. The marks were issued on a 4.0-as- perfect system and a 2.5-as-failing. The persons who did not manage to make a 2.5 or better for the week were hung on the Tree, while all those in the lower Zfa of the class had to attend a compulsory study hall the night before the next exam in that subiect. The book issued in Gunnery was full of schemes and diagrams of Naval Ordnance and its component parts. Each section is covered thoroughly either as a ROC Two or as a One. ln the first year, the four main Naval guns were discussed, along with such topics as ammunition, powder, fuses, proiectiles and sights. Then, the men were introduced to a basic ballistic problem in the form of a Line Of Sight dia- gram. During the second summer of gunnery, the topics were computors, range finders, directors, Atomic En- ergy and iet power. As in all other subiects, visual aid played a part in demonstrating the complicated mechanisms that op- erate the naval guns. Fortunately, the U. S. Naval Air Reserve Unit on the station had a large Armory with ordnance equipment that was used in weekly practical classes. One of the more interesting aspects of becoming an officer was learning the history, customs and tra- ditions ofthe U. S. Navy. From John Paul Jones and his bold attack on the British to the War in the Pa- cific, the history of the Navy was presented. An all inclusive course such as orientation discussed the nautical terms that a Naval Officer might use, or

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THE ART CF NAVIGATING Navigation is a practical science, and as such many training aids can be employed to clarify the theories about which the text books always talk. At the left are shown a group of ROC Ones shooting the sun with their sextants on a mock-up ship used for training purposes. Much of the time in the advanced navigation course is concerned with celestial navigation. More compli- cated plotting situations and greater knowledge of radar, loran, and other means of electronic methods gave ROCS the final touches of their foundation in navigation before re- ceiving their bars. NAVIGATION stuov HALL fl Enlightenment often came. M Comm.nde,G.d....,.....C.,m..n...,,H.,., A xg L sl 0 w '. E 0 Zigi.:-5 l'c?T? YI Q0 I' 5 ' l cz 3 4' ' ' u ' - uwgg... 64 P l