What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

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zappey1
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What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

#1

Post by zappey1 » Thu Dec 12, 2019 9:22 pm

I arrived at boot camp in June. I thought it was going to be all “Full Metal Jacket”. What I got was much more mundane. The first week or so in boot camp is called P-days (processing days). You get lots of shots and wait in lots of lines. You also do not have your uniforms yet so everyone runs around in blue Navy sweat suits. Because of this all blue attire you get the nick name of “Smurfs”. Not exactly the elite training I had been thinking of. I don’t remember that much physical activity yet. I do remember lots of yelling, some push up and lots of waiting in lines.

Once you get out P-days you get moved to you barracks and get issued a sea bag with all your uniforms. Now the monotony of boot camp sets in. Each item must be correctly stenciled with you last name and division number. After this each item must be folded perfectly. Including your “skivvie stack” underwear and white t-shirts. If they are not folded and stenciled perfectly. If your uniform is not perfectly pressed. If your boots are not perfectly shined. If you do not know a piece of obscure military knowledge you are getting beat.

Getting beat is not when your boot camp instructors physically beast you. Getting beat means they make you do calisthenics until either you collapse while they yell at you or until they get board or find another recruit to pick on. You do not get to be called a sailor until you graduate boot camp. Until you graduate, they call you recruit and periodically will use your last name.

On top of getting “beat” sometimes several times a day. You have about an hour of division PT every day and about an hour of running a day. You also must march all over a giant base for all types of stupid ass reasons. At first this was way more exercises then I was used to. But after several weeks I was in great shape and would often make jokes with the RDC (Recruit Division Commanders). While I was getting beat to lighten the mood and boost morale. My Chief would tell me “Either you’re going to get stronger or smarter.” I would enthusiastically reply “Yes Chief thank you for educating my mind body and soul.”

You also eat lots of high calorie food in boot camp. It is not great but there is lots of it. I packed on a good 20 lbs. of somewhat lean muscle during boot camp. Taking me from 175/185 ish to 205lbs or so.

All these boot camp shenanigans culminate in a final event called “Battle Stations.” You must run around this giant base and use all the skills you learned in a high stress environment. You are up for 2 days doing all these simulated disaster-like events. They have fire rooms, flood rooms, fake tornado rooms, divers trying to drown you in a giant pool, gun shooting areas. This was by far the coolest most exciting part of boot camp. At the end, if you make it through you finally get your Navy ball cap. All the dick RDC’s call you shipmate and it is a very emotional moment.

Boot camp is very physically and mentally demanding. It is very tedious for a large portion. You must take lots of boring ass classes and do TONS of folding and ironing just right. It does have a few cool exciting moments. Most people will get in better shape. There were zero free weights to use when I went. I want to say the drop out rate when I went was roughly 20%. I’m not sure what it is now.

This is long again. If people are still interested, I will post a part 3 when I went to my training school and started lifting again.

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Re: What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

#2

Post by Murelli » Fri Dec 13, 2019 5:46 am

Resonates a little with my experience going to officer's training course (as opposed to those who go to the Naval School and spend their college years in uniform, we were people who went to regular colleges and entered the Navy with a degree) in the resolute Brazilian Navy, although we had 2 weeks of marching, PT, and drills, with some of that military culture shenanigans interspersed. We were called "candidates" (you enter the OTC via a public tendering / entrance examination) before those weeks ended, then we became Midshipmen and wore our grey, white and blue uniforms for the rest of the nine months.

The rest of OTC was a lot of classes (leadership, oral communication, naval comms, naval architecture, weapon systems, naval writing, naval history, naval and military law, weapons training, firefighting) and at least twice a week PT. Since my platoon had a lot of free time, we also had the most drilling of all platoons. We also had a month of internship in some real naval unit (Weapons Maintenance Center's torpedo shop, in my case) and a month of drilling for the big graduation.

FWIW, I still have my sword and my rank (only the president can destitute a brazilian officer's rank) and still hold dear some of the theoretical and practical knowledge from those times.

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Re: What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

#3

Post by zappey1 » Fri Dec 13, 2019 6:23 am

Murelli wrote: Fri Dec 13, 2019 5:46 am Resonates a little with my experience going to officer's training course (as opposed to those who go to the Naval School and spend their college years in uniform, we were people who went to regular colleges and entered the Navy with a degree) in the resolute Brazilian Navy, although we had 2 weeks of marching, PT, and drills, with some of that military culture shenanigans interspersed. We were called "candidates" (you enter the OTC via a public tendering / entrance examination) before those weeks ended, then we became Midshipmen and wore our grey, white and blue uniforms for the rest of the nine months.

The rest of OTC was a lot of classes (leadership, oral communication, naval comms, naval architecture, weapon systems, naval writing, naval history, naval and military law, weapons training, firefighting) and at least twice a week PT. Since my platoon had a lot of free time, we also had the most drilling of all platoons. We also had a month of internship in some real naval unit (Weapons Maintenance Center's torpedo shop, in my case) and a month of drilling for the big graduation.

FWIW, I still have my sword and my rank (only the president can destitute a brazilian officer's rank) and still hold dear some of the theoretical and practical knowledge from those times.
Thanks for sharing. If any of my kids want to join the service I want them to do what you did. Go to college first and go the officer route.

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Re: What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

#4

Post by Murelli » Fri Dec 13, 2019 6:34 am

zappey1 wrote: Fri Dec 13, 2019 6:23 am
Murelli wrote: Fri Dec 13, 2019 5:46 am Resonates a little with my experience going to officer's training course (as opposed to those who go to the Naval School and spend their college years in uniform, we were people who went to regular colleges and entered the Navy with a degree) in the resolute Brazilian Navy, although we had 2 weeks of marching, PT, and drills, with some of that military culture shenanigans interspersed. We were called "candidates" (you enter the OTC via a public tendering / entrance examination) before those weeks ended, then we became Midshipmen and wore our grey, white and blue uniforms for the rest of the nine months.

The rest of OTC was a lot of classes (leadership, oral communication, naval comms, naval architecture, weapon systems, naval writing, naval history, naval and military law, weapons training, firefighting) and at least twice a week PT. Since my platoon had a lot of free time, we also had the most drilling of all platoons. We also had a month of internship in some real naval unit (Weapons Maintenance Center's torpedo shop, in my case) and a month of drilling for the big graduation.

FWIW, I still have my sword and my rank (only the president can destitute a brazilian officer's rank) and still hold dear some of the theoretical and practical knowledge from those times.
Thanks for sharing. If any of my kids want to join the service I want them to do what you did. Go to college first and go the officer route.
That's a nice condition to put, and it sounds nice:

"First you graduate college, then you can do whatever the hell you like". It works for other things too (like tattoos, marriage, living abroad, etc.).

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Re: What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

#5

Post by Hanley » Wed Dec 18, 2019 10:12 am

Haven't used it once since I learned it and I've brain-dumped it...but we were taught celestial navigation Coast Guard OCS.

Hopefully it'll come back quickly in the event I need it in a post-apocalyptic maritime hellscape.

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Re: What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

#6

Post by zappey1 » Wed Dec 18, 2019 12:28 pm

Hanley wrote: Wed Dec 18, 2019 10:12 am Haven't used it once since I learned it and I've brain-dumped it...but we were taught celestial navigation Coast Guard OCS.

Hopefully it'll come back quickly in the event I need it in a post-apocalyptic maritime hellscape.
SO much useless knowledge to memorize! If you can't recite it from memory at boot camp it is 10+ minutes of Calisthenics while some one yells at you!
Celestial navigation might one day come in handy. What about all the classes on describing military uniform devices? We also had several classes on the different types of ships and their numbering systems.

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Re: What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

#7

Post by OrderInChaos » Wed Dec 18, 2019 2:25 pm

They pushed the majority of that shit to NKO/E-learning (yes even at Boot Camp) by 2014, so it was in and out the ears respectively. Meanwhile my great uncle went to the state Academy at Vallejo and learned spherical trig and had to do a summer cruise with tests of navigation by sextant...

Even at core government functions like the military, the government just keeps getting worse at what it does :lol:

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Re: What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

#8

Post by zappey1 » Wed Dec 18, 2019 2:33 pm

OrderInChaos wrote: Wed Dec 18, 2019 2:25 pm They pushed the majority of that shit to NKO/E-learning (yes even at Boot Camp) by 2014, so it was in and out the ears respectively. Meanwhile my great uncle went to the state Academy at Vallejo and learned spherical trig and had to do a summer cruise with tests of navigation by sextant...

Even at core government functions like the military, the government just keeps getting worse at what it does :lol:
So what are they spending their time on at boot camp now? Besides marching around singing stupid songs and folding and ironing skivvy stacks?

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Re: What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

#9

Post by KyleSchuant » Wed Dec 18, 2019 3:30 pm

Hanley wrote: Wed Dec 18, 2019 10:12 am Haven't used it once since I learned it and I've brain-dumped it...but we were taught celestial navigation Coast Guard OCS.
I'd like to see you with a sextant.

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Re: What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

#10

Post by platypus » Thu Dec 19, 2019 3:51 pm

Hanley wrote: Wed Dec 18, 2019 10:12 am Haven't used it once since I learned it and I've brain-dumped it...but we were taught celestial navigation Coast Guard OCS.

Hopefully it'll come back quickly in the event I need it in a post-apocalyptic maritime hellscape.
Lucky! All we learned in bootcamp was how to dry automatic sinks without setting them off, how to not sexually assault anyone, and how to hold a full canteen at arms length for thirty minutes.

My favorite part was that we did this ridiculous physical therapy test the first week, and since I squatted properly they put me in physical therapy three times a week, where I got to nap for an hour while the PT played on her phone.

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Re: What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

#11

Post by zappey1 » Thu Dec 19, 2019 9:00 pm

platypus wrote: Thu Dec 19, 2019 3:51 pm
Lucky! All we learned in bootcamp was how to dry automatic sinks without setting them off, how to not sexually assault anyone, and how to hold a full canteen at arms length for thirty minutes.
Now I feel lucky I got to go in 2002. But in hind sight lots of dudes probably should have had that sexual assault training!

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Re: What Navy boot camp was like for me in the US

#12

Post by cole » Wed Jan 01, 2020 6:21 am

i remember a lot of sitting on hard floors, and trying not to nod off all day long. i also remember them not giving us enough time to shower (like 30 sec) which resulted in a lot of really bad smelling young men living together in bunks. boot camp screwed up my feet and back from all the standing at attn and marching in shitty boots and sitting on the floor cross legged style. it was a good exp though

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