Share this comment
Great and timely post, Sal. And this line caught my eye: "We are going to take a decade to build 16 air defense sites. I think in WWII, Seabees would do it in about 10 weeks."
Umm... Yes. And there's a reason for that... In WWII, Seabees numbered over 250,000 in uniform by June 1945; over 83% deployed Out-CONUS. (Fascinating history here:
Great and timely post, Sal. And this line caught my eye: "We are going to take a decade to build 16 air defense sites. I think in WWII, Seabees would do it in about 10 weeks."
Umm... Yes. And there's a reason for that... In WWII, Seabees numbered over 250,000 in uniform by June 1945; over 83% deployed Out-CONUS. (Fascinating history here: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1962/march/seabees-world-war-ii?check_logged_in=1 ). In terms of Pacific theater, over 175,000 Seabees mobilized out of Port Hueneme alone.
WWII Seabees outnumbered, say, the current size of the US Marine Corps (174,500 active plus 32,000+ reserve). Almost all were trained construction workers & tradespeople, brought into the Navy and given combat arms training on top of their skill set. Important because if civilian construction workers take up arms against their opponent, under international law they can be considered guerillas and treated as such.
From the Proceedings article cited above: "A SeaBee," they said, "is a soldier in a sailor's uniform, with Marine training, doing civilian work at WPA wages."
Of course, by the 1940s US had many skilled construction workers available for service, an outgrowth of FDR's WPA and massive construction efforts building dams out West, and TVA down South. Which is to say that a decade of internal improvements -- bridges, dams, etc -- paid unexpected dividends.
More from Proceedings article: "SeaBees were, for the most part, typical American craftsmen—plumbers, carpenters, steam-shovel operators, truck drivers, wharf builders, engineers, surveyors, draftsmen, clerks, lawyers, teachers, preachers, cooks, and bakers—in fact, almost every trade and profession was represented in the ranks of the SeaBees. Of the 10,000 officers, almost 85 per cent had one or more college degrees, mostly in engineering. Others were honor graduates of the "University of Hard Knocks," tempered in the fire of the highly competitive construction industry. Most of the officers had been contractors, project managers, superintendents, and foremen on construction operations in civil life."
Plenty more history out there about Seabees. Sad to say, much of it is that proverbial "history that nobody knows." Neglected and long forgotten, Now, to be re-learned the hard way, it appears.
I know it. My nephew SeaBee is a Senior Chief stationed in Pearl. The last one of my family still serving.
We should bring back the WPA / CCC again. It has shown to work.
You'd probably have to draft people into a new WPA/CCC. It is hard, icky work that is done with your hands.
You mean it's "work Americans won't do"? I think I have an solution.
Where have you been?
"AmeriCorps officially the Corporation for National and Community Service or CNCS) is an independent agency of the United States government that engages more than five million Americans in service through a variety of stipended volunteer work programs in many sectors."
Wikipedia
Very few actually building and working with their hands.
Of course not, silly. They are Government employees! Very few work with their brains, either.
Hard times produce hard men…….
A shout out to Admiral Ben Moreell
My father was a SeaBee in the Great Pacific War, toiling away on various and sundry base-building projects on Okinawa. Fortunately Mr. Truman bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki so he didn't have to undertake a pleasure cruise to Kyushu for Operation Olympic ...
The SeaBees have a permanent facility on Guam, adjacent to the naval base. It's named Camp Covington. Turn 'em loose. They're already on site.