Pigeon trainers, airship riggers, and buglers—these are just a few of the enlisted Navy ratings (jobs) no longer in use due to technological advances. Let’s take a look at some of these ratings and the part they played in the Navy’s history. (Note: this overview is not all-inclusive.)
Ratings Established before or during World War I
Bugler (BUG)
The Navy established the bugler rating in 1871. However, designated sailors have performed bugler duties aboard Navy ships since the early 19th century.
At one time, buglers sounded calls for almost every activity aboard ship. The Navy Manual for Buglers states that bugle calls are categorized as routine, emergency, or a combination of both. Examples of routine calls are “reveille,” “mess call,” “morning colors,” “evening colors,” and “Taps.” Examples of emergency calls are “man overboard,” “general quarters,” and “abandon ship.”
Buglers, unlike U.S. Navy musicians, were not able to advance to petty officer. According to the pamphlet U.S. Navy Enlistment, Instruction, Pay, and Advancement, a bugler second class was paid $33 per month in 1917.
During this era, the Navy offered a bugler course for recruits. To be eligible for the bugler course, prospective buglers needed only to have “some idea of music, have very good teeth, have good health, and clean record,” according to a Sept. 23, 1918 bugler course syllabus.
When the Navy began installing better shipboard announcing systems on ships, it disestablished the bugler rating. In 1948, the sea service consolidated bugler duties under the quartermaster rating.
Navy musicians still play “Taps” at funerals and other memorial services.
Printer (PrTr)
The printer rating became an official part of the U.S. Navy in 1866. Originally dubbed “ship’s printer,” these sailors wore the same “open book” specialty mark as ship’s schoolmasters. In 1893, the Navy dropped “ship” from the name, and the rating was thereafter just “printer,” or PrTr.
Navy printers worked in ship print shops, printing cruise books, menus, newspapers, magazines, bulletins, training materials, official policy manuals, and more. They knew the principles of lithography, engraving, electrotyping, and typesetting, and operated process cameras, linotype and monotype machines, printing presses, bindery machines, and other printing machinery. Since the rating required proofreading skills, printers also needed to be excellent spellers.
Advances in printing technology were incremental until 1940 when the Navy began installing offset printing presses on its ships. Offset printing was much faster and less labor-intensive than letterpress, a mechanical printing technique used in print shops of the era.
To operate and maintain these new presses, the Navy created a new designation of Navy printer called “Printer M” (for multilith), or PrTr M. The other category of printers was printer L (lithography), or PrTrL. Printers who didn’t have a sub-specialty designation were classified as PrTr.
In 1948, the Navy created the lithographer (LI) rating. The lithographer rating combined the printer ratings (lithographers and offset process) and the various specialist P (photography) ratings by 1958.
As the Navy shifted from print to digital multi-media, it merged the LI rating with the illustrator draftsman (DM), journalist (JO), and photographer’s mate (PH) ratings to form the new rating of mass communication specialist (MC). Mass communication specialists now perform the duties of all four ratings.
Pigeon Trainer: Quartermaster (Pigeon), QM (P)
Naval aviators utilized carrier pigeons to send emergency messages while flying coastal patrols during World War 1. From November 1917 to October 1918, the pigeons flew 10,995 flights, and the U.S. Navy had 2,500 birds in lofts stateside and 900 in Europe.
To care for their growing carrier pigeon flock, the Navy created a pigeon trainer rating. Dubbed “pigeoneers,” these sailors fell under the quartermaster rating, or quartermaster (pigeon), QM (P).
The duties of pigeoneers were to feed, train, and otherwise care for the various strains of pigeons for use in communications, night flying, and homing.
The Navy Department’s “Instructions on Reception, Care and Training of Homing Pigeons in Newly Installed Lofts at U.S. Navy Air Bases” detailed a strict daily regimen for the proper care and training of the birds. On a typical day in 1918, pigeoneers cleaned the pigeon loft, fed and bathed the birds, sterilized the birds’ water and bath cans, replenished grit pans, released birds on training flights, and updated their flight performance records. In the event a pigeon became sick, pigeon trainers isolated the birds in “sick bays” constructed from packing boxes covered with chicken wire.
Pigeon trainers remained in the ranks in the years following World War I. In 1943, the Navy moved pigeon trainers into the specialist X (PI) rating.
The specialist X pigeon trainer rating was changed to an exclusive emergency service (ESX) rating on Jan. 1, 1948. The ESX-9792 (pigeon trainer) rating existed until Jan. 10, 1961.
World War II
Airship Rigger (AR)
The Navy created the airship rigger (AR) rating in 1943 to service its expanding lighter-than-air fleet. Airship riggers were equipment riggers and involved in all stages of non-rigid airship operations, from preparing the airship for flight to assisting in securing the airship to the mooring mast. They also maintained the airship’s control lines and cables, repaired damage to the airship’s fabric outer coating, maintained proper pressure and trim of the airship while moored to a mast, and adjusted helium and air valves.
As a member of the aircrew, they stood rudder or elevator control watches. They had a general knowledge of the principles of flight and could operate the airship’s controls as well as steer a steady and level course.
To qualify as an airship rigger, ARs needed to be adept in mechanics, possess a high level of courage, and function effectively under stress, according to the Bureau of Naval Personnel’s “Your Future in the Navy” pamphlet.
The AR rating was disestablished in 1948 and incorporated into the aviation boatswain’s mate (AB) rating.
Punched Card Accounting Machine Operator (Specialist I)
Specialist I (punched card accounting machine operator) was a rating that existed from 1943 to 1948. Its predecessor was the International Business Machine (IBM) operator, which existed for one year (1942–43). The “I” in specialist I stood for IBM as this company was the foremost maker of punched cards.
Punched cards were an early data storage medium. Each card had holes that represented pieces of data. Punched card machine operators fed the cards into tabulation machines that could read the data on the cards.
During World War II, the Navy employed punched card operators at naval establishments that had a high number of accounting machines. The naval intelligence establishment employed Specialist I personnel to work on the great batteries of punched card machines used for automating codebreaking operations.
In 1944, the Navy inducted several former IBM technicians/engineers into the Specialist I rating to serve as machine operators for the IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Harvard Mark I computer). The Navy had leased the Mark I, an electromechanical computer, from Harvard and utilized it to perform wartime gunnery and ballistics calculations. Naval officers with advanced mathematical training—including computer pioneer Grace Hopper—programmed the machine while the enlisted Navy specialists completed the more physical tasks: punching the paper tapes with the numbers and instructions, setting the machine's switches, dialing in constants, feeding the tape and punch card readers, and retrieving the printed output.
In 1948, the Navy merged the specialist I ratings with the specialist X (key punch operators and supervisors) into the machine accountant’s rating (MA).
Specialist Teacher (T) or Link Trainer Instructor (LT)
With Great Britain and the United States both experiencing a shortage of trained naval aviators at the beginning of World War II, the Allies needed a way to train pilots quickly. When Link Aviation Devices founder Ed Link delivered his Celestial Navigation Trainer (flight simulator) to Great Britain in 1941, the United States contracted with Link to build hundreds of the devices to train aviators and airmen for combat missions. This innovative simulator mimicked all of the aspects of flight and included a broad range of equipment as well as a miniature planetarium so that aviators could navigate using the stars and a sextant.
Beginning in 1943, the Navy’s Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES) personnel began serving as operators/instructors of these new flight simulators. They attended a 10-week course at Link Celestial Navigation Trainer Operators and Maintenance School, located on naval air stations Quonset Point, Rhode Island, and Seattle, Washington. Specialist Ts learned celestial navigation theory, flight theory and instruments, aerodynamic principles, electricity, radio, general mechanics, radio voice communication, dead reckoning navigation, radio navigation, and Link Trainer operation.
By the end of the war, WAVES had trained more than 100,000 aerial navigators using the CNT flight simulator.
In 1948, the specialist (teacher) ratings were absorbed into the tradevman (training devices man—TD) rating.
Cold War Period and Beyond
Nuclear Weaponsman (NW)
In 1957, the Navy created the nuclear weaponsman (NW) rating. NWs maintained, adjusted, repaired, inspected, tested, and packaged nuclear weapons, components, and associated equipment. The NW rating badge bore the design of a bomb encircled by two electrons. Four years later, due to security concerns, the Navy changed the NW rating designation to gunner’s mate technician (GMT), assigning the new rating the same badge as that worn by gunner’s mates (two crossed cannon).
The majority of NW/GMTs worked on aircraft carriers in the ship’s weapons department while the remainder manned advanced undersea weapons (AUW) shops. In AUW shops, they worked alongside torpedoman’s mates maintaining and assembling torpedoes and special weapons for antisubmarine aircraft and helicopters. They also maintained magazines. On aircraft carriers, they assembled and maintained conventional and nuclear weapons for the air wing.
In 1986, gunner’s mate technicians were merged into the new weapons technician rating. Weapons technicians (WT) also worked with nuclear weapons, warheads, and components. The Navy abolished the WT rating in 1995.
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