Navy Whites for an Aviation Ordnanceman 3rd Class

[ObKrieger]

Hi guys,

This was a second present from my girlfriend this year. It's a full set of whites, with the jumper, pants, belt, and gloves. Aviation ordnancemen were the guys responsible for loading bombs, rockets MG's, and ammo on the aircraft. His gloves are greasy! Better yet, all of it is named to a guy named 'M. I. Blizzard'. I would love to have this guy researched. Until I know what he did, I will just assume he was a decorated war hero on an aircraft carrier who single-handedly fought off a school of sharks when his ship went under...

For some reason, each item is named in several different places. Why did the sailor do this?

[Wagriff]

Sailors printed their names all over everything they got, due to the habit of Other sailors stealing everything they had. I've seen pillow cases with half a dozen names on them with 5 inked out. The more names(and sometimes service numbers) you put on something, the harder it was to cover them all up if they swiped it-but, of course, this never stopped the sailors Anyway...On board ship, if you didn't chain everything down, you could pretty well figure that it would disappear like magic. And, no...it made no difference if wartime versus peacetime....it's just an old long time sailor tradition!

[ObKrieger]

Hi William, thank you for the info. I am not sure if you got my PM.

I can understand the whole communal system aboard a ship. I am sure that stuff got passed around so much that it became somewhat commonplace for guys to just use whatever pillowcase, blanket, etc. that was laying around. This kind of thing happened when my reenactment unit stayed aboard the Little Rock...

[roger9344]

William, you sure are right about anything not fastened down disappearing. However, when I was in Navy boot camp, we had to stencil our names on every piece of equipment and clothing we were issued. That was a Navy requirement, but it rarely stopped things from developing their own legs. Lots of 'sticky fingers' on board ship.