I have been in the navy for over 17yrs..and most of it, i wouldnt change at all with the time that i have done. our uniforms have always been distinctive if not a bit of fodder for gay jokes, but you could always tell a sailor in his uniform. there has been serious discussion over the last 2+ yrs or so about uniform changes. SERIOUS CHANGES!
I have had the same style of unifoms with the exception of the working uniform. it was called dungarees. the pants were like blue jeans but not quite as cool. if you can imagine the back pockets on most jeans, we had 4 of them. 2 on the front and 2 on the back. over the right back pocket, our name had to be stenciled on the pants to facilitate returning of your pants back to your rack when laundry was passed out when we were out to sea. they were also true bell bottoms. the reason for this was, that if we ever had to abandon ship in the ocean, we could take our pants off over our boots, which you wanted to keep on when you entered the water incase of debris that could hurt you. so after swimming away from the ship if there were few life rafts, you take off your boots and tie them together and hang them around your neck as you want to keep them, if/when you make landfall. you take your pants off, tie the legs very near the bottom and making sure the pants stay wet. you can blow or slap air into the pants making them into a flotation device that needs very little maintenance as long as you kept the wet.
The old shirt was called a "chambrie" shirt. it looked like a work shirt from a gas station. and when put all together, it kinda looked like a prision uniform....(swear to god...we used to joke about it in boot camp all the time....) we also had to stencil that shirt with our last name over our right pocket.
the working white uniforms...kind of looked like the good humor man uniform if you have nothing on it. and the cotton ones got dirty very quickly. it took me a few years, but i finally went and got the all polyester short sleeve whites. they looked better and dont get as quickly dirty. the dress whites have always been polyester.
we all know what the dress blues look like with the piping on them. the really bad things about the uniform was how hard the top was to get in and out of and then pants were held on the waist, by i kid you not, 13 bottons. 2 for the waist band, and the bottom of that held the top of center of the "flap" that was the front of the uniform. i called it the "Marine Feeding Tray". heven help you if you went out drinking. you learned to only button a few of them for ease of opening them...
the working blues, which we called "Johnny Cash's" was a dress pant and matching shirt with a regular neck tie. as soon as i got out of boot camp, i went and bought a clip on. i hate neckties....to be honest, they reminded me of Nazi SS uniforms.....
coveralls were for the longest time not in the sea bag and were used just for dirty jobs on the ship. when they changed to the new utilites which has normal work pants and the style, cut and material of the shirt is also different. it really no longer looks like a prision uniform. it look like what a supervisior of a maintenance company might wear. when they changed the utilities, they changed the coveralls to a uniform item. we have to have ranks on the collar as well as patches for the name on the chest as well as us navy and any warfare designation. mine is surface warfare so the pin/patch for that looks like a ship from a front view, with crossed cutlasses under the ship, that is cutting through water. what i dont like about it now is that you can wear coveralls pretty much anywhere on the pier in the us, but here people can wear them to the fleet recreation center to the food vendors if they are free of dirt. my question is...why are you wearing them to begin with if your not doing a dirty job?
well, the new uniforms will be getting rid of the working whites, blues and coveralls. it is going to be like the digital cammies the other branches have. i think they will be in grey, white and black. i think it will look very cool. but they are changing the dress uniforms to more of a WW2 style undress uniform. in certain instances you wont need the neck tie and the whites will go to black pants and a grey top. the blue pants, the bottons will become decorative as they are going to put a hidden fly in them. i am not sure its i good idea to do all these changes at one time, and also the fact is that i will have to pay for uniforms that will only wear for maybe a year or so. i will aslo have to have, get this, a full sea bag inspection, when i out process....so i have to have all of the uniforms in the right numbers....WTF!!
i just dont think that i should have to buy these new uniforms and the change for one, is going to be dramatic for almost everyone?
