SILVERDALE, Wash. –
When it comes to preservation of ships, some of the first things that come to mind are cleaning, welding, and refitting. But a less talked about, but just as crucial, step to preserving a ship and keeping it combat ready, is painting.
Paint doesn’t just provide an aesthetic purpose for U.S. Navy ships. It provides needed camouflage and has to be chosen carefully for various factors like sunlight exposure, temperature and any buildup of ocean organisms. For these reasons, the Paint shop at Trident Refit Facility Bangor (TRFB) is a crucial part of the team.
The Paint Shop is solely responsible for the preservation and protective coating application on naval assets, a process critical to maximizing the operational lifespan of our vital Submarine fleet and supporting the Strategic Deterrence Mission.
But with an increased workload, the paint shop was augmented with 11 volunteer Sailors from various shops at TRFB.
“Typically, the shop doesn’t have Sailors assigned to it”, said MMC Tyler Downs. “These volunteers have come from various other shops around the command in order to help. While they’re there the Sailors will be mainly focusing on preservation work; needle gunning, chipping, mixing paint, and other work similar to those. With the Sailors taking on these roles, it allows the paint shop to put more people on the large jobs to maintain the refit schedule.”
During a period of operational need, those eleven Sailors were successfully integrated into the paint shop to maintain critical production and schedule requirements.
The volunteers provided essential labor, assisting with work site staging, paint distribution and formulation, and other work as needs arise. Their work is paramount in ensuring that the upcoming extended refit period goes by smoothly for the paint shop and allows further work by other shops to be done.
These volunteers are also not just helping TRFB, but also themselves. Being volunteers, the Sailors were not chosen due to their rate, which means some had never done this type of work before.
The 11 Sailors temporarily assigned to the paint shop were able to enhanced existing skills and learned new skills that they would not normally do in their rate.
Included with their volunteer efforts was training by the paint shop team to get them ready for the work that they would be doing.
This level of inter-departmental cooperation underscores Trident Refit Facility Bangor’s commitment to mission success through collaborative repair, incremental overhaul, and modernization efforts of PACFLT SSBN’s.