Re: Marine Contingents

At 02:09 PM 11/13/1998 +0000, Mike Elliott wrote:
>The counter argument to this (and the reason why we treated Marines the
way
>we did in MT) is
> that historically marines are considered to be part of the ships
>complement. If we don't have to use mass for the crew, why should we
use
>mass for marines?

	Actually we don't usually have Marines aboard ships, unless we
are a
Marine landing ship.  Even the Amphibious ships that I worked on had
only
two marines as part of ships company.  It wasn't until we were in the
process of conducting work up excercises with our Marine Corps
counterparts
that we had a significant Marine force aboard.	It is true that you
could
build a boarding party from ship's company, but you are removing people
from the watchbill and from jobs they would otherwise be doing.  Even
then
the boarding party is pretty small compared to ship's company.	If we
expect to board a ship we usually get a Coast Guard Detachment, not only
for manpower reasons but for legal.
	Phil P.

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