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Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen
Was there an officer in charge of supply? Did he consult the captain regarding provisions? I would like one as well.
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There was no Supply Corps officer, but a junior officer was designated Commissary Officer as a collateral duty. He was really a proto-division officer of the cooks and stewards but it wasn't a "real" division under an operational department. AFAIK this collateral duty reported to the XO, just as the COB and the yeomen did.
Shipboard duty runs in several paths, then and now. Officers report up to the XO via department heads and division officer billets for administrative, training, evaluation, pay, orders, etc. The XO, with the COB, makes up the Watch Quarter and Station Bill. The CO is, for the most part, a distant figure who is everywhere at all times, but doesn't meddle in the nits of running the store. He's already been an XO so he observes, but doesn't usurp.
But when it comes to combat readiness the chain flows directly to the CO from the department heads, semi-bypassing the XO. My boat had a formal ceremony before each patrol. The department heads stood in the P-way outside the CO's stateroom and we marched in by order of seniority and reported to the skipper than our departments were ready for sea in all respects, or if we weren't what was not. It was a little corny, but "signing up" did serve to focus the attention and cause one to pucker up just a bit. Three months is a long time to rue an oversight.
Perhaps if my Supply School instructor, off a PacFlt boomer, had undergone this exercise he would have personally checked the coffee supply and not taken the chief's word for it. He barely survived. Picture being in a cage for three months with 150 angry rats . . .
On the idea of rating food as a consumable in SH4--put me down for a yes, but only if it can be tied to crew fatigue and efficiency. While it's true that boats were well-provisioned, food was and is a KEY morale and efficiency item. Just because a boat has "food" doesn't mean it's balanced-diet-time late in the patrol. Food can spoil at a rate not forecast. Reefers break down and lose the whole load. Equipment casualties can make good menus impossible to prepare. And even though orders demand a departure date losing two engines might make the trip home take a longer time than envisioned.
We never ran out of food; I had a good chief and I crawled my storage spaces every three days. I did report to the CO on the status about weekly, in an informal manner, usually at meals. (Contrast this to daily, formal, Fuel, Oil, and Water Reports required of the Engineer to the CO at noon every day.) But there were patrols where we were eating soda crackers the last week because the flour was green, others where we had cheese but no ham, etc. It's not fatal, but it makes for a grumpy crew.
As for coffee, that should be its own variable. The Navy doesn't work without coffee.