Identify the duties and responsibilities of thecommanding officer, executive officer,department head, and division officer.The officers and enlisted personnel make up a ship’swartime organization. They keep the ship in a state ofreadiness to fight a war. During peacetime operations,the ship’s organization can be expanded if a wartimeoperation becomes necessary. The two elements of theship’s organization are the battle organization and theadministrative organization.THE BATTLE ORGANIZATIONThe battle organization contains a list of thenumbers and specialties of the personnel a unit will needto fulfill the wartime missions. The unit’s battleorganization depends on its armament, equipment, andpersonnel. As a part of the battle organization, youshould know your assignments as posted on the Watch,Quarter, and Station Bill.THE ADMINISTRATIVE ORGANIZATIONThe administrative organization makes sure that theship can fight or carry out its mission. Training,maintenance, and routine operations are covered by theadministrative organization. The commanding officer(CO) is the head of the organization. He/she is assistedby the executive officer (XO) and other officers.Look at figure 6-6. Each ship is organized into atleast five departments—navigation, engineering,operations, supply, and a fifth department. For mostships, the fifth department is the weapons/deckdepartment. Some ships have a separate deckdepartment in addition to a weapons department, andsome have a deck department instead of aweapons/deck department. Specially designatedships have a combat systems department instead of aweapons or weapons/deck department. Additionaldepartments may be assigned according to ship type.Some of these departments are air, medical, dental,and repair.Each department is under a department head.Departments are usually divided into divisions under adivision officer. Each division is subdivided intosections, usually under senior petty officers. Thefollowing paragraphs describe the responsibilities ofthe five standard departments.Navigation DepartmentThe navigation department is responsible for thesafe navigation and piloting of the ship. It is responsiblefor the operation, care, and maintenance of navigationequipment, charts, publications, and records.Operations DepartmentThe operations department has several divisions tocarry out tasks such as collecting and evaluating6-7Student Notes:Figure 6-6.—Typical ship organizational chart.
Integrated Publishing, Inc. - A (SDVOSB) Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business
