The Most Important Tool in the Most Important Room on the Battleship 

Out of 40 of myself and other enlists, only 3 were good in writing backwards so they were selected and with lots of practice they were very fast. The issue was they tended to keep writing backwards in the letters too so their parents had hard time sometimes!

I was on 4 different ships. 3 of them primarily used status boards and we wrote backwards to either draw the boxes or to write on them. The 4th ship was an AEGIS cruiser that started off with limited status boards and during a refit a few years after I left was updated to be all electronic automated status boards. Yes I wrote several letters home all backwards. They held it up to a mirror to read. I can still read something upside down and backwards. Comes in handy when you standing in front of your bosses desk and want to see what he is working on...

Man, I always dreamed of owning one of these boards. They're so ludicrously scifi yet so incredibly basic at the same time. I love them so much.

In Iraq a lot of Marines in my battalion would write on their windshields with all sorts of similar info. The difference is that people can take pictures of a windshield and learn all sorts of things we don't want them to learn. It took a while to get that to stop.

When I was a young'un down in Bakersfield in the 60s, the local TV station had a weather forecaster (Marge Stiles, I still remember!) who wrote temperatures on a plexiglass board. We were always fascinated that she could write so well backwards. It was only after she retired that we found out that she wrote forwards the whole time, and a mirror setup was used to make it look like she was writing from behind the glass.

At the data centre where I used to work they used the windows as whiteboards and covered them in dry erase marker notes. One window with a particularly nice view had the notation "This page intentionally left blank."

When I was in the Navy, we mark the bearing and range of surface contacts every 3 minutes. the reason is what we call the 3 minute rule, which is if you know the (true or relative )speed of the contact you can double the speed and add 2 zeros and you know how far they will travel in 3 minutes. Example: a contact is plotted to be going 20 knots will travel 4,000 yards in 3 minutes.

grease pencils work great, until you are at GQ and ventilation is secured and it starts getting very humid in the space. those things dont like to write in high humidity, they just slide without leaving grease behind.

I learned to write backwards when I was a kid on the Missouri Tiger Cruise. I hung out with the DC guys and they were all writing backwards on the glass so I thought I would give it a try. I can still write backwards pretty well to this day.

I worked as a photographer for a good number of years. Film negatives all got numbered and dated in ink. I can still write upside down and backwards!

I always admired sailors that could write backwards in Combat. When working night baker, I’d deliver fresh bread to CIC at oh-dark-thirty, but never was assigned in there for GQ.

1000 yards / minute = .5 Nautical Miles / minute = 30 knots

I spent 23 years in the civilian fire service. Engineers sometimes need to run calculations to provide appropriate fire flows , as well as monitoring the output of their pumps. We would use grease pencils to do calculations on the side body panels of the apparatus, as well as to mark gauges. They’re an amazingly indispensable tool that works in all weathers.

Doug sure liked to put his mark on everything.

As a kid my Dad taught me how to read maps, estimate journey times and keep it all on a clipboard that covered a map with a plastic sleeve, making notes with a Chinagraph (or Grease) Pencil. This was in the days before Sat Nav. Thanks for triggering a happy memory.

My dad's pre-war destroyer had the commodore's cabin turned into a CIC during its first war time overhaul.

In an early scene in The Hunt for Red October there's a roll of toilet paper hanging at the sonar station. I asked my father and he explained that they would put a transparency (clear sheet of plastic) over the sonar screen and write in grease pencil on that. The toilet paper was for erasing. It's not used or referenced in the movie but that roll of TP is easy to see. It's a great little detail they included.

Looks like a Ham Radio operator has left their mark on the boards :P

I think you left a word out in the title

We used a grease pencil to complete our weapons loading checklists in the USAF. I imaging the other services do as well.

Not quite writing backward, but I did learn to write down long numbers on a whiteboard starting with the last digit in a math class once, because I'm left-handed and I was tired of my arm being constantly smeared with dry erase marker.

Went to RD A school in 1968. Spent a lot of time writing backwards and also upside down on the DRT. Radar man was a great job. Lots of liberty.

I stood duty in our CIC on my second ship because we were short handed. Put on the surface repeater 3 section watch. The XO said no one gets a hair cut at sea, so I grant you a secret clearance while underway. Get up to CIC. After standing bridge watch on my first ship, I now understood alot more how the ship did its job.

Not just the Navy - We had numerous status boards and maps in our Division Tactical Operations Center. The only difference was that we didn't edge-light the boards or have them marked from the back. Guess the Army wasn't able to figure that one out.

When I was getting my enlisted surface warfare pin they made us learn how to write backwards on the status board. I eventually did it well enough to pass, but I had to think carefully about each letter and never got to be fast. The guys who could got a lot of respect from me.

My grandmother could take a pen in each hand and write the same word both backwards and forwards at the same time. Pretty crazy for an old farm girl.

Former OS here, happy to see this.

I served on a DDG with a tarter missile system in the 1970s. In CIC I manned the missile systems target tracking console which could display any of the three search radars. I saw the targets in real time. The grease pencil boys had to be told by someone what to write on the boards. They were NEVER fast enough to keep up with incoming treats. One captain refused to go weapons free unless he could see the target in grease pencil. Thats when I knew we had no chance with those old systems in a modern missile fight. Navy was developing AEGIS and automatic target detection and tracking. It takes a lot of computer to do that.

That was fun! I was thinking whilst you were writing: why do all this manually? Then the penny dropped. One big advantage of this was power, or at least not needing it. If power to the CIC was lost, the boards still had the status information on them, good up to that time. All-electronic systems might lose everything, Even if it was only a big display that went down it would be quite a nuisance. It was an argument for keeping the grease pencils busy well into the electronic/digital age. I wonder how many modern vessels had/have the ability to run the same sort of manual system in a crisis.

Most important room on ANY ship is Main Control, without propulsion and electric power, the ship is just a large metal object tied to the pier!

I used to write messages on blackboards in elementary school. Would drive the teacher nuts trying to figure it out. Also, would write backwards on glass doors then watch somebody trying to clean it off.

when on hikes recording nocturnal wildlife diversity, we were not allowed to use any light-sources, instead, being taught how to write fully joint, purely by feel (measuring the starting position based on counting the rings of our notebook)… I wonder if any similar practice was used by the ships lookouts during black-out conditions? to me, the skill came very useful later taking notes on slideshows made in a darkened room.

Question: What battleship do you think had the worst career. Personally, my pick would be the Japanese battleship Mutsu. This ship never saw combat before sinking to a turret magazine whose cause remains a mystery. What cements Mustu as the worst would be the fact that she was built in exchange for America getting to build USS Maryland and West Virginia, and the British getting to build HMS Nelson and Rodney. She literally destroyed -4 battleships. She deserves her medal of honor for her contributions to the allied war effort.

For those who care, the "Notes for the Captain" are for points inbound from the Pacific Ocean/Salish Sea through Puget Sound via Rich Passage to (most likely) Bremerton, WA...Home of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.

As recently as the early 1980's I had to write backwards from a radio room on Plexiglas with the command center on the other side. When I retired in 2010 that had vanished from land-based command centers in favor of large plasma screens and looked much like NASA's Mission Control, only more modern and much more portable. These command centers could be set up in warehouses or large tents and the large screens were connected to satellite ground stations so that global communications were possible. There was generally at least one row of computer terminals, often laptops, networked into the command post. Grease pencils and alcohol pens have all but vanished. Paper maps are on their way out. It helped to be mildly dyslexic when writing backwards. Constant practice made me proficient, but my skill has decayed. Keyboards (and now voice to text) is far faster and more legible.

8:20 that’s a ham radio call sign of an old employee

I still have a couple of the mechanical grease pencils from my time in over 40 years ago... Still use them periodically to write notes on a mirror in the living room about dates and times for upcoming trips and such... Still using the original grease sticks in them... Whereas the dry erase markers will dry out over time, the grease sticks still work after 40+ years...

10:20 1,000 yards/min = 29.6 Knots or 34 miles/hr Not an aircraft, but possibly a fast Battleship, a standard Cruiser, or a Destroyer going slow....

I bet it’s the guy with the toilet plunger.

LOVED my grease pencil in the engine rooms. Some days I still miss writhing on everything, just to wipe it off late. Bad with oil bottles, if there was any oil on the bottle, it would not write or wipe right off.

Worked Flight Deck Control on board the USS Carl Vinson CVN-70 as part of her Commisioning crew. We had to write backwards on the aircraft status board that the AirCraft Handler would reference. Never had a class, our first class, an ABH1, showed us how to write backwards. I could do it but always had to think about how to do it.

just for reference purpoaes: a black or other color sharpie works well to write on glass. I sometimes mark the hours when the fuel tank is filled and gallons to figure out rate of consumption. Handy to know when writing bills for billable hours. Also mileage and target mileage for service intervals. Sharpie comes right off with rubbing alcohol or straight alcohol. even booze if you want to waste it as a cleaning solvent. Rubbing alcohol will even readily take sharpie ink off a white board if the wrong marker is used on it

An interesting video , I suppose the sailor writing had to be careful not to brush against the board if the ship was moving about . Writing backwards reliably seems a pretty unique job . Always like to see your videos , it's interesting to see equipment installed and integrated in a ship that was mothballed for so long between commissions .

"Aah! I see you have the machine that goes ping. This is my favourite. You see, we lease this back from the company we sold it to, and that way, it comes under the monthly current budget and not the capital account."

Lord McSamanski

Actually printing backwards, been there done that as Radarman in CIC aboard USS Coral Sea CVA 43 from Nov 1965- April 1968 then USS AJAX till July 1969. On Coral Sea we would rotate differ work locations from air search radar scope or surface radar, display status board, Outside Lookout. Inside CIC was airconditioned, Outside Lookouts with soundpowered phones was sometimes bit challenging like, Port or Starboard catwalk while air launches, midnight watch or extreme heat or cold weather, once while in Gulf of Tokin/VietNam 100+ heat few days later it was below zero when we were in the Korean water after the North Korea captured the USS Pueblo in Jan 1968.

Notice K2QWQ mentioned on several displays turns out this a Ham Call Douglas W Mc Cray who lives in New Jersey, guess he uses the ham radio station on USS New Jersey

another great video from the battleship. thanks

One of my earlier jobs I worked with the drawings in the engineering department. Before CAD. We had copies of drawings for some parts that were similar. To edit the details, you erased the emulsion from the top side of the print, and then wrote backwards on the reverse, which had a finish that would take pencil. I never had to worry about the speed and stress of a combat situation, but I got pretty used to reading and writing backwards.

Yeah where on the ship is the converted 16"/50-calibre powder magazine?

I was a RD/OS between 69/73 on two missile destroyers. I had a lot of practice on the plotting and status boards.

So wise , Thank You

My office door was glass, where some others used suction cup board or the like for away messages, i just wrote on the glass. backwards, because people loved to wipe it off. I guess i got the idea because i had some grease pens from the Army and have seen them using status boards like that.

I could read and write upside down and backwards. I was a printer before I joined the Navy.

Awesome video ryan!!!

We mostly transitioned to dry erase in the engine room. We left notes on the engine order telegraph (EOT) and the windows looking into the engine room. And imagine how extra pale I must have looked the moment I realized I used a permanent marker on the EOT by mistake!

amazing!

I had no idea those guys wrote backwards! That’s such a unique solution to the problem, I would have tried something with a mirror first. As a left handed person I actually can write backwards relatively easily because for once I’m pulling the letter instead of pushing like normal.

K2 QWQ looks like an amateur radio call (Ham Radio). Is there a Ham on board who put his call up there? If not, what does that notation mean? Fun video. The LST I was on had a CIC which had repeaters for the one radar we had as well as all of the necessary radio sets and teletype machines attached to the radio gear. CIC talked to the bridge via one of the phone-talkers stationed on the bridge. The phone talker then told the OOD or the CO any information sent from the CIC. Hand sets allowed the officers to talk directly with CIC.

Would be awesome to have this as a hands on experience! Watching all the guests trying to write backwards would surly give the staff a laugh each day.

We had plastic overlays on the topographic maps so we could write on them without ruining the base map. No need to write backwards, though. Grease pencils everywhere.

00:46 I know those waters well. She steamed about 126nm in 8 hours for an average speed of 15.75kt.

LOL, nice easter egg. 73 & best regards

Back in my day, they were called "RADAR indicators", not "repeaters"... SPA-25...

When I first saw this the first thing that came to my mind was The Grease Pencil.

Nice explanation, only you made a mistake on the plotting board. Contact went from 180 to 160, that's to the east... you went west. The Hazzard of writing backwards...

7:56 Writes 3 numbers that are the same backwards and forwards :P

Do they have one with PPI, the ship in the center with the bow at 12 o'clock? Unfortunately each time the course is changed, the target whizzes around. Or just use bearings and forget about your direction of travel. And I Mercator with islands staying still and all planes and ships trailing lines and timestamps?

What happens on the relative bearing board when the ship turns around and heads 180 degrees? Why doesn’t the board rotate to adjust the relative heading? Or is that a true bearing board?

A grease pencil? Not a big hammer?

I'm surprised their CIC looks like that. I just started working at the USS Hornet CV12 museum, and our CIC looks much more up-to-date than this, despite being the same age. Of course, it would have been updated in the '60's for duty in Vietnam, but NJ was in commission through the '80's, so it should look newer.

Unless you are an engineer, you are just along for the ride. No electricity, No Propulsion, no Hydraulics there is no life for all the fancy weapons or detection systems and you may as well stay at the pier.

I've tried to write backwards a few times. My issue is that I usually spell the word backwards but I still write the letters forwards.

I could write backwards and never hd to use it when I was in Air Force. I can still write backwards to this day and I always used it to mess with folks. One time I had a boss that was messing with me before I retired as I would write notes to myself backwards as I was about the only who was able to decipher them quickly. So I was working a third shift one time and supervisor was giving me a hard time about something so I settled him down fast and wrote the entire shifts tie ins in mirror. I was never bothered again about what I wrote.

1000 yards a minute is not an aircraft. That speed is about 55 kph or 29.6 knots. It’s actually pretty dead-on for a fast battleship or other surface combatant running at flank speed in your direction, or you and another ship closing towards each other at cruising speed of 15kts each.

How is this handled in the modern navy? Is this computerized or is it still a quick backwards-writing seaman with a pen and a piece of glass?

I still put a slash through my zeros so they are not confused with another letter....lol. Old SeaBee comment...

Reading and writing backwards, and upside down. Great fun for confusing those around......

Does the navy still use this system, or is it all computerized now?

Yeah the IFF has 1 problem, the human-computer interface

It seems like it might be a fairly simple thing to mimic another nation's transponders, at least well enough to make an enemy hesitate for a moment.

As an RM, I had to write backwards on the status board

I believe Engineers would have a different “Most Important Room.” How about the Firerooms and Enginerooms? Ship isn’t moving without the Snipes.

No I never have had to write backwards

Running PPI is very similar.

👍👍👍👊👊

LOVE THIS CHANNEL!! I have a silly question but I think it would explain fire direction versatility; If the NJ had to engage a Star Destroyer that was hovering 1000s of a feet in the air, would the guns use the turret mounted optical gunsights or could the fire directors reliably engage something in the air and not at sea level?

backwards or upside down, not a problem for me, do not know why, but hey don't question your gifts, I gues

relative bearing ≠ magnetic heading

Time to eat breakfast.

Seems a lot more efficient and faster than using some computer...

Should I be ashamed I thought about the plunger?

K2QWQ hello to Douglas

presumably you're only writing short abreviations, or code names and number strings backwards so its not as bad as say trying to write a whole document backwards

No, but I spent time reading backwards and upside-down writings on Facebook.

I'm fairly decent at writing backwards. I can write cursive backwards.

Am I the only one who finds it easier to write backwards using the other hand? Try it and see!

the most important tool anywhere is the human brain because without that no other tool can be used

Dysgraphia backwards writing

I see pencil