HT Hull Technician Navy Rating Patch

In the hidden arteries of every Navy ship—down steel ladders, past roaring machinery, through compartments hot enough to blister paint—you’ll find the sailors who keep the vessel alive. These are the Hull Technicians, HTs, the backbone of ship survivability and the artisans of steel. If something breaks, they fix it. If something leaks, they stop it. And if the ship is ever wounded, HTs are the ones who run toward the danger with tools in hand and courage in their lungs.

The HT rating carries a lineage stretching back to the days when shipfitters forged the Navy’s great warships by hand. Over time, their role evolved into one of the most demanding, versatile, and essential jobs aboard. Hull Technicians weld, fabricate, braze, cut, patch, and repair anything the sea or the mission can damage. They overhaul plumbing systems, maintain fuel and water lines, reinforce structural frames, and craft parts that don’t exist anywhere except in their imagination and a sheet of steel.

But their true crucible is damage control, the moment when alarms scream, smoke thickens under red lights, and the ship trembles under impact. It is the HTs who charge into flooded compartments to shore bulkheads, who cut through twisted metal to reach ruptured piping, who weld plates over holes big enough to swallow a man. Their calm in chaos has saved countless vessels—from destroyers limping home through enemy fire in World War II, to cruisers struck by missiles in the Cold War, to modern warships surviving collisions, fires, and catastrophic failures only because HTs refused to let the sea win.

Life as an HT is long hours, loud machinery, burned knuckles, and the quiet pride of knowing the crew’s safety rests on your skill. They are the ship’s craftsmen and its last line of defense, trusted implicitly by officers and enlisted alike. When the captain says, “Get me damage control,” it is the Hull Technicians who answer the call.

The HT Hull Technician Navy Rating Patch honors these steelworkers of the sea—sailors who shape metal with artistry, fight disaster with nerve, and keep the fleet afloat through sheer will and mastery. To wear it is to honor the unsung heroes deep below the decks, the ones who hold the ship together when everything else falls apart.