Operations Specialist Rating Hat Patch

The two spikes on the trace inside that circle are a range reading, and the arrow driven through the scope is the bearing, and between them they are the whole job of an Operations Specialist. Range and bearing are the first two things anyone in Combat says about a contact. Everything after that, the course, the speed, the closest point of approach, the call to the bridge, gets worked out from those two numbers. The OS mark puts both of them in one small device. Sailors who stood the scope recognize it before they read a single letter on the patch.

The Navy created the Operations Specialist rating in October 1972, when the old Radarman (RD) rating was broken up. Radar maintenance went to the Electronics Technician (ET) rating, electronic warfare went to the new Electronic Warfare Technician (EW) rating, and the operators became OS, keeping the Radarman's badge. In the Combat Information Center they run the air search, surface search and height-finding radars, plot contacts on the maneuvering board, keep the tactical picture of friendly, neutral and hostile traffic, and control aircraft in anti-air, anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare. They also back up the navigator, control amphibious landing craft, coordinate naval gunfire support and run search and rescue plots. OS "A" school started at Great Lakes, moved to Dam Neck in Virginia Beach in 1979, and has since returned to Great Lakes. The Coast Guard folded its own Radarman rate into Operations Specialist in 2003.

The patch measures 4.5 inches wide by 3.25 inches tall, with a navy blue merrowed edge and an iron-on backing. A gold arch across the top carries UNITED STATES NAVY and a matching gold band across the bottom reads OPERATIONS SPECIALIST, both stitched in navy blue lettering. In the blue center panel a big white O and S stand on either side of the scope and arrow. Below the scope sit two small signal flags, the red and yellow diagonal of Oscar and the white field with a blue square of Sierra, which spell the rating in flag hoist. It is a detail a signalman would catch, and so would anyone who ever wrote OS on a watch bill.

Operations Specialists live in a dark room. CIC runs on dim light, headsets, sound-powered phones and the hum of consoles, and an OS learns early to write backwards in grease pencil on the vertical status boards so the watch officer standing on the other side can read them. Midwatches on the surface search scope in a quiet sea, then general quarters with the air picture filling up, are the same job at two very different speeds. When the captain makes a decision, it is usually built on a picture an OS put together a few minutes earlier. The rating has carried that work on every cruiser, destroyer, frigate, amphibious ship and carrier with a Combat Information Center.

This patch fits a ball cap, a ship's jacket or the vest worn to a crew reunion, and it sits well in a shadow box with a sailor's crow, ribbons and ship photos. It also makes a good gift for an OS heading to the fleet from Great Lakes, or for the retired chief who spent twenty years in Combat. It is a small piece of the CIC, and the people who stood those watches will know exactly what it says.