Temporary Assigned Duty

This is something special that takes you away from your normally assigned duty. It is possible to be TAD and still be with the same command. That would happen while a sailor is on shore duty. Most of the time when attached to a ship TAD would be a special school you need in order to be qualified for a job you are doing on your ship.

While my ship was in Norfolk I spent three weeks TAD to Little Creek for classes on boiler water, fuel oil, and aviation fuels. I needed all of those classes so I could be an official Oil King.

On a rare occasion a person assigned to shore duty would actually go TAD to a ship. This would happen when a person on the ship could not deploy and they filled a critical need. This also happened to our ship when our MR2 had to leave for medical. MR’s are machinists and they can be very important at times. So when ours left we had a MR from SIMA Norfolk assigned to the ship for our 6 month deployment.

My WOD today also serves a purpose. I will be sort of TAD for a while, so my WOD will suffer some. But do not worry, I will pick back up where I left off. It seems the aviation industry is not feeling the economic pinch, so we are striking while the iron is hot. Look back on or about 7/20 for the next installment starting off with the DKM.