Most jobs in the graveyard aren't actually gone. They were renamed, merged, or evolved into something that still musters today. These are the bloodlines — from the headstone to the living descendant.
Every modern Navy "Doc" descends in an unbroken chain from a teenage age-of-sail surgeon's assistant who carried away amputated limbs.
From shoveling coal in a 130°F fire room to running a nuclear reactor — the engineering rating that changed its name six times and never stopped being "snipes."
Four old ratings — mail, stores, aviation supply, and the disbursing office — collapsed into one. The job survived four names; the crows did not.
A complete editorial newsroom — photographer, reporter, illustrator, and printer — fused into one sailor on 1 July 2006. Predictably, mediocre at all four.
The back-seaters: from an enlisted observer killed by nuclear-release policy to the RIOs and B/Ns of the jet age, all funneled into one designation.
Born in the dark CIC compartments of the Pacific war, the radar plotter outgrew its own name in a single generation.
Killed by a peacetime act in 1920, exiled into the Infantry, and reborn when the blitzkrieg proved the doctrine the Army had refused to read.
From coastal forts guarding harbors to missiles guarding cities to shoulder-fired launchers — the branch that buried more weapon systems than any other, and kept its mascot.
The bombardier, the navigator, the weapon-systems officer, and the electronic-warfare officer — four rated back-seat trades fused into one in 2009.
A generation of analysts signed emails as "35F (formerly 96B)" out of pure spite when the whole Military Intelligence field was renumbered in the 2000s.