Navy·Consolidated / merged·In Memoriam
Signalman
SMSkivvy Wavers
Served: 1921–2003
Flaghoist, semaphore, signal lamp — visual comms between ships when radio silence was the law.
The Story
USNI Proceedings (June 2020) made a serious post-mortem argument that disestablishment was premature: visual comms are the *only* EMCON-proof option in a contested electromagnetic spectrum, and now nobody in the fleet knows how to do them. The signalmen were right.
Epitaph
“Disestablished in 2003. Already being missed by 2020.”
Sources
- USNI Proceedings — Visual Commswww.usni.org