Hull maintenance technician
US Navy occupational rating
Hull maintenance technician (abbreviated as HT) is a United States Navy occupational rating.
Hull maintenance technicians plan, supervise, and perform tasks necessary for fabrication, installation and repair of all types of shipboard structures, plumbing, sheet metal fabrication, carpentry and piping systems; organize, supervise, and train personnel in maintenance and hull and mechanical repair; supervise and perform tasks in procurement and issuance of supplies and repair parts; instruct personnel and enforce safety and security precautions; prepare records and reports, and maintain shipboard sewage systems.
An HT stationed on a tender or other auxiliary vessel or shore duty station, may perform far more tasks than listed here. HTs fabricate and repair all types of equipment and items. This expertise may include metal of all thicknesses with hand tools, welders and very large cutting, forming and shaping equipment. Having had other ratings such as molder, patternmaker, carpenter, pipefitter and others absorbed into the rating, HTs may be tasked with working with all types of materials.
History
The rate hull maintenance technician has only existed in the United States Navy since 1972. Prior to that the rate was split into four different rates including plumber, shipfitter, metalsmith, and pipefitter. The history of these different rates is shown through the current rating badge. It consists of a maul; (consistent with the shipfitters and metalsmiths), an axe; (showing an in depth knowledge of firefighting and damage control), and the carpenters square; (which displays an ability to design as well as construct anything the ship may need).
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This entry incorporates text from “Hull maintenance technician” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.