General Quarters - Training For General Quarters

Training For General Quarters

Preparing a crew (and passengers or embarked troops) for GQ is just as important as carrying out a real one, and is tantamount to carrying it out successfully. It cannot be left to the imagination that anyone will know what to do, where to go, what not to do or where not to go upon hearing the claxon sound for GQ, nor is there a such thing as "too much" preparedness. The very nature of any emergency dictates that it can happen any time, any place and with anyone present or in charge. As such, numerous drills are a normal part of a crew's life, and often become monotonous, but are still necessary. Timing for having the ship "at" GQ is essential, from the moment it's sounded until the captain is informed that the ship is secure. If one crewmember is unaccounted for at the assigned battle station, that department head cannot yet report 'all hands present and accounted for', thereby rendering the entire ship 'not at' GQ. During a drill, a certain time period is pre-arranged wherein missing personnel are considered officially unaccounted for, and the department head reports readiness with X number of persons missing, reason unknown. In a real-life GQ situation, however, that would be a luxury, and the urgency to secure the ship and have it ready for action creates a different set of circumstances. During drills, certain personnel are purposefully detained from reaching their stations and/or certain GQ-essential systems are purposefully shut down to test the crew's ability to work around such difficulties. Training drills must be run at various times of day and night, various days of the week, and introduce various scenarios that mirror any potential threat. Following each drill, the leadership is responsible to analyze response-time, readiness factors, suitability of the crew under stress, etc, and continually perfect any discrepancies. It is equally important to communicate to the crew how well they have done in the areas where they excelled, without causing false confidence.