...okay, so we're a little late for the broadcast, but you can still catch a great history lesson here!Seabees: America's Unsung Heroes
Q & A With "War Stories" Producer
FOX FAN: Who are the Seabees and how did they get their start?
AYSE WIETING: The "Seabees" are the U.S. Navy's construction battalions. Each present-day battalion has approximately 650 highly-skilled members — plumbers, electricians, heavy equipment operators, etc. — who are all trained to fight back if attacked. Their nickname comes from the initials of their military occupational specialty: "C" for construction and "B" for battalion. CBs eventually became "Seabees" due to their sea-faring nature and also partly due to their magnificent logo, created by civilian Frank Iafrate in 1942. The logo depicts a very determined bee sporting a white sailor's hat, a hammer, a wrench and a Tommy gun for when he fights. (Sea!funny, huh?) photo above.
U.S. Navy Seabees consider Rear Admiral Ben Moreell to be their founding father, or "King Bee." The Seabees didn't exist prior to World War II, but by December 1941, there were some 70,000 civilian contractors working for the Navy building advanced bases, mostly throughout the Pacific on tiny specks of coral like Midway, Wake and Guam. As war clouds gathered over Asia and Europe, Moreell had the foresight to recognize that having civilians in the middle of a war zone would be very dangerous and highly impractical, and so he rallied for the creation of construction units of skilled builders trained to fight. The Seabees were born on March 5, 1942. Moreell personally furnished them with their motto — "We Build, We Fight" — from the Latin phrase, “Construimus, Batuimus.”
For full story click here . This is very interesting and isn't too long to take a couple of minutes to read, so please check it out.
"The Navy's Fighting Seabees" aired on "War Stories" Sunday, March 12, 2006. Who all saw it?
2 comments:
Richard sent word through his XO for all of us to tune in to Fox to watch this. He couldn't tell us himself because he was still out at COP South. I excitedly tuned in that night, and Johnny and Lanette recorded it so Rich could watch when he returned home. It was an excellent program. Ollie North is awesome. I learned so much about the Seabees from this program. I have since looked on Fox's website to see if we could order a video, but alas, one was not available. Maybe in the future.
I tried the same thing since I wasn't able to watch it. You remember we were fasting. Me from wine, Greg from TV. That was a 40 day fast to remember!
But I did try to find it then and also the last couple of nights. I wish we could. Maybe they'll do another or do they do re-runs?
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