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ImOnlyHereCauseGME t1_j9yd7wk wrote

Watching the movie Greyhound (good movie btw) it made me think, what happened if you joined the Navy in WW2 or before and found out you were violently sea sick? I would assume most guys joining the Navy back then had probably never been on a boat as traveling wasn’t as common, and certainly not on rough seas. Would they be reassigned to something land-based or would they just have to suck it up/live with it until they hopefully got used to it?

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shantipole t1_j9zrthe wrote

From my understanding, if a sailor or officer was violently seasick and didn't get over it after a day or two, that's a liability to the ship and was bad for morale, so it's in everybody's best interest to transfer him to a shore role (which probably limited their chances for promotion and so some refused). There were a ton of Navy jobs that didn't involve being on a ship. Some guys probably lied about how sick they were or just hung on out of sheer stubbornness, and they made it work, but that depended on their NCOs and CO letting things slide.

But, generally you'd want to figure this out before the guy was deployed somewhere where him being half-dead from vomiting the past 10 days straight might or not might matter. So, everyone went on a training cruise during basic training or OCS at least in part to see how they handled being on a ship in deep ocean. Worst case,l scenario, you find out on your first Atlantic crossing or the trip to Pearl Harbor, you suck it up and do your best until you get there, and they reassign you there.

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ImOnlyHereCauseGME t1_ja8j4e5 wrote

That makes total sense to me. I would assume you’re right in that people who got seriously sea sick would be an annoyance at best and dangerous to have aboard at worst in a battle situation.

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2748163 t1_ja96ex7 wrote

This was not my uncle’s experience, he had never been on a boat and joined the Navy and was extremely sick his whole deployment. This was during Vietnam, there wasn’t much sympathy or flexibility from the Navy, the attitude was at least you’re not on the ground in the jungle being shot at.

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