Establishing the AZ Rating

Howard Goben, AMDO #1

After I established the Maintenance Technical Advisory Teams on AirLant staff in ’61 – ’63, our visits to squadrons and AMDs (at that time) pointed out the need for two new ratings. One to maintain aircraft logbooks and the other to maintain Ground Support Equipment. We tackled the logbook problem first. In those days, each squadron assigned at least two and sometimes more random ratings to the job of maintaining the logbooks. No specific rating was pinpointed. Sometimes individuals would be given the job because they couldn’t hack it in the working divisions. Some did an outstanding job. Some didn’t, and the accuracy of the logbooks and other maintenance records suffered.

So, we initiated a letter from AirLant to BUPERS in ’62 recommending the AZ (aviation maintenance administrationman) rating. The proposal was put before the BUPERS Rating Review Board, a group of Flag and O-6s who made the decision as to whether we established a new rating or not. The Board’s initial reaction was “what’s wrong with our current modus operandi” and “if we give you this new rating, everyone else will want one to cover their requirements”. Fortunately after our briefing, they approved the rating. Since then, with the advent of the 3M system into the NAMP, the analyst task came about and was incorporated into the rating. (By the way, I was initially against taking women into the AZ community! I was wrong! Some of our most knowledgeable and dedicated AZs are women. Shows what I knew at the time.)

Next came the requirement for a Ground Support Equipment rating. Again we initiated a letter from AirLant to the BUPERS Rating Review Board. An answer from BUERS was not in hand by the time I transferred to BUWEPS in ’63. As soon as I got settled in FWMP, the Fleet Maintenance job, I contacted the RRB secretary and was told that AirLant’s recommendation for the rating had been forwarded to BUWEPS for comment. So I started looking for it. BUWEPS Mail Control had sent it to the GSE Division for comment. Finally found it in a GS15’s hold basket. Convinced him that we had to comment and return it to BUPERS. After much politicking, we finally returned it to BUPERS with a favorable endorsement. (Two GS15s contended that the ratings that worked on hardware should maintain the related support equipment. They hadn’t even shown the AirLant letter to their military bosses!)

Anyway, when the recommendation reached the Rating Review Board, CDR Bill Harrell, AirLant Maintenance, and I brought Virg Lemmon, then a LCDR working for Bill, to Washington to brief the Board as to the fleet requirement for the rating. Virg did an outstanding job, as usual, and so the AS rating came into being.

The two ratings have been an integral part of the overall Navy structure of the past 35+ years with little change in rating scope.