NAVAL MOBILE CONSTRUCTION BATTALIONS

The Navy organized the Construction Battalions, or "CBs," during the first days of WWII, 1942, and the name "Seabees" was quickly adopted to identify the personnel of the new organization. Seabees are at work all over the world designing, building, and replacing buildings, air fields, and camps in support of the Navy and Marine Corps mission requirements. This is accomplished with fully trained, combat ready, rapidly deployable, interoperable, and self-sustaining Seabee units or battalions. Dental personnel are assigned to various battalions to provide world-wide dental and medical support to 11,000 active and 17,000 reserve Seabees.

Table 12-2.\DENBNs AND DENCOs

ORGANIZATION

Dental support to the Naval Mobile Construction Battalions (NMCBs) is provided at the battalion level by dental personnel assigned to the NMCBs. These officers are clinically and administratively assisted by Navy enlisted Dental Technicians.

There are a total of eight NMCBs homeported in NMCB, Gulfport, Miss., and NMCB, Port Hueneme, California. The organization of the NMCBs is shown below in Table 12-3.

MISSION

The mission of the NMCB dental organization is to ensure the combat effectiveness of the NMCB by providing a comprehensive program of dental support. During contingency, disaster control, or mass casualty situations, NMCB dental personnel augment with the medical effort under the direction of the cognizant authority.

The deployment schedules of the NMCBs are on a 7-month rotation basis. With four battalions on each coast, they rotate the deployment schedule with two battalions out and two battalions in. Each coast sends one battalion to Guam or Rota Spain, and one battalion

Table 12-3.\Organization of the NMCBs

to Puerto Rico or Okinawa, Japan. The two battalions on each coast that are not deployed work out of the branch dental clinic treating battalion and base personnel.

The NMCBs can also be called upon for special ^missions. During the Gulf War, more than 5000 Seabees (4,000 active and 1,000 reservists) served in the Middle East. In Saudi Arabia, Seabees built 10 camps for more than 42,000 personnel, 14 galleys capable of feeding 7,500 people, and 6 million square feet of aircraft parking apron. Dental personnel assigned to the NMCBs were there providing dental support.

PERSONNEL

Each battalion has a total of three dental personnel assigned. One general dentist (dental department head) and two Dental Technicians. The dental department head reports directly to the commanding officer of the battalion. The enlisted personnel consists of one DT2 or DT1 who acts as the LPO and one DT3 or DN who is the chairside assistant to the dental officer.