Average of a Ship's Company?

[OldGuns]

As a consultant I love using the analogy of a ship's company to co-ordinate and 'get stuff done' without endless instructions and (god help us dozens of emails a day!). I usually use a carrier as the example and get 'civvies' to visualise those cracking scenes from 'Top Gun' showing the shots of the US Flatop at flying stations launching and recovering fast jets and everything happening all over the ship to launch and recover the aircraft in a short time. I usually give little snippets of what is going on in all the main locations depts, Flight deck, Flyco, Bridge, Ops room (threat management and fighter control), MCR, hangars... and so on.

Once they begin to get the sense of complexity involved in what has to be a safe working environment I then ask them 2 questions:
1. What do you think is the average age on board? -I usually say this is 22.5 but would love to know a more accurate average age.
2. How do they do it? the response is usually a sea of blank faces lol

Can anyone help me with the average age of a modern carrier? Invincible would do or the old Ark Royal to be honest, if there are any sensitivities of the average age of HMS Queen Elizabeth' s Ship's Company. I suppose I could make an FOI request too!

 

[Seadog]

Can anyone help me with the average age of a modern carrier?

(HMS) Queen Elizabeth left the womb so to speak 7 weeks ago. Very much still in nappies.

 

[fishhead]

(HMS) Queen Elizabeth left the womb so to speak 7 weeks ago. Very much still in nappies.

I think he wants the average age of the crew members. I have no idea but I would guess at early 20s as statistically junior rates form the largest part of the ship company.

 

[guestm]

No real way of telling other than asking everyone, and FOI requests are an enormous, wasteful burden.

It's certainly significantly higher than 22.5. You're looking more in the 26 or 27 range. Some of the seniors are very senior. @Ninja_Stoker can probably attest to the average age of new joiners being higher than historical averages too. A lot of our fresh out the box ratings are some way past their teenage years.

 

[Sumo]

@OldGuns what are you a consultant in?

 

[Archangel]

If you crawl through the MOD website, you'll find annual Trained Strength statistics for the Royal Navy. This will might the average age, by rank (OF2, OR3, OR5 etc), for each branch.

This is the best that I could come up with from a quick search - Average Age on Promotion. I can't comment as to the specific make-up of each ship, but as @fishhead has mentioned, a crew is mostly Junior Rates. Find out the average length of service for first promotion and you can make some fairly robust conclusions from that.



Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/614378/20170515_-_RN_RM_Quarterly_Pocket_Brief.pdf

 

[alfred_the_great]

No, you can't (at least for Officers). The OF2 and 3 ages are skewed substantially by the large number of UYs and SUYs. For a while, the average age for promotion to Cdr in the WE branch was lower than the average age to Lt Cdr...