Ship Characteristics Board

It was created after the body previously responsible for coordinating ships characteristics, the General Board, had been seen as ineffective in a series of earlier Navy bureau miscoordinations.

Participants in SCB meetings recall cases in which the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery cast the decisive vote on weapons systems choices.

For a time that was both very important, given the poverty of the [post-World War Two] shipbuilding program and the lack of any integrated U.S. concept of future warfare.

[5] During the development of the Oliver Hazard Perry class frigates it was renamed the Ship Acquisition and Improvement Board (SAIB).

The irony is that the SCB's motives for this change were to enhance safety: not only to support greater combat survivability, but also out of a concern that the increased speed of nuclear submarines could cause them to inadvertently exceed the more shallow test depths while maneuvering.

[8] Review of the following lists of SCB projects will show: All ship hull classification symbols shown (CLK, SS, DL, CVA, DE, etc.)

These were usually changes of a lesser scope or risk than SCB projects; many were contingency plans to refurbish reserve ships had it been necessary to reactivate them.