I moved the family (Janet and Warren Jr.) back up to the bay area and found an apartment out on 104th Street in Oakland. I reported to the 48 week Advanced Electronics Technician Class “B” school on Treasure Island. I wasn’t sure how long I would initially be there, as this school had a reputation of having a very high drop out rate. I remember LT. Basham, in his welcome aboard speech, saying “if I had my way, you would be here without your families, so we would have 100% of your attention.” I remember thinking, what am I getting into!
I was in one of the last classes to go through this old-school 48-week version of “B” School. Later the course was trimmed several times, deleting material that was nice-to-know for a career on the outside, but not necessarily conducive to the Navy’s needs. Fault isolation down to the component level was becoming a lost art as the fleet (and equipment manufacturers) were now only requiring the fault to be isolated to board or module level. Vacuum tube theory was being replaced with solid state circuit theory. The old Thevenin’s and Norton’s Theorem type of analysis and teaching weren’t necessary anymore. The math portion was reduced, with more emphasis on Boolean Algebra and only an elementary exposure to Calculus. I remember that we had to design a power amplifier and a yagi antenna, mainly as an exercise to give you enough homework to keep you busy over the weekend. Nice experience for designing circuitry, and a fun exercise, but not that necessary in learning troubleshooting and fault isolation in Navy equipment. These, and other fun exercises, were later eliminated. We were strongly encouraged (hell, it was almost mandatory) to attend remedial night study, which started after hours around 6pm to 9pm - instructors was made available to answer questions. It was the toughest school that I ever attended, harder than any college course I’ve ever taken.