TAYLOR
Chief Warrant Officer Kent Taylor
- Meritorious Service Medal
- Navy Commendation Medal (2 Awards)
- None on file
SERVICE RECORD
Chief Warrant Officer Kent Taylor — known across Carrier Air Wing ZERO (CVW-0) as “Old Salt” — is the Wing’s resident naval sage: a man whose career has spent more time below the waves than above them. After 25 years beneath the surface serving aboard the Seawolf-class and later the legendary USS Parche, Taylor had long since retired when Col. Pete “Dude” Donnelly personally recalled him to duty. Donnelly knew that to build a carrier wing that operated in total silence — a ghost arm of the fleet — he needed someone who understood the ocean as a living, hostile system. That man was Kent Taylor.
Taylor’s expertise is unmatched. A career submariner and systems chief, he served as a Senior Acoustic Warfare Officer and Engineering Technician, responsible for power distribution, quieting systems, and classified deep-reconnaissance packages during Cold War and post-Cold War operations. On the Parche, the Navy’s most secretive submarine, Taylor earned a reputation for turning silence into survival. His uncanny sense for sonar patterns and his instinct for predicting ship behavior under pressure gave him a mythic status among his crews.