Why navies need NCOs on every kind of ship

Should a navy place its best NCOs on capital ships or smaller ships?

Both need them: smaller ships require them to run effectively, while larger ships rely on them to train personnel and steady junior officers.

Small ships need experienced NCOs to function day to day, while larger ships need them to train newcomers and support junior officers. The allocation problem therefore has no universal answer because both settings depend on scarce accumulated experience. Moving senior ratings from one type of ship to another cannot substitute for the time required to develop their judgement and authority. The practical difficulty makes skilled NCOs a persistent bottleneck in wartime expansion.