If you want an honest and thorough answer, only elite repairs are worth it (get 3 or 4, see engies below). For the other sailors you're better off getting rolled ones:

gunners 11/11 (or 12/10) with 10+ repair
engies 10+/x/12 (depending on how many vets you're going to put on, get 6 or 7)
BO with good repair (could even be a late-classed elite repair that you level beside a normal BO)
scout with 12 aircraft and 10+ repair (that you can also late-class if you put some more vets on)

The repair all adds up and makes a difference later.

...but everybody here gets all-elite crews (lol)

Elite Reps?

You should be able to cap it with 4 +11s with the amount of free experts given out these days. 




Hell, 5 engineers with mixed bases from beta produce 135 repair alone in the 130-140 vet range. Which means 3 reps should be doable, still without being elites.

Well, norm, you noticed surely that talk wasn't of rep capping... something that most people don't try to do with their first crew.

Even so, in order to have a reasonable stab at the rep cap with three US elite repairers and seven engies with +10 repair base, you'll need no less than 200 vets on each. That gives 32.2 M repair true ability. Rest provided by BO, scout and gunners, if their repair is not too rubbish.

200 vets on ten sailors is already a tall order - I wouldn't recommend this as if it were nothing to do...

(NFcalc + calculator >> ingame repair display + intuition :D )