Starfleet Ranks?
- Thread starter James Wright
- Start date
My father was a boatswain's mate, second class during the Leyte campaign -- crewing LCTs and LCVPs. After the war he was a steelworker, and yet I think it just as likely a Starfleet defined from the start as not having enlisted rates would have them, as I do that they'd have steelworkers. And by leaving steelworkers and boatswain's mates out I wouldn't feel the least bit offended or hurt, because my great grandfather ten times back sailed on the Mayflower, and yet I wouldn't expect any Pilgrims crewing a WW2 navy movie.
Things change, and it's kinda cool to see things in the past -- or the future -- be a little different from the present.
Oh, I do agree that things change and the addition of enlisted as I did outline on how it could possible exist in Starfleet and not just in the "grunt" manner of today's military. These individuals could be just as trained as officers, hold various degrees, scientific or otherwise, but not choose to attend SFA or be part of the decision-making management. I am not advocating rates like steward, boatswain's mate or otherwise. Perhaps there would be new rates like Stellar Cartologist 1st class or Warp Field Specialist 3rd class.
There has to be a group of people to delegate duties to, it seems inefficient to have them all be ensigns. Of course, then that would be an enlisted class since they would do the grunt work. If everyone in Starfleet is an officer and eventually climb to sit in the big chair, then nothing would get done.
^ That's why in the Federation Reference Series I interpreted Roddenberry's TMoST admonition about no ratings to mean the "crewman" rank was like "patrolman" in a police department. An officer, but also a guy that might spend his whole career in that rank, perfecting the skills of his position.
^And I do like the work that was done on FRS (and damn do I miss the site) but I'd like to see all little more specificity in it rather than a blanket "crewman" designation.
My intent was to eventually break crewman out into four tiers -- "trainee," "technician," "specialist" and chief."
Look at the target audience of the show. The only people who would have cared or noticed anything about Commodore were those who read sea stories and perhaps a larger group of vets of the US Navy. For those Vets a Commodore wouldhave been a job, the command of the merchant ships who awnsered to a Commander or Lt Commander the captain of the senior escort ship. In their service, unless merchant seamen, they didn't awnser to Commodores just as Kirk seemed to just tlerate them.
To the people you mention commodore wasn't just "a job". To veterans of WW2, such as the creators and viewers of the original show, it was a rank. It remained a conferred rank in the U.S. Navy until 1947 and was used until 1950.
I should point out that it was also at this time that the U.S. Navy -- facing the same need for mid-level command positions below the admiral rank -- seriously considered adding the "fleet captain" rank.
I think it likely that the creators of the show -- knowing full well that the rank of commodore had since the time of their service been dropped -- still employed it because it made the same practical sense for a widely distributed Starfleet as it did for the USN in WW2.
They wanted to be ADMIRALS...not Commodores.
Oh, well...then that makes all the difference in the world and clears up all the confusion when you're talking to two people of different ranks and they're both called "Rear Admirals."
Perhaps the Navy just wanted to grind in that stereotype and wanted more Rear Admirals.
Perhaps the Navy just wanted to grind in that stereotype and wanted more Rear Admirals.
Well at least now you can tell the lower half from the upper half. It used to be that all the Rear Admirals got two stars and I guess you wouldn't know the difference unless they told you or you saw the promotion letter.
For most Americans of the time, commodore would be mostly recognized from history class: Commodore Preble, Commodore MacDonough, Commodore Perry, Commodore Dewey etc. Whether they understood this to be a rank or a job is open to question, but I would strongly suspect that most people simply thought of it as a rank, as it was used before the name like captain or lieutenant.
Most WW2 navy veterans served when commodore was really a rank, from spring of 1943 on. By mid-1945 there were 127 one-star commodores on active duty in the US Navy (107 line, 7 Medical Corps, 5 Supply Corps, 8 Civil Engineer Corps), including future CNO Arleigh Burke. There were still captains serving in slots that were traditionally called commodore, too, but that was more obscure for most people. But more to the point, many people who published reference materials, encyclopedias, almanacs etc., wanting to make nice neat tables and not getting too deep into USN rank peculiarities, plugged commodore in as equivalent of brigadier general even when the navy wasn't using it. When I was a kid in the 1970s it was pretty common for encyclopedias and such to list commodore as a USN rank and illustrate the insignia. Sometimes they would note commodore as a wartime-only rank. For that matter, offical USN materials didn't always know how to treat the rank. The 1941 USN uniform regulations describe (but don't illustrate) the insignia for commodore, which must have been handy when the rank was revived a couple of years later.
It didn't matter much because the only ones who cared were army (and later air force) one-stars. From 1900 to 1981 or '82, the active USN simply didn't have a one-star rank (except for the WW2 COMOs). Officers went straight from captain to two stars, but were paid O-7 pay until their seniority reached the "upper half" of the rear admirals' list. There is an interesting story in the biography of Adm Raymond Spruance about this. Captain Spruance was CO of a navy base on Puerto Rico before the war. The local army commander was a brigadier general. When it was announced that Spruance had made flag rank, the army officer hurriedly caught a plane to DC and was gone a few days. When he returned, he had a new second star, having pulled whatever strings it took to keep himself from being suddenly outranked by his navy counterpart.
--Justin
Shall we revisit this thread with an eye towards analyzing XI ranks?
Easy. There are two ranks in the nuTrek universe:
1. Cadet.
2. Whatever you were in the original series.
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