Midshipmen started out in the Royal Sailing Navy as novice officers. There was no Acadamy, and no OCS. A boy would go to see as a Midshipman and remain so until his superiors determined that he was qualified to become a junior Lieutenant.

As far as I know "Midshipman" is a title reserved for members of the Naval Acadamy or OCS.

I don't know about today's navy either. Warrant Officer was technically between a Chief Petty Officer and an Ensign, but garnered all the respect of a senior officer, which a Chief already gets anyway, so I never saw what the point was (except maybe more pay).

Likewise 'Commodore'. In the US Navy 'Commodore' was a temporary title bestowed upon a Captain while he was in command of a squadron. In 1982 the official rank of Commodore was established, but in 1983 it was changed back to its original 'Rear Admiral (Lower Half)'.

Most of the CWOs I knew were in training billets or technical oversight where you needed an officer's authority and a chief's experience. For example, a Cryptologic Technician Master Chief PO might become a CWO and be assigned to manage and develop part of the Navy-wide CT training program.

I was in the US Navy in Washington when it introduced and withdrew the Commodore rank. Boy, that outraged a bunch of captains and admirals. At the time, the Navy had no "one star" rank.. you went directly from "Captain" to "Rear Admiral" -- like going from Colonel to Major General in the Army or Marines -- so your Army Brigadier General with 30 years experience was suddenly having to say "sir" to Navy Rear Admiral with 25 years experience who was, yesterday, the General's inferior.

So they came up with "Commodore-Admiral," which lasted about a year, then just "Commodore" which didn't last much longer.

Finally, they came up with Rear Admiral (Lower Half) and Rear Admiral (Upper Half), which has made Rear Admirals the butt of many jokes since then.

This thread reminded me of this... http://www.users.on.net/~jscones/dum...on%20Chart.pdf

I started it back around 2001-ish and, as you can see, haven't quite finished it yet, although the main military comparisons are there.

In my humble and obviously biased opinion, it's the best "go-to" chart there is (although I don't claim that there's no typos, lol). I might finish off the Soviet comparison this weekend (I have the data, just haven't plugged it in yet).

EDIT: I should stress that my sources are all original WWII documents from ~1942. My primary sources:
-for US information: USN Rear Admiral J.W. Bunkley's well known "Military and Naval Recognition Book" 3rd Edition 1942 and the US War Department's "Handbook on German Military Forces", 1944.
-for Kriegsmarine information: Various Kriegsamrine recruitment pamphletts
-for Commonwealth information: "Ranks and Badges in the Australian and USA Navy Army and the RAAF and Auxiliaries", 1943

No post war "memories" or revisionism. ;)

Oooo shiny. And printable!

And jeez, did Goering invent "Reichsmarschall" just so he could outrank every other person in the entire Wehrmacht? :O:

I'll try to put an updated version up over the weekend. I need to add some footnotes to explain a few things, for example, that I've used the pre-1942 USAAF ranks, only because it got a bit cluttered with adding the 1942+ ranks...I just got lazy with that. Main difference is essentially the "swapping" of Master and First Sergeant and the inclusion of five Technical ranks.

I also haven't included a unique line for CWO, as my source implies that a CWO was essentially the same as an Ensign (in rank terms). The difference being that a CWO had spent 6 years as a WO and instead of being called Ensign was called Chief whatever.

And the USN had four levels of Midshipman. I haven't added those in yet because I'm not sure if any of them align with the German, or for that matter USAAF, Officer Candidate ranks.

And lastly, I have to split the RAF AC into AC2 and AC1. I just wasn't sure 10 years ago which one aligned to Gefreiter.

I'm from the US, I used to work on one a naval base as a contractor in the super computer center. Have got several friends on active duyt, or a couple that have just come back from their deployments, I think a better way to define it was not specialist but career path. From your logic, someone from JAG could get a command once their reach commander/captain. Some people are just not fit to command a ship when they've spent the last 20 years in a courtroom to get their rank.

I apologize for the mixup, I see that what I wanted to say came out very wrong and not what I was trying to say. As your example, the comm officer on the ship could very well get a command someday. What I was trying to get across is that there are several careers/jobs in which you will never step foot on a boat you 20 years. Once they get their proper rank, do you think it's wise/fair then to give the keys to a ship a who is a lawyer or nuclear engineer(the ones that design the cores, not the onboard ones that monitor the one on their ship?

My bad, they would probably best resemble a warrant officer rank until they become a leutnant.

Here's a comprehensive chart for the navy:

I apologize for the clipping on the file, the page was written in html and hard to figure out a way to get it displayed on this site. The Chief Petty Officer Row (completely missing) and bottom of the Warrant officer 1st class are clipped

To see the whole list correctly click here

http://pelsia.741.com/source.html

http://a.imageshack.us/img840/7777/c...wwiiranksx.png


Sorry about the ads, I don't have any easily accessible webspace around and just needed something quick.

A good point, and one that escaped me. I guess we do have our own versions of the 'technical wizards'. :sunny:

The US Navy side of this chart is wrong in the enlisted ranks. A Petty Officer First Class outranks a Petty Officer Second, and so on. A Seaman First Class outranks a Second, who outranks an Apprentice. Left out here, too, are Senior and Master Chief Petty Officers.

Otherwise, I think part of the problem here is trying to make a simple "top-to-bottom" rank chart, which is simply not possible in the US and UK navies, since midshipmen are/were sort of an intake route to officership. Midshipmen simply don't exist in that hierarchy.

If they did in the German navy ranks, at that time, of course, is another question.

I'm guessing the status of officer candidates in the KM was about the same. They're in a special category - not enlisted men, but not yet COs, and it sure doesn't seem like they occupied some hypothetical rung in the ladder above the former but just below the latter. Or were accorded the kind of status when serving in a crew that one might expect if that were the case.

Think of middies as your (very) younger brother - always underfoot, not quite coordinated enuf to actually DO anything with you and your friends, but Mommy INSISTS you let him tag along .....

Middies in all navies are strictly makee-learnee, not in any formal chain of command but strictly there to learn and get some experience. Back in the days of sailing ships, a middie in the RN might actually be given some duties and responsibilities in the smaller ships, but to my knowledge not in any Navy in the "modern" age.

:rotfl2:

Unfortunately we always talked about ensigns in those exact same terms.

Sounds like a description of 'Fanrich' to me. :D

I think the ranks of Fähnrich and Oberfähnrich are analogous (in the RAF and British Army - not so sure about the RN) to the modern day Officer Cadet.

These are trainees, enlisted and paid as private soldiers, but may understudy a regular officer until they are themselves fully commissioned. They are given the honorary title of OCdt and certain privileges like use of the officers' mess. From reading Iron Coffins by Herbert Werner, his duties aboard his first boat as a Fähnrich sounds pretty close to that ... and being the most junior, his officers dumped all their post-patrol paperwork on him the moment they reached port! :haha:

Good job, thanks for catching that. I'll update the html page (can be done quickly), getting the chart inside this thread will still be a bit of a challenge since the html doesn't convert cleanly to bb, otherwise would've posted it that way. Aside from having the PO's as WO's upside down in terms of their rank this' still the best comparison chart that has everything all in one place. All the decent ones I've found in the past split officer's and enlisted as two seperate charts.

Have you seen post #48 and #50? ;)