Warbird Information Exchange

while watching the world news tonight i watched a story about u.s. navy involvement in quelling the pirate problem off the coast of somalia. the pentagon news correspondent interviewed a 1 star naval officer & he kept referring to him as an admiral. if i remember correctly, during the reagan years the navy reactivated the rank of commodore for the 1 star flag naval rank which was abolished decades before. so which is it?? is he a commodore?? or an admiral?? did the navy can the the commodore title again?? or does this news guy who's a PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT doesn't know his crap from his oatmeal?? if he is an admiral, then what type of admiral?? not vice or rear admiral.

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

1 star is a Rear Admiral, Lower Half, or RDML for short.

Commodore became RDML in 1985 after only 11 months with Commodore back "active". The title of Commodore is still used today in two occasions - when a Captain is present on a ship which he/she does not command or when a senior Captain is put in command of a Surface Action Group, SEAL Groups, and Air Wings & Groups (not part of a Carrier Air Wing) among others (a position not authorized for appointment to RDML).

Here's the Wiki entries on RDML and Commodore -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rear_admir ... ted_States)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_(United_States)

That's almost disappointing. Feels like a Commodore should be an actualrank to me, sort of like a brigadier. I guess that's the Navy way.

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"I knew the jig was up when I saw the P-51D-20-NA Mustang blue-nosed bastards from Bodney, and by the way the blue was more of a royal blue than an indigo and the inner landing gear interiors were NOT green, over Berlin."

The problem with Commodore is that it implies something less than a Flag Officer but more than a Staff Officer. Something that is kinda hard to justify in a "unified" rank structure where all branches are supposed to have the same number of ranks even if the names are not all the same.

Then again, since most flag officer ranks are by appointment (i.e. by holding the job) only, you can argue that Commodore does fit into the modern military rank structure. Guess it's what "floats your boat".....

Also for a great period of this (usually used only in wartime) the Navy ranking system skipped 1 star. You went from O-6 to O-8 ie 2 stars and that pissed the other branches off very much.

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Don't touch my junk!!

thats 1 of the points i was driving at!!

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

Here's a little more detail. The Navy has always had ranks equivalent to Brigadier General (one star) and Major General (two stars.) During WWII the one star rank was titled Commodore and the two star rank Rear Admiral. Some time after WWII the Commodore title and the single star insignia were dropped and officers of both the O-7 and O-8 grades wore two stars and were called Rear Admirals but "lower half" and "upper half". The title of Commodore came to describe officers in command of a division or squadron of ships. A Commodore could have an actual rank as low as Commander. It's similar to the commanding officer of a ship being called "Captain" even though his actual rank is something different.

After numerous complaints from the other services about the confusion of having two different pay grades wearing the same insignia and using the same title, the Navy elected to bring back the single star insignia but I don't believe the title of Commodore was ever applied to that rank. At present, the Navy uses Rear Admiral (Lower Half) and Rear Admiral (Upper Half) with the corresponding one and two stars for insignia.

leave it to the navy.......... more red tape.

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!