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Can someone who knows something about these things explain the disappearance of Commodore from among US naval ranks and the "Lower half" and "Upper half" designations? RickK 01:16 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)
It's all actually very well explained in the Commodore article. -- Ray Trygstad 22:10, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Does anyone else think it's out of place to have a complete table of British officer ranks on the page for every military and Naval rank? Shouldn't it have it's own entry, perhaps? -- Ray Trygstad 22:41, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Vis-a-vis the comments in the table: navy.mil clearly shows all-uppercase abbrevations for ranks. Not sure about Midshipman, though; I'm not sure it's an actual rank. I'll edit the table appropriately. -- Eric 05:29, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC) ...or perhaps not. Anyway, the use of all caps in rank abbreviations is standard throughout the US Armed Forces. -- Eric 05:31, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This phrase about the Dutch navy is not correct: "The Dutch navy is unique in that there is only one Admiral in the navy and it is the reigning sovereign. As a result, the highest rank one can achieve in the Dutch navy is Lieutenant Admiral. Also, the Dutch have only two ranks with the title of Admiral, excluding the sovereign." The rank of admiral doesn't exist anymore officially since 1956 and it was only given twice in the 19th century: first in 1839 by King William I who made his son, allready Secretary of State for War and Navy and commander-in-chief, admiral; and the second time somewhere in the 1880's of 1890's when prince Henry was appointed admiral 6 days before his dead by his brother, king William III. There is no law or rule that the rank can only be held by the sovereign, in fact the only two time the rank was used, it was not the king.
I don't see the point of this section. Its authors seem to have gathered as many variations on the rank of admiral from different navies as they can find (plus at least one rank that never actually existed), then tried to put them in the order they would rank in a hypothetical navy that had the lot. Even if one accepts the validity of the exercise (which is undermined by the fact that rank titles have had different meanings in different times and places: e.g., Admiral in the Royal Netherlands Navy corresponds to Fleet Admiral in the USN, while a Kriegsmarine Admiral is generally considered to have ranked with a USN Vice Admiral), some of the placings are problematic at best.
So, if we have to have the table, it should more like this:
This is still less than satisfactory, for the following reasons:
This would give us a table like this:
Admiral of the Navy | Flag Admiral |
Fleet Admiral | Admiral of the Fleet | Grand Admiral | Admiral (Royal Netherlands Navy) |
General Admiral [1] |
Admiral | Lieutenant Admiral | General Admiral [2] |
Vice Admiral | Admiral (Kriegsmarine) [2] |
Rear Admiral | Rear Admiral Upper Half | Counter Admiral | Vice Admiral (Kriegsmarine) [2] |
Rear Admiral Lower Half | Commodore Admiral | Flotilla Admiral | Rear/ Counter Admiral (Kriegsmarine) [2] |
[1] applies if a Kriegsmarine General Admiral is considered to outrank a USN Admiral; [2] applies if they are considered to be of equivalent rank.
Shouldn't we just scrap the whole section, and point people at Comparative military ranks? — Franey 13:27, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
General Admiral |
Admiral |
Lieutenant Admiral |
I guess if the Admirals from the different countries were all in the same room at the same time, it would matter who saluted who. It also comes to play in joint-international military operations with who has tactical control of a group fo ships from more than one country. I've served in task forces with U.S., Japanese, and South Korean ships. That was an issue as to which Admiral would have taccon of the whole group. Also, in World War II, the matter came up during surrender ceremonies where General Admiral von Friedeburg went to British HQ and back then the two sides were saluting enemy officers (try that today with Iraqi POWs!). In any event, the British actually said General Admiral was senior to Admiral. Some U.S. text books list it as "a rank between a full Admiral and Fleet Admiral".
I like the suggestions on these tables and I would say just go for it and make the changes in the article. I think the table should say, without a soubt, since this is an article about all Admiral ranks and a comparative table is something that the article needs. - Husnock 16:34, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What do people think about making this into a disambig page? There are already four countries listed here as well as the listing of ranks by senority. Separate the Admiral articles into ranks by country might be in order at this pont. I just did something similar over at the articles regarding General of the Army and Field Marshal. - Husnock 09:05, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
This article should explain what an admiral (with a small 'a') is (in the sense that Fleet Admirals, Vice Admirals, etc., are all 'admirals'), whilst the actual ranks (an 'Admiral' with a big 'A') should be dealt with in separate articles by country: Admiral (United States), Admiral (United Kingdom), etc. Fleet Admiral is currently ridiculously Americo-centric in that it says that 'Fleet Admiral' is the general term for a very senior admiral, which is nonsense. It should be a disambiguation page. Proteus (Talk) 17:11, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I noticed that the British Royal Navy is referred to as 'Royal Navy', whereas the Dutch Royal Navy is referred to as the Dutch Navy. Am i the only one who thinks this is weird? I was about to edit it, then i saw there were already some Dutchspeakers on the talk page, so i'll leave it to you guys. Yeahyeahillmakeanicksoon 2:34 CET 9 aug 2005
Curiously, there's no explanation/wikipage for the naval term "breaking (his) flag", despite it appearing in numerous articles ( USS Ranger (CV-4), for a start). I had to go searching over half the Pacific to discover what it meant, since everyone writing the articles assumed it was a known term. I don't know the Wikipedia convention for defining terms, however... Nae'blis 21:18:14, 2005-08-18 (UTC)
In Germany the term was already traditional before the 11th century. With the emperor Otto III.'s accession to the throne in 983 a. D. an "Oberst Admiral" could be found on the guest list of high dignitaries. (Source John B. Hattendorf, Deutschland und die See: Historische Wurzeln deutscher Seestreitkräfte bis 1815; in: Werner Rahn (Publ.), Deutsche Marinen im Wandel - Vom Symbol nationaler Einheit zum Instrument internationaler Sicherheit, from page 17. [20]) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.166.70.162 ( talk) 20:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
The first paragraph of the current "etymology" section covers the bases—English from French, French from Med. Latin mangling of Arabic emir—and then there are 7 loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong paragraphs of random nonsense trying to discuss historical folk etymologies as if they were all equally accurate (instead of all already known to be inaccurate) and some attestation history that should just be in a history section before circling back to additional early English forms that belong at the top of the section instead of its tail. I guess some of that silliness is owing to the discussion above, but it seems bizarre whoever wrote it thought Sicilian, Italian, Aragonese, French, Portuguese, and Spanish didn't count as "Latin-based languages" while imagining English does and then went on to write a "Further History" section without an actual "History" section before it.
In any case, the OED actually handles this very well (as usual) but if we need a specific expert on the specific topic
specifically calls out the derivation from amir al-anything as nonsense already well known to be nonsense since the 1860s. — LlywelynII 14:42, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
This is an inaccurate, confusing mess.
What is this table meant to achieve? If it's a clear depiction of the relative ranking of the most common grades of admiral, it fails for the reasons, and should be replaced with a simple list of the near-universal admiral/vice admiral/rear admiral.
If, however, it's supposed to be a kitchen-sink collection of every variation of admiral ever, levered into some strained notional order of precedence, we need to add a few:
— Franey 13:07, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Right, how about this:
The following are the various grades of Admiral, listed by seniority.
Admiral of the Fleet | Admiral of the Navy (1) | Fleet Admiral | General Admiral (2) | Grand Admiral |
Admiral |
Vice Admiral |
Rear Admiral (3) | Counter Admiral (4) |
Flotilla Admiral (5) |
Flag ranks in the Dutch Navy have some unique features that make them difficult to fit in the table above:
The Royal Navy has the position (not rank) of Port Admiral; historically, this was often a senior captain rather than an admiral proper.
Several science fiction sources also give mention of the additional Admiral ranks of Sector Admiral, High Admiral, and Branch Admiral. None of these fictional Admiral ranks have ever been used, however, in an actual real world Navy. The rank of Fleet Admiral is also common in science fiction sources.
— Franey 10:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
The simple answer is to create a new table that lists all admiral rank in alphabet order with columns on who held them, what they were used for, when they were used, and the generally accepted "star" equivalent. I was going to do this change, but take a look at my user page and you will quickly see how my time is now devoted elsewhere. - Husnock 12:54, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Surely admiral is not a proper noun and should not be capitalised throughout. Only when part of a specific name. -- Beardo 11:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I will mark this one as fact required....
ADMIRAL Appliances were sold in the US by Admiral Radio, and in Canada by Canadian Admiral Corp. Wards radios used "AIRLINE" as a brand. see for example http://www.scripophily.net/adcode1.html and http://www.geocities.com/rxtxtubes/pa01077.htm cmacd 19:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Does anybody know if 1- or 2-star admirals -- from any navy -- are ever assigned to single-ship commands? I'm not talking here about commanding squadrons from a flagship; I'm referring to commanding a single vessel on a day-to-day basis, or commanding a mission from a single ship. Sacxpert 07:22, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
The last 2 paragraphs in the "Etymology" and "Further History" sections are word-for-word identical. The third-from-last paragraphs are also *almost* identical. 69.118.248.228 ( talk) 01:12, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
In the section titled Admiral insignia by country, the following were showing empty transparent images where rank insignia were once shown: Almirante, Angolan Navy; Amiral, Benin Navy; and Amiral, Congolese Navy. I have remove these three placeholder images. AdmPope ( talk) 10:19, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Can someone who knows something about these things explain the disappearance of Commodore from among US naval ranks and the "Lower half" and "Upper half" designations? RickK 01:16 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)
It's all actually very well explained in the Commodore article. -- Ray Trygstad 22:10, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Does anyone else think it's out of place to have a complete table of British officer ranks on the page for every military and Naval rank? Shouldn't it have it's own entry, perhaps? -- Ray Trygstad 22:41, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Vis-a-vis the comments in the table: navy.mil clearly shows all-uppercase abbrevations for ranks. Not sure about Midshipman, though; I'm not sure it's an actual rank. I'll edit the table appropriately. -- Eric 05:29, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC) ...or perhaps not. Anyway, the use of all caps in rank abbreviations is standard throughout the US Armed Forces. -- Eric 05:31, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)
This phrase about the Dutch navy is not correct: "The Dutch navy is unique in that there is only one Admiral in the navy and it is the reigning sovereign. As a result, the highest rank one can achieve in the Dutch navy is Lieutenant Admiral. Also, the Dutch have only two ranks with the title of Admiral, excluding the sovereign." The rank of admiral doesn't exist anymore officially since 1956 and it was only given twice in the 19th century: first in 1839 by King William I who made his son, allready Secretary of State for War and Navy and commander-in-chief, admiral; and the second time somewhere in the 1880's of 1890's when prince Henry was appointed admiral 6 days before his dead by his brother, king William III. There is no law or rule that the rank can only be held by the sovereign, in fact the only two time the rank was used, it was not the king.
I don't see the point of this section. Its authors seem to have gathered as many variations on the rank of admiral from different navies as they can find (plus at least one rank that never actually existed), then tried to put them in the order they would rank in a hypothetical navy that had the lot. Even if one accepts the validity of the exercise (which is undermined by the fact that rank titles have had different meanings in different times and places: e.g., Admiral in the Royal Netherlands Navy corresponds to Fleet Admiral in the USN, while a Kriegsmarine Admiral is generally considered to have ranked with a USN Vice Admiral), some of the placings are problematic at best.
So, if we have to have the table, it should more like this:
This is still less than satisfactory, for the following reasons:
This would give us a table like this:
Admiral of the Navy | Flag Admiral |
Fleet Admiral | Admiral of the Fleet | Grand Admiral | Admiral (Royal Netherlands Navy) |
General Admiral [1] |
Admiral | Lieutenant Admiral | General Admiral [2] |
Vice Admiral | Admiral (Kriegsmarine) [2] |
Rear Admiral | Rear Admiral Upper Half | Counter Admiral | Vice Admiral (Kriegsmarine) [2] |
Rear Admiral Lower Half | Commodore Admiral | Flotilla Admiral | Rear/ Counter Admiral (Kriegsmarine) [2] |
[1] applies if a Kriegsmarine General Admiral is considered to outrank a USN Admiral; [2] applies if they are considered to be of equivalent rank.
Shouldn't we just scrap the whole section, and point people at Comparative military ranks? — Franey 13:27, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
General Admiral |
Admiral |
Lieutenant Admiral |
I guess if the Admirals from the different countries were all in the same room at the same time, it would matter who saluted who. It also comes to play in joint-international military operations with who has tactical control of a group fo ships from more than one country. I've served in task forces with U.S., Japanese, and South Korean ships. That was an issue as to which Admiral would have taccon of the whole group. Also, in World War II, the matter came up during surrender ceremonies where General Admiral von Friedeburg went to British HQ and back then the two sides were saluting enemy officers (try that today with Iraqi POWs!). In any event, the British actually said General Admiral was senior to Admiral. Some U.S. text books list it as "a rank between a full Admiral and Fleet Admiral".
I like the suggestions on these tables and I would say just go for it and make the changes in the article. I think the table should say, without a soubt, since this is an article about all Admiral ranks and a comparative table is something that the article needs. - Husnock 16:34, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What do people think about making this into a disambig page? There are already four countries listed here as well as the listing of ranks by senority. Separate the Admiral articles into ranks by country might be in order at this pont. I just did something similar over at the articles regarding General of the Army and Field Marshal. - Husnock 09:05, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
This article should explain what an admiral (with a small 'a') is (in the sense that Fleet Admirals, Vice Admirals, etc., are all 'admirals'), whilst the actual ranks (an 'Admiral' with a big 'A') should be dealt with in separate articles by country: Admiral (United States), Admiral (United Kingdom), etc. Fleet Admiral is currently ridiculously Americo-centric in that it says that 'Fleet Admiral' is the general term for a very senior admiral, which is nonsense. It should be a disambiguation page. Proteus (Talk) 17:11, 4 August 2005 (UTC)
I noticed that the British Royal Navy is referred to as 'Royal Navy', whereas the Dutch Royal Navy is referred to as the Dutch Navy. Am i the only one who thinks this is weird? I was about to edit it, then i saw there were already some Dutchspeakers on the talk page, so i'll leave it to you guys. Yeahyeahillmakeanicksoon 2:34 CET 9 aug 2005
Curiously, there's no explanation/wikipage for the naval term "breaking (his) flag", despite it appearing in numerous articles ( USS Ranger (CV-4), for a start). I had to go searching over half the Pacific to discover what it meant, since everyone writing the articles assumed it was a known term. I don't know the Wikipedia convention for defining terms, however... Nae'blis 21:18:14, 2005-08-18 (UTC)
In Germany the term was already traditional before the 11th century. With the emperor Otto III.'s accession to the throne in 983 a. D. an "Oberst Admiral" could be found on the guest list of high dignitaries. (Source John B. Hattendorf, Deutschland und die See: Historische Wurzeln deutscher Seestreitkräfte bis 1815; in: Werner Rahn (Publ.), Deutsche Marinen im Wandel - Vom Symbol nationaler Einheit zum Instrument internationaler Sicherheit, from page 17. [20]) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.166.70.162 ( talk) 20:00, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
The first paragraph of the current "etymology" section covers the bases—English from French, French from Med. Latin mangling of Arabic emir—and then there are 7 loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong paragraphs of random nonsense trying to discuss historical folk etymologies as if they were all equally accurate (instead of all already known to be inaccurate) and some attestation history that should just be in a history section before circling back to additional early English forms that belong at the top of the section instead of its tail. I guess some of that silliness is owing to the discussion above, but it seems bizarre whoever wrote it thought Sicilian, Italian, Aragonese, French, Portuguese, and Spanish didn't count as "Latin-based languages" while imagining English does and then went on to write a "Further History" section without an actual "History" section before it.
In any case, the OED actually handles this very well (as usual) but if we need a specific expert on the specific topic
specifically calls out the derivation from amir al-anything as nonsense already well known to be nonsense since the 1860s. — LlywelynII 14:42, 19 April 2024 (UTC)
This is an inaccurate, confusing mess.
What is this table meant to achieve? If it's a clear depiction of the relative ranking of the most common grades of admiral, it fails for the reasons, and should be replaced with a simple list of the near-universal admiral/vice admiral/rear admiral.
If, however, it's supposed to be a kitchen-sink collection of every variation of admiral ever, levered into some strained notional order of precedence, we need to add a few:
— Franey 13:07, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
Right, how about this:
The following are the various grades of Admiral, listed by seniority.
Admiral of the Fleet | Admiral of the Navy (1) | Fleet Admiral | General Admiral (2) | Grand Admiral |
Admiral |
Vice Admiral |
Rear Admiral (3) | Counter Admiral (4) |
Flotilla Admiral (5) |
Flag ranks in the Dutch Navy have some unique features that make them difficult to fit in the table above:
The Royal Navy has the position (not rank) of Port Admiral; historically, this was often a senior captain rather than an admiral proper.
Several science fiction sources also give mention of the additional Admiral ranks of Sector Admiral, High Admiral, and Branch Admiral. None of these fictional Admiral ranks have ever been used, however, in an actual real world Navy. The rank of Fleet Admiral is also common in science fiction sources.
— Franey 10:17, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
The simple answer is to create a new table that lists all admiral rank in alphabet order with columns on who held them, what they were used for, when they were used, and the generally accepted "star" equivalent. I was going to do this change, but take a look at my user page and you will quickly see how my time is now devoted elsewhere. - Husnock 12:54, 22 May 2006 (UTC)
Surely admiral is not a proper noun and should not be capitalised throughout. Only when part of a specific name. -- Beardo 11:19, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
I will mark this one as fact required....
ADMIRAL Appliances were sold in the US by Admiral Radio, and in Canada by Canadian Admiral Corp. Wards radios used "AIRLINE" as a brand. see for example http://www.scripophily.net/adcode1.html and http://www.geocities.com/rxtxtubes/pa01077.htm cmacd 19:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Does anybody know if 1- or 2-star admirals -- from any navy -- are ever assigned to single-ship commands? I'm not talking here about commanding squadrons from a flagship; I'm referring to commanding a single vessel on a day-to-day basis, or commanding a mission from a single ship. Sacxpert 07:22, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
The last 2 paragraphs in the "Etymology" and "Further History" sections are word-for-word identical. The third-from-last paragraphs are also *almost* identical. 69.118.248.228 ( talk) 01:12, 13 August 2016 (UTC)
In the section titled Admiral insignia by country, the following were showing empty transparent images where rank insignia were once shown: Almirante, Angolan Navy; Amiral, Benin Navy; and Amiral, Congolese Navy. I have remove these three placeholder images. AdmPope ( talk) 10:19, 12 October 2021 (UTC)