In a recent email posting, an old column was referenced about why a Lt. Gen outranks a Maj. Gen. (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_325a.html).
Cecil’s answer, “For simplicity, the regimental sergeant major eventually became a major and the sergeant major general became a major general.” seems to be a copout.
This “answer” begs the question… **Then why does a Major (no general) outrank a Lieutenant (no general)? **
At least one ex-military man wants to know!
There is some discussion of exactly this question in this thread, especially Billdo’s post, which includes some links. Essentially, it’s this:
(Sergeant Major < Lieutenant < Captain)
(Major < Lieutenant Colonel < Colonel)
(Major General < Lieutenant General < General)
With additional ranks (Brigadier General, frex) thrown in later.
By the way, you have an extra parenthesis in your link–try Why does a lt. gen. outrank a maj. gen., but a maj. outranks a lt.? (26-Feb-1993).
No it doesn’t. It might raise the question, but it doesn’t beg it.
I agree, but I think that battle is lost.
I’ve spent many years in the Air Force stationed overseas. As Armed Forces Network television isn’t allowed to show ads, they fill in the time with trivia and other public service announcements. This is one that stuck with me, and is also on Wikipedia (though that is often not a definitive source). According to both, “Major General” was originally “Sergeant Major General.” Over time, it became shortened to simply “Major General.” Hence, a Lieutenant General outranks a Major General.
As zut summarizes, the reason a plain Major outranks a plain Lieutenant has to do with relative to what each of those titles is assigned.
The plain Lieutenant is the guy who’s #2 **to the Captain ** in a line-command sequence that goes:
While the plain Major is the guy who’s #3 to the Colonel in a field-command sequence of:
…and at some point in history, it was determined that everyone in that field-command sequence outranked everyone in the line-command sequence, and tough cookies if you don’t like how it sounds.
Now, for a lot of the world’s modern armies, the names and relative line-ups of the ranks were just copied down from preexisting manuals of theory and organization (ultimately Prussian or Napoleonic in most cases), and often laid down on top of autochtonous titles. You organize a modern Army and want to describe it using the English language? Then you call your platoon leaders “lieutenants” and your Batallion XOs “majors” because that’s how the book is written. If in your own language they make more or less sense, is your business.
I like this analysis. Working with it is the old basic internal organization of an armed force: your army was composed of regiments, each of which was in turn composed of companies. Divisions, battalions, and the rest were later developments.
The Army was commanded by:
(Note that General is shorthand for “General Officer,” i.e., the officer in general command, while “Sergeant Major General” follows the pattern for “Attorney General” and “Postmaster General.”)
The Regiment was commanded by:
The Company was commanded by:
The officers of the Army outranked those of the Regiment, which outranked those of the Company. And at some point, the lowest rank became the top NCO position.
While we’re on the subject, I read this somewhere, and wanted to know if it jibed with what other people have learned on the subject.
Basically, while a Lieutenant Colonel is Lieutenant to a Colonel, a Lieutenant Commander (a Navy rank, and thus potentially having some different background) was a Commander of Lieutenants (as opposed to a Commander of a ship), with the two ranks eventually balancing out to rest in their current places bewteen Lieutenants and Captains. Is this legit? Total history-wank?
All of the historical references are good, but by definition, a Lieu - Tenant is the person that holds the rank of being just before the Tenant… or in lieu of… thus, the Lieutenant General is the next person to make General… Odd they don’t call it Lieutenant Captain, but then again, Radar O’Riley was a Corporal Captain once upon a MAS*H…
IIRC, it’s from the French Lieu Tenant, or “Place Holder”. A Lieutenant takes the place of a Captain when the Captain wanders off, as does a Lieutenant Colonel, Lieutenant General, Lieutenant Governor, etc. There’s a joke that the Royal Navy calls them “Leftentants” because he doesn’t have anything to do until the boss has “left”.
My understanding is the opposite - a lieutenant commander was originally a lieutenant commanding (most likely some captured vessel or something unworthy of a commander, let alone a captain.)
In other words… a French ship! 
I’m reminded of one of my favorite exchanges in the Hornblower movies. Midshipman Hornblower has just been assigned to take a French merchant ship back to England as a prize, and the French captain, deciding to try and belittle the young Hornblower as quickly as possible, asked him when they’d send over an officer of high enough rank to command the vessel.
Hornblower simply replied that the ship in question was only important enough to warrant a mere midshipman’s time, and that shut up the French captain for all of a minute and a half.
Many of these questions are addressed in a paper on the US Navy Historical Center website: Why is the Colonel Called “Kernal”?: The Origin of the Ranks and Rank Insignia Now Used by the United States Armed Forces.
When Grant was named Lieutenant General of the US army in 1864, he was not lieutenant to another general. He was in command over every other soldier in the army, including the generals and the major generals and the brigadier generals. He was lieutenant to no one else but the president. That makes it easy to understand why a lieutenant general is higher than a major general. He was lieutenant to the highest authority.
Question: Is the rank of lieutenant general used differently today? Zut and others in this thread suggest that a lieutenant general is lieutenant to a general. Is this right? I know history, but not the current army structure.
Thanks. This is my first post here.
Sid, what Zut et al are referring to is how it was historically. Historically as in way before Grant.
Historically when for example my foreparents were “captains of the troops of (their village)” and whomever was their second in command was their lieutenant; each geographical area whose men trained and fought together had its own captain (some groups were much bigger than others) and the king appointed a “general captain” to lead the whole assembly… this “general captain” could be changed for every battle depending on which particular groups and terrain were involved. Waaaaay before Grant and in another continent.
I just wanted to point out the irony that a resident of Berkeley, CA, a city so famous for advocates of pacifism, was so curious (and, to an extent, well-informed) about military matters. Maybe it’s about knowing your “enemy”.
(Oh, I know, Berkeley isn’t what it used to be. Just start with its expanding Cal business school!).
Basically, the ranks for the Army go Brigadier General (a General in command of a Brigade-sized force), Major General, Lieutenant General, and then General. After that you get much rarer ranks such as General of the Army, General of the Armies, and General of the Armies of the United States (to be ever held only by one person, President George Washington, and posthumously at that).
I do not believe there is such a deignation of General of the Armies of the United States as seperate from General of the Armies. Also, General of the Armies is a post held twice. Posthumously by Washington and then by Pershing, who you forgot.
You might also think of the ranks as designated by the insignia (stars):
Brigadier General - one star
Major General - two stars
Lieutenant General - three stars
General - four stars
General of the Army - five stars in a pentagon (held in modern times by Marshall, MacArthur, Ike, Arnold and Bradley)
General of the Armies - no oficial insignia (held by Washington and Pershing)
Seems to me I remember seeing an well-researched answer to this question before and had thought it to be resolved. Although (of course), I can’t find the article to cite. Honestly, I’d have guessed I’d read it on straightdope.com
Anyway, the explanation that I recalled was that in the past the basic ranks were Captain>Colonel>General. Each rank had a “Lieutenant” associated with it. Each rank also had a “Sergeant Major” associated with it. Over time the titles dropped some of the additional wording.
So under that concept the “spelled-out” rank structure would be:
General
…Lieutenant General - “Lieutenant to the General”
…Major General - “Sergeant Major to the General”
Colonel
…Lieutenant Colonel - “Lieutenant to the Colonel”
…Major - “Sergeant Major to the Colonel”
Captain
…Lieutenant - “Lieutenant to the Captain”
…Sergeant Major - “Sergeant Major to the Captain”
Has anyone else seen this?
Actually, I didn’t forget Pershing, he was the General of the Armies, with Washington being the General of the Armies of the United States. Not sure if the two ranks are intended to be separate ranks or simply separate titles (for what it’s worth, the highest rank Washington ever achieved in his life was three stars, a Lieutenant General, but then the Army was much smaller back then).