See subject. Just met a nice Brit who told me her father is a Wing Commander, and we didn’t have time to talk about it really.
She also said he was never a pilot, which blew my mind. Can that happen in the U.S.?
In RAF “Wing Commander” is a rank, not a job. See RAF officer ranks - Wikipedia It appears to me to be more or less equivalent to a USAF Lieutenant Colonel.
In USAF a “Wing” is a level in the organizational hierarchy. At a very arm-waving level of detail one Air Force Base typically hosts one “wing” to accomplish the main mission and occasionally a second one to provide all the support functions. The person in command of a wing carries the job title of “Wing Commander”. Most often the job is held by someone with the rank of Colonel.
If the purpose of a wing is to fly airplanes, the commander will be a pilot or (rarely) a navigator. If the purpose of the wing is to operate ICBMs the commander will be an ICBM operator. If the purpose of the wing is conduct research, operate satellites, perform command and control, perform heavy logistics, or any of dozens of other myriad support functions, the commander is probably steeped in that functional area, whatever it may be.
I work with someone who’s dad was a wing commander in the RAF, I’m not sure if they ever piloted planes either. Its a senior commissioned officer, equivalent to lieutenant colonel in the army. It’s too senior for flying planes to be a routine part of the job.
Comparison of United Kingdom and United States military ranks
Wing Commander = Lieutenant Colonel
Thanks. I guessed it was a Colonel–note that my knowledge consists of Wing:Base:Lionel Mandrake, who I now see is a Group Captain. (Still haven’t checked what that is…)
ETA: Colonel.
So I was right, sort of, thanks to WW III.
The RAF’s (and Royal Canadian Air Force’s) ranks were originally based on naval ranks. So, a “two ringer” (to use Canadian jargon) would be an army Captain, a naval Lieutenant, and an air force Flight Lieutenant. A “two and a halfer” would be an army Major, a naval Lieutenant-Commander, and a Squadron Commander, a three ringer would be an army Lieutenant-Colonel, a naval Commander, and a Wing Commander. A four-ringer would be be an army Colonel, a naval Captain, and a Group Captain. A “one star” (or maple leaf as we have in Canada) would be a Brigadier General in the Army, a naval Commodore, and an Air Commodore, and so on.
The wrench in all this is when a Captain (rank) is or isn’t a Captain (command role) in either Navy or Air Force.
And the usual Major-equivalent rank in the traditional Commonwealth scheme is a Squadron Leader, which shares with the lowest two grades the usage of novel descriptors as opposed to legacy titles. In the case of the junior officers, you got Flying Officer and Pilot Officer, as opposed to 2nd and 1st Lieutenants(*) and the two tiers of naval Sublieutenant.
(*y’know, someone could have decided the Flying Corps was a cavalry branch and then you’d have Flying Cornets at the bottom of the scale…)
However, past Air Commodore there is another discontinuity: instead of Major General/Lieutenant General/General/Fiels Marshal and Rear Admiral/Vice Admiral/Admiral/Fleet Admiral, the RAF both leapfrogged and mashed both nomenclatures and came up with senior grades Air Vice Marshal, Air Marshal, Air Chief Marshal, Marshal of the RAF. I get the feeling that the Royal Flying Corps’ senior officers may have mentioned it would be a smashingly brilliant idea when this was being discussed…
Navy (and Coast Guard) has this issue. USAF doesn’t.
In USAF “Captain” is always just a rank. AFAIK there aren’t formal job titles containing that term. Also AFAIK the same is true in USMC and US Army.
In USAF parlance the guy in charge of a crew-served aircraft is the “aircraft commander”. He may or may not out-rank the co-pilot and other crewmembers. In things like the AWACS, where the aircraft is just a bus to carry the stuff in back, the lead pilot is the “aircraft commander” and the lead guy in the back working the radar & comms is the “mission commander”. The AC works for the MC, not vice versa. But in matters of flight safety the AC has the final word.
Aside:
One of the things that always confused my about the RAF rank structure (and other countries’ structures derived from RAF) is the choice to name the ranks as essentially job titles. Which leads to a mess when the actual jobs are filled by folks of a different rank. And among all the folks occupying any given upper- or upper-middle rank, at any given time only a small fraction of them hold the actual commanding roles indicated by their rank. There simply aren’t enough command slots to go around.
e.g. Most RAF Wing Commanders do not in fact command wings. Neither do most Squadron Leaders lead squadrons.
To be sure the corresponding US rank names originally were job titles a few centuries ago. But they’ve diverged enough now that no confusion results. Except for the one odd case where USN / USCG “Captain” has survived as both a rank and as a job title. A job title often held by an officer of lesser rank.
The RAF used Army ranks originally, however after a few years they changed that the ranks are roughly
- Former RFC positions; Pilot Office, Flying Officer, Flt Lt and Squadron Leader
- Modified Naval Ranks: Wing Commander, Group Captain, Air Commodore
- Renamed Army ranks: Air Vice Marshal, Air Marshal, Air Chief Marshal and Marshal of the Royal Air Force.
They used Royal Navy insignia for ranks, with blue rather than gold stripes.
In case you are wondering why the USAF did not do they same, the reason is that the USAF was created from the Army Air Forces, while the RAF was created from the Army’s Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Navy’s Royal Naval Air Service.
They did however copy RAF Blue.
(I wonder if any though was given to transferring Naval Aviation to the USAF in 1947?)
(1) In the early 1990s the USAF ***did ***switch to sleeve braid on the officers’ service dress jackets a-la Navy. This however coincided with the adoption of a cheap-business-suit style jacket as the Brass at the time attempted to divorce from the Army-legacy tradition of Battle Bling and look more “sleek and corporate”… they even took away the “US” lapel badges. This was universally panned, everyone reported they were getting confused with airline pursers, and within a couple of years they sewed back on epaulettes and switched back to bars, clusters and stars.
(2) Yes, in 1947 there were discussions of moving everything that was of strategic or tactical use in the air into the new USAF. Heck, there was even discussion of dissolving the Marines altogether and spreading their remnants among the other branches.
I do wonder why they kept Army style ranks and insignia though, when they did change to a Blue uniform ala the RAF.
As for Naval Aviation, many leaders in 1947 would have been aware (from observation and from WW2 service alongside the British) of the absolute pigs breakfast the RAF had made of Fleet Air Arm when it controlled it, so that would have mitigated.
Was’nt there a turf war between the US Army and USAF over who could control IRBM and ICBM’s, with the Airforce winning through some underhanded tricks (Powell mentions this in his book).
Force of habit? After all they had just gone through WW2 as abranch of the Army. They must have felt it was not required to adopt a newly minted scale and style - and that is the practice for virtually every other non-Commonwealth air force. After all, the Marines already used “Army” rank titles and insignia for their officers. Also in the US all the services, both land and sea, use the “army” pin-on bars/clusters/eagles/stars officer rank insignia in their field/flight/physical work uniforms anyway. So they may have thought hey, a Colonel is a Colonel, a Major is a Major, a Lieutenant General is a Lieutenant General, everyone is pretty clear on what eachlooks like and who salutes who, why confuse anyone?
(The US forces use “army” ranks and insignia for officers in the Army, Marines and Air Force, and “navy” ranks for those in the Navy, Coast Guard, USPHS Corps and NOAA Corps. It’s in the enlisted ranks of the land services that you end up with service-idiosyncratic rank titles (Airmen, Privates, Lance Corporals, Specialists, Senior Airmen, Gunnery Sergeants, Chief Master Sergeants etc) and for those and the Warrant Officer that you get service-distinctive styles of insignia. )