LaForge was a lieutenant when he became chief engineer. Later he was promoted to lieutenant commander. I believe his immediate predecessors had also been lieutenant commanders.
It’s possible that he might have been addressed as “chief” on the show, but that might have been meant as a contraction of “chief engineer” rather than “chief petty officer.”
OK, so what about when a ship suffers casualties? Let’s say, for instance, that we have a carrier battle group, with a carrier flagship with an O-6 captain and an admiral, and a bunch of cruisers and destroyers screening it with O-5 commanders. The carrier takes major battle damage, and the highest-ranking surviving officer on board is (let’s say) a lieutenant. Does the flag pass to another ship? Does the lieutenant who’s now in charge on the carrier have any authority over the commanders on the screening units? Alternately, what about if the admiral dies but not the carrier’s skipper, or vice-versa?
In the strictest interpretation of how things work, I believe command goes to the senior line officer in the battlegroup, as opposed to the senior Staff Corps Officer (ie: Legal, Medical, or Chaplain). So if the USS Kittyhawk takes a series of hits that take out the bridge and the Combat Information Center (kind of like the Battle Bridge on Star Trek, it’s buried deep in the guts of the ship), and the two senior officers are Commander Budd Roberts (a JAG officer), Lieutenant Commander McCoy (a Medical Officer) and Lieutenant George Kirk (the Officer of the Deck), Kirk will be in command, despite the other officers outranking him. He is simply the only one of the three who is qualified to command the ship.
That said, let’s say that one of the Aviators, Commander Luke Skywalker, also survived the attack, he is a higher-ranking line officer (not to mention being a Jedi Knight, which at the least must have been a strong bullet on his OPR when he was trying for a promotion from Lt. Commander), he would be senior to Lt. Kirk, and would be in command. Now, presuming that somehow an attack that took out both the Bridge and the CIC failed to force the Kittyhawk to cease flight operations, Commander Skywalker (and Commander Rabb, if I know that Top Gun Lawyer™ well enough…) will possibly be busy finding a fresh plane to launch in and defend the ship, which might leave Kirk in command for the time being.
Add the various (many) cruisers, destroyers, frigates, tenders, subs, etc. that would be in a Carrier Battlegroup, and you likely have at least a few Lt. Commanders and Commanders floating around who would have seniority in the battlegroup over Lt. Kirk (though maybe not Commander Skywalker, but like I said, he may be busy fighting off further enemy attacks or having heart-to-heart time with his estranged dad or whatever). If any of these guys is a Captain, he’d certainly outrank Commander Skywalker for clear seniority. But given that the whole point of a Carrier Battlegroup is air operations, the new commodore might take his cues from whoever is in command of the carrier. All this goes out the window if the carrier loses the capability for flight operations, at which point you effectively have a Surface Action Group with a very large liability to protect, so the more junior surviving officers on the carrier might then not have as much input into the decisions that the new boss will have to make.
Simple, yes? 
Let me see if I have it:
Under normal circumstances, each skipper gives orders to his ship, and the admiral gives orders to all of the ships, but stays out of the way with respect to the details (including on the ship he happens to be on). If the admiral is taken out of commission, the most senior remaining line officer (which is probably the skipper of the flagship) takes over the admiral’s duties of commanding the entire group in addition to commanding his own ship (or whatever it is he’s ordinarily in charge of, like commanding the air wing). If there are more casualties, then whoever in the fleet is the most senior remaining line officer takes over the admiral’s duties in addition to their own, and the most senior line officer remaining on each ship assumes the duties of skipper of that ship. And an officer of the air wing can end up in command of the carrier, but only if he’s on board it: He can’t command the ship from the air.
Heinlein also has an amusing quote of “If anyone ever saluted a third lieutenant, the light must have been bad.” Are there actual cram-them-into-the-chain-of-command ranks like that?
In that same passage, he gives a clear historical example – the Chesapeake IIRC – of such a situation, which he had himself learned in Naval History at Annapolis.
In the Air Force, you will occasionally see Cadets from the Air Force Academy acting as instructors for flights of enlisted trainees at Basic Training. Which is interesting, because that is something that the cadet will have no direct experience with ever again, given that all of our instructors at Basic Training (cadets aside) are either Senior Airmen or Non Commissioned Officers. It’s basically something they do during the summer to give them some extra seasoning and leadership experience/training (the giveaway is that the Military Training Instructors, the Air Force’s drill sergeants, will be wearing the big round hats, while the Cadets acting as instructors will still wear their light-blue berets).
This becomes a weird thing because a Cadet does not outrank anybody in the operational military, due to their status as still being in entry-level training (just like the Trainees who are in the enlisted Basic Military Training, only the cadets are in training for four years typically as opposed to six weeks). Once the trainees graduate Basic, they will outrank the Cadet, but given the circumstances, they are unlikely to treat him with much disrespect (for one thing, if the MTIs, who DO outrank the Airmen, find out about them trying to give the Cadet undue crap after graduation, they are still in a position to make the airmen miserable, not to mention the possibility that the cadet will serve over the airmen later as a commissioned officer)
I think the Third Lieutenant thing in StarShip Troopers was mainly a throwback to the Midshipmen that used to serve as junior officers aboard sailing ships. They were considered amongst the officers aboard the ship, and thus gave orders, received salutes and other courtesies, but did not have commissions (I think they were a type of Warrant Officer, but I don’t know). They were basically cadets on the high seas, learning about sailing and leading and following, until they could successfully test for Lieutenant and receive a commission as an Officer. That said, if all the officers aboard a ship were incapacitated (killed, sick, whatever), any surviving midshipmen would end up in command of the ship, hopefully with the assistance of more experienced sailors and warrant officers who actually knew what they were doing.
Heinlein set up a similar quick promotion in the novella “If This Goes On–”
John Lyle (our hero) takes over temporary command, though not entitled by rank to do so. He gives the orders that bring victory.
Heh. I had an XO Major Payne (USMC) when I went through MOS school in 2000.
Re: Third LTs. In my ARNG unit (a light infantry battalion) it the informal title we’ve given to the ROTC cadets who attend drill with us. They have no authority what so ever, and are pretty much there just to observe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one issue an order.
So salutes are required across branches and people are expected to be able to readily identify ranks and pay grades across branches?
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Absolutely! I remember when I was in the Marines, getting chewed-out by an Army officer, because I didn’t notice his insignia and didn’t salute him. Army officers have black insignia that they wear on their camoflage uniforms, and Marine officers always wear shiny metal insignias. I noticed this person walking toward me, from a distance I noted that he was wearing black insignia, and didn’t even think that he might be an officer! We were also expected to salute foreign officers if we encountered them.
I was actually a midshipman for four years in NROTC back in college. According to Naval regulations, midshipmen are “officers in a qualified sense.” I think they actually rank formally between warrant officers and commissioned officers. However, being trainees, most midshipmen with any sense would not push the issue with courtesies and the like.
As a midshipman, I went to sea three times in the summers during breaks from college. My first summer (as a Midshipman third class or MIDN 3/C), I learned what life was like as an enlisted sailor. I wore enlisted dungarees, had a Petty Officer as a running mate, and cleaned heads, swabbed decks, and qualified and stood watch as the ship’s Helmsman, Lee Helmsman, and Surface Search Radar Operator.
I actually spent my second summer doing CORTRAMID (Career Orientation and Training for Midshipmen) in which I spent a week getting hands-on training on a surface ship, a submarine, a Naval aviation unit, and finally, a week blowing things up with the Marines.
My stepfather was an Army officer, and was taken with this idea of hands-on field experience, so with his commander’s position, I actually spent a fifth week in the field with his Army unit in Germany. I had the camouflage utilities from my Marine week, and I wore the proper Midshipman insignia. For the week, I acted basically as a “third lieutenant.” (Just like JerseyMarine’s experience, all I did was observe–I didn’t give any orders.) It was useful training–I realized that I had made the right decision to join the Navy. 
My third summer at sea I spent on a ballistic missile submarine as a MIDN 1/C. This summer was spent learning to be a Navy division officer. I was put in charge of the sub’s Torpedo Division (which is a division that normally doesn’t have a Division Officer, but reports directly to the Weapons Officer, a Department Head). In this way, it was a bit of a made-up job, but it served its purpose, and I was able to take some load off the Weapons Officer. I also qualified and stood watch as the Diving Officer of the Watch, which was somewhat unusual for a midshipman to actually finish.
[quote=“Raguleader, post:147, topic:551549”]
I was in a squadron where the Commander gave them Brevet rank of 2nd Lieutenants. It was a little tongue-in-cheek and it was always noted “Brevet,” but I still consider it an interesting throwback to brevetting officers.
Then that article gets into Regular Army, Army of the United States, and the like. . . I don’t know if those armies were raised through different legal means, but it still comes into play today. I’ve seen different signature blocks with “AUS” and “USA.”
Tripler
Brevet Generallisimo Galacticando Excellente
[quote=“Raguleader, post:147, topic:551549”]
The term Midshipman comes from sailing ships. The officers quarters were aft, that is behind the Main Mast. The crew lived forward of the main mast in the folcole (sp?). A ship may have one or two crewmembers who were in training to become officers. They slept forward with the crew ate aft with the officers. their lifes were going between the two places therefore midship.
A Midshipman outranks an warrent officer but is junior to a Ensign. But they are limited in the orders they are allowed to give. They are not normally in the chain of command. When deployed they are oftem placed under the supervision of Chiefs with orders to follow their instructions. Like in the days of sail they live in never never land not really an officer and not really not an officer.
The example, however, is a bit misleading because the Anglo-American rank structure was a bit different in the age of sail. Each major warship ship would have a single captain and a number of lieutenants. Indeed, lieutenant and captain constituted the two primary commissioned officer ranks, just with a limited number of “master and commanders” squeezed in between, and some flag officers at the top of the heap.
The larger ships would be commanded by a captain, intermediate combatants commanded by a commander and the smaller vessels could be commanded by a lieutenant (a situation that evolved into the rank “lieutenant commander”). Below the commanding officer would be a number of officers of the grade lieutenant, depending on the size of the ship. Each of those lieutenants aboard a particular ship would be given a numeric rank, with the senior being the first lieutenant, the next senior being the second lieutenant, and so on down to perhaps the fourth, fifth or sixth lieutenant. However, if for instance, the fifth lieutenant of one of the larger class of warship were to transfer to a smaller vessel, he might become the first lieutenant, or even the lieutenant commanding.
As such, the third lieutenant of a major sailing vessel would be the fourth highest ranking officer out of a crew of hundreds. He would have years of experience at sea as a midshipman and to have demonstrated his competence at the navigational arts before he would have been promoted to lieutenant.
As the ratio of officers to enlisted is much higher today, with major ships having scores of officers rather than the small handful in the sailing navy, the third lieutenant thrown into command in the story would probably be a lieutenant commander or commander if he were in an equivalent post aboard a modern warship.
AIUI, the Midshipmen and Cadets who are actually ranked between Chief Warrant Officers and other Commissioned Officers are those at the federal Service Academies. Those in ROTC programs at other universities are considered to do so when they are deployed for training with line units.
Here you go! fo’c’s’le.
Two earlier threads on the USS Chesapeake controversy referred to by Heinlein in Starship Troopers:
They were generally aft of the Mizzen mast as well.
Whence this sudden concern with spelling?
Thank you
Sometimes I do try, but if it begins to be work I don’t. Not here.