and are there any other ranks that are associated with animals??
I mean - why is it called a “bird” colonel.
The bird refers to his eagle cap/colar device, which means as a “full” colonel he outranks the lieutenant (oak leaf device) colonel.
as for you other question… hmm, how about a “buck” private?
Since I don’t know anything about US military ranks, I had to look it up to be sure my WAG - that the Bird Colonel had an eagle as part of its rank insignia - was correct.
It’s a “bird” colonel because the emblem is an eagle. Outranks a lt colonel who wears a silver oak leaf. A major wears a gold oak leaf. Yes, silver outranks gold, and emblems cross ranks. More questions to ponder.
Because the insignia for an O-6 is a silver eagle, as opposed to the leaves, bars, or stars used for other officer ranks. The eagle has a long tradition of appearing on U.S. insignia, but I don’t know how it came to be that the rank of O-6 got a bird, instead of a leaf, bar, or star.
- Rick
Thanks for answering the question everyone.
GOOD WORK!
The Straight Dopers come through with the goods again.
Regarding your first OP, while not a specific rank, officers that worked their way through the enlisted ranks are referred to as “mustangs.”
And a bird colonel was sometimes more disrespectfully called a “chicken colonel”, casting aspersions on the nature of the bird issued by the US Army. Probably fell into disuse with the rise of Colonel Sanders’ fast food joint.
My dad was a “mustang”. Heck, he even spent two years in the army before his 20 in the Navy. He got his commission in the 1950s before I was born, and retired a Navy lieutenant (O-3).
I think that “shavetail” was originally applied to Army Mules, but later used to designate a 2nd Lieutenant.
It’s “Buck” as in “buck naked”, meaning stark or bare. US Army E-1 Privates wear no rank insignia whatsoever and are otherwise known as “slicksleeves”.
Privates E-2 are sometimes known as “skeeters” beacause the single cheveron for the rank is also known as “mosquito wings”.
Specialists E-4 are sometimes called “full-bird privates” because, like Privates E-1 thru E-3, they are not Non-Comissioned Officers, i.e. Sergeants and Corporals, and have a distinctive rank insignia that incororates the Army eagle insignia in its center.
“Shavetail” derives from the practice of shaving the tails of new mules to distinguish them from older ones. Calling a Second Lieutenant a “shavetail” is considered derogatory since you are basically calling him an untrained mule (which is often pretty accurate, I’ll admit).
A “bull” ensign is a Navy word for the highest ranking member of the lowest officer paygrade [sub]except for warrant officers, but that’s a different matter[/sub] in a command.
A “bull” ensign is a Navy word for the highest ranking member of the lowest officer paygrade [sub]except for warrant officers, but that’s a different matter[/sub] in a command.
[sub][sub]Oops.[/sub][/sub]
Hell, as long as we’re here, weren’t Warrant Officers enlisted ratings that had temporary officer status by dint of field commission? And did they not sink back to sargeants or corporals or whatever when the crisis closed?
I may be wrong as hell in that assay of warrant officers - what’s the true deal on them?
beatle, I don’t think that’s quite right about warrant officers. I’ve never been in the military myself, but JTR discusses WO’s here, and he seems to know what he’s talking about. Basically, it seems that the WO ranks are permanent, obtained by senior enlisted personnel with particular mastery of some specialty.
The army’s page on warrant officer insignia is available here, but it doesn’t really talk about much except for the devices themselves.
Warrant Officers fill a niche between Noncommissioned Officers and Commissioned Officers. A lot of the information in the thread brad_d mentioned is inaccurate. There is no specific time-in-service requirement for becoming a WO. In the US Army, prospective WOs attend the Warrant Officer School at Fort Rucker, AL. It is located there because the majority of WOs in the Army are helicopter pilots and that happens to be the location of the US Army Aviation School. In the past, some previously-qualified enlistees have been sent to Fort Rucker immediately upon completion of Basic Training to become WO pilots. The only other field dominated by WOs is the Criminal Investigation Division, the Army’s version of the FBI. I personally knew several CID WOs that attended the school soon after selection for CID and promotion to Sergeant. Warrants serve in other specialties, but none are dominated to the degree that aviation and CID are.
There is a lot of speculation on how much longer DoD will include the Warrants in its grade structure. The class was created to designate specialists who deserved recognition for being specialists above the rank and file enlisted personnel but weren’t intended to be in command of other soldiers. In the modern military system, most enlisted persons are very skilled specialists that often require months of initial training just to begin learning how to do their assigned jobs. Even a basic infantryman spends over a month learning additional skills after the two months of basic training that was all infantrymen got in the days before Viet Nam. The distinction is really blurry these days about what exactly Warrant officers are supposed to be.
The Air Force was first to do away with them – back around 1960 they stopped creating new WO’s – as they attrited away the jobs were split between the then-new senior NCO posts (E8 and E9), and specialty commissioned officers. (BTW, in British-Commonwealth armies, “Warrant Officer” IS the senior enlisted grade)
The Navy(?and Marines and Coast Guard?) IIRC no longer uses the WO-1 grade, starting off right away at CW2; and hasn’t adopted the Master Warrant or CW5 grade.
But the Army, OTOH, seems committed to the Warrant Officers, having added the CW5/“Master Warrant” grade and made a point for the last couple of decades of developing the WO as a career track in and of itself (as opposed to an advancement alternative for NCOs).
I guess the management types at the Pentagon may wish for greater uniformity, but they’d have to consider whether it would be efficient for everyone’s needs, and what to replace it with (LDOs for all services?).
Waaaaayy back, officers wore gold-braided epaulettes/shoulderboards/gorgets/whatevers on which to pin their insignia – fancier for field officers than for line officers. Majors would just wear fancier braid with nothing on it, second-lieutenants plainer braid with nothing (BTW the German Army up to WWII did it that way); the upper ranks would pin silver insignia on it. Later on as the epaulette/shouldermark braid was simplified, and eventually eliminated, first the majors and then the 2nd-louies kept the gold color, using the next-rank-up’s device (lest they be confused with a lower rank).
Originally, the idea behind warrant officers was that their rank was assigned by a piece of paper called a “warrant,” as opposed to commissioned officers, whose rank was assigned by a piece of paper called a “commission.” This difference was probably important back in the day, but is trivial today.
I was a naval officer from 1989-1993, and can tell you that in the U.S. Navy warrant officers now carry commissions and are treated in all ways like commissioned officers: they’re part of a ship’s wardroom, they’re saluted by chiefs, they wear the same uniforms as ensigns and commanders and lieutenants.
But when they get their commission (after many many years of service as enlistedmen), their paygrade is CW02, and they can only advance twice, to CW04, then they’re stuck. Glass ceiling.
That’s why, when I left the service in 1993, warrant-officer commissions were being discouraged in favor of LDO (Limited Duty Officer) commissions. Same idea, except you’d get commissioned as an ensign and can rise up through the ranks all the way to admiral, theoretically (and it has happened on a few occasions). I don’t know how far they’ve gone in this direction (where’s Chief Scott when you need him?).
I remember learning that the Army retains the Warrant Officer 1 paygrade, and that that first level is still an enlisted paygrade, but couldn’t confirm it.
And just in the interest of completeness, chique’s right: the seniormost ensign at a command is called the “Bull Ensign.” And the juniormost ensign is called the “George Ensign.”
I did my time as each. Bull is better.