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I've read in a Heinlin book that when a land Captain boards a naval ship, then the sailors refer to him as Major (a rank higher than Captain), because there can be only one Captain in a ship, and that's the naval Captain.
Sandman2007 (
talk)
09:28, 31 August 2008 (UTC)reply
"As a matter of etiquette in the U.S. Navy there is only one captain aboard a vessel. If a Marine Corps captain is at the officer's mess, he or she is given the courtesy title of major to be differentiated from the head of the ship." From:
Captain (naval).
Sandman2007 (
talk)
18:20, 10 December 2008 (UTC)reply
It was Starship Troopers, yes, and it seems to be fairly close to universal in fiction and science fiction, but I'm playing pluperfect hell trying to source it in real life. --
Baylink (
talk)
03:24, 28 January 2009 (UTC)reply
This article may be too specific for what it is and definitely includes too many UK specific details. And do all the commonwealth countries really follow the same ranking structure?--
99.206.35.139 (
talk)
00:55, 26 September 2008 (UTC)reply
I concur. As a minimum, I think that the "common military ranks" info boxes ought to be removed. I haven't yet done that, per the "be bold" maxim in WP, just because of time.
User:Pdfpdf removed the UK and US rank lists for much the same reason.
I don't see any more UK specific details than U.S. specific: UK 4, US 4, France 1, Canada 1, Commonwealth 3
And do all the commonwealth countries really follow the same ranking structure? - No. And the article doesn't say they do. It says: "the air forces of many Commonwealth countries". And in the next sentence: "In the unified system of the Canadian Forces, however, the air force rank titles are identical to that of the Army".
"
User:Pdfpdf removed the UK and US rank lists for much the same reason." - Not really; I removed the templates because they are about UK ranks and US ranks, whereas this article is about the one rank of Captain, not about ranks in general, nor specifically about UK or US.
Regarding "I think that the "common military ranks" info boxes ought to be removed." - I'm not convinced one way or the other. I think it's appropriate to start a discussion, and will do so.
Remove - I think that the "Common military ranks" info boxes ought to be deleted because they are not necessarily common to all nations, they have a footnote about the UK, etc. Therefore, I think that the info box ought to be deleted. This was also a concern of an anonymous user back in Sept see
Talk:Captain (land and air)#UK Centric above. Thoughts?
Don'tKnowItAtAll (
talk)
12:51, 4 December 2008 (UTC)reply
Retain until we can find a better way to provide the functionality. - Although I don't particularly like that box, it's a reasonably concise summary of the ranks, and shows where a rank fits into "the grand scheme", so it does serve a useful purpose. That raises some questions: 1) How well does it serve that purpose? 2) If you removed it, would you be able to replace it with something that better serves that purpose? Although I can't find anything to disagree with in what you say, it would seem that I think the box serves a useful purpose, and I can't think of a better way to serve that purpose. Therefore, I don't think removing the box is the best way forward, unless we can find something better to replace it with.
Pdfpdf (
talk)
14:33, 4 December 2008 (UTC)reply
Retain. If there is a problem with the Common military ranks then it should be improved. Personally, I think the box is pretty good as it is, although as with most things it might stand some improvement. While it does not include every single rank in every single language (that would be a vast amount of information), it does include the generic name of almost all ranks in all English-speaking countries.
Greenshed (
talk)
19:17, 22 August 2009 (UTC)reply
Name change
Captain (land) doesn't make a lot of sense to me: most sports team captains, tower captains, &c, operate on land. To distinguish OR-2 army captains from their OR-5 naval namesakes I believe Captain (military) would make more sense: this would apply to army and marine captains, captains in paramilitary forces and certain police forces, without implying football captains, Salvation Army captains, &c.
78.145.235.241 (
talk)
20:19, 16 September 2009 (UTC)reply
Not being funny, but wouldn't this article be better titled "Captain (Army)"? The disambiguation "land" seems odd and implies "terrain". Captain (military) is still too wide as it would imply air force captains and naval captains as well. Naval captains are are equivalent to colonels, so that would be wildly wrong! --
Bermicourt (
talk)
18:25, 9 April 2011 (UTC)reply
Comments:
a) There are OF-2 Captains that aren't "army" (or "land").
b) I'm not sure what "
Captain (military)" means. Nor am I sure what it "should" mean.
Thanks Pdfpdf - an outstanding proposal to bring clarity out of confusion! I would support all of the above with just 2 minor caveats: first, a question mark about why
Captain (naval) shouldn't be the main article and
Captain (OF-5) the redirect as at present. AFAIK the only OF-5 captains are naval and its the clearer title of the two. Second, it should be Group Captain as at present, not Group captain, which is a combination that is never used in my experience. --
Bermicourt (
talk)
19:49, 10 April 2011 (UTC)reply
Dear Bermicourt, I agree with you - that is indeed what I had originally intended! Thanks. Have I now succeeded in making it clearer? Cheers,
Pdfpdf (
talk)
16:00, 11 April 2011 (UTC)reply
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