Talk:Commander

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is within the scope of the Law Enforcement WikiProject, a wikiproject dedicated to improving wikipedia's coverage of law enforcement. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks.
???	This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale.

The following sentence does not make sense. I am not sure how to correct it:

"A Commander in the U.S. Navy commands a Frigate, Destroyer, Submarine or shore installation is second in command to a Captain."

The sentence does make sense, because the style "Captain" may not always correspond to the actual rank of a commanding officer. Thus, the officer in charge of a (say) US fast-attack submarine is usually holding the rank of Commander (equivalent to Lieutenant-Colonel in the Army), but the CO of a (larger) ballistic missile submarine is usually a Captain. Nonetheless, both are, for reasons of custom and courtesy, addressed by their crews as "Captain". Likewise, courtesy is the reason that a Lieutenant Colonel or Lieutenant Commander is usually addressed simply as "Colonel" or "Commander". Christian Rödel

[edit] Hornblower

Horatio Hornblower was not a Commander in Hornblower and the Atropos; he was a full Captain, in command of a large 22-gun Sloop of War which was a (according to Forester/the novels) borderline command between a full captain or a commander.

This could have been easily missed, if reading the books out of order; the distinction is not made clear in Atropos but rather at the end of Hotspur when he is promoted by the retiring Admiral Cornwallis.

Further, he was made a commander twice in Lieutenant Hornblower; initially he was made one by an overseas admiral, which was not confirmed due to the Peace of Amiens, and later made one shortly before the resumption of hostilities.

Way TMI for the main article.

Nkedel 22:50, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Commander only as rank?

This page seems to talk of a commander only as a rank, and does not talk about commanders in general (as a duty, a person who commands people). Don't know about other armies, but in the Israel Defense Forces, a commander has many distinct features (insignia, duties, etc.), regardless of rank. That is, a corporal who is a commander is very different from one who is not (although all officers are commanders other than some NCOs). If someone can, please write more about the generic term commander. I can probably come up with something next week, but it would be better if someone else with more global military knowledge wrote this. -- Y Ynhockey || Talk Y 21:00, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

We already have articles at Commanding Officer and Officer Commanding. I suspect these distinctions between commanders and non-commanders are more down to the fact that Israel has a conscript army than anything else. In Britain, for instance, a corporal is a corporal is a corporal, whether he commands something or not. Same authority, same insignia, same status. I've always seen commander as a fairly informal term without a great deal more to say - it's someone in charge of a unit and that's about it (which is probably why there's not a lot about it in the article already - see the third and fourth paragraphs). But if Israel (and/or other countries) see it differently then it's worth a section. -- Necrothesp 22:49, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comments about the rank in Sci-Fi worlds

• In Battlestar Galatica, while Commander might have been equivilent to Rear-Admiral, in effect, Commander Adama commanded the entire fleet and all of the military, at least in the original series and books based on that series.
• In Battlestar Galatica, the references to Adama's promotion and his son Lee, apply only to the remake. He had no son by that name in the original. His kids there were Apollo, Zack, and Athena.
• Most parts of the Star Wars universe had two ranks of Commander. One was the normal naval version of the rank, placed between Lt. Cdr. and Captain. However, in the X-Wing book series, we find out that Commanders outrank Captains in the equivilent of the Air Force and Ground forces of the Republic. Further confusing matters, Commanders can be promoted to General and might be given "Naval" commands like that of a capital ship or even a fleet.

--Will 06:19, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

re: BSG: BSG uses a very different rank scheme, combining army and naval ranks in a single chain of command. Usually Commander would be the equivilant of a Captain today. Thinking that Commander is the same as an Admiral today is dubious reasoning, because he is commanding that fleet only due to extraordinary circumstances. Without the Cylon attack, he'd still command only a single ship. And in the remake Apollo is still in the callsign of Lee Adama. In the old series it was his real name

1. You forgot to sign.

2. Adama did have legitimate command of more than the Galatica. He also commanded all forces attached to it. Since any forces sent to other ships were nominally attached to his ship, he would still command those forces too. In the US Navy, the captain of an aircraft carrier does NOT command any aircraft. In fact, each carrier has THREE captains on board. In addition to the ship captain, the XO and CAG are also captains. Commanding everything including the surrounding fleet would be a rear admiral. So the BSG rank of Commander, even prior to the start of the series, would have to be somewhere between the US Naval ranks of Captian and Rear Admiral.

--Will 18:47, 9 August 2006 (UTC)