Scrambled Eggs (Military)

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Dutch Admiral Helfrich with British Air Marshal Brooke-Popham both wearing peaked caps with embellishments
Dutch Admiral Helfrich with British Air Marshal Brooke-Popham both wearing peaked caps with embellishments

Scrambled Eggs (US English) or Scrambled Egg (British English) is a military slang term used in reference to senior officers, or the leaf-shaped embellishment found on the visors of their peaked caps. It is so-called because such an emblem, particularly when in golden colour, resembles scrambled eggs.

Today the "Scrambled Eggs" emblem, in one form or another, have been adopted by the majority of the world's navies; the main exceptions being the French and Italian navies, which use embroideries on the officers' cap bands to indicate seniorities.

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[edit] British Commonwealth

In the United Kingdom, and several other Commonwealth countries, scrambled egg (singular) is a nickname for the gold braid on the visors of defence force senior officers' peaked caps, and by extension a nickname for an officer. Specifically, Flag Officers, General Officers and Air Officers have two rows of golden oak leaves, while Commodores, Captains and Commanders (Royal Navy), Brigadiers and Colonels (Army), and Group Captains (RAF) have one row.

[edit] United States

USAF General Twining wearing his dress hat with silver cloud and lightning bolt embellishments
USAF General Twining wearing his dress hat with silver cloud and lightning bolt embellishments

"Scrambled Eggs" in the USA is the nickname for the golden oak leaf embellishments on the peaks of dress hats worn by high ranking military officers, usually on U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, and United States Coast Guard hats – the embellishments on U.S. Air Force hats, which has silver clouds and lightning bolts in place of oak leaves, are known as "farts and darts."[1][2]

Lieutenant Commander, US Navy, with no use of scrambled eggs

scrambled eggs of a Commander/Captain, US Navy

Flag Officers, US Navy

[edit] Civilian usage

"Scrambled Eggs" is also used to nick-name the leaf-shaped visor decorations on the peaked caps of merchant ships' masters and airline pilots. By convention this is reserved to Captains (of four-striped rank), in contrast to the Anglo-American naval traditions, where officers of Commander rank and above are entitled to it. Moreover, in the case of airline pilots, such "leaves" do not have to be oak leaves, and may be gold or silver in colour, depending on individual airline uniform.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Eggs on my Hat
  2. ^ *Whittingham, Richard. (December 1985). Saturday Afternoon: College Football and the Men Who Made the Day: Workman Pub Co. ISBN 0894809334 Phrase used to describe the passenger makeup on the train from Washington to Philadelphia for the Army-Navy game:"There were more scrambled eggs on the train than were served to the invading forces on D-Day"