Need a bit of info for a story I'm writing, please?

wombat140

I'm trying to write an origin story of sorts for my main character. Can anyone who knows something about the Navy/Air Force/whatever sort out a question of ranks for me, please? She starts out as a young scientist running colony errands for the Environmental Division in a J-Class, first by herself, then (when the war situation makes that too dangerous) with two other people, then they get asked to fly a new ship from the dockyards to where it's wanted as nobody else is available (and then things get complicated). Is she an officer? If so, at what point, and what kind of an officer? Any other advice about what kind of career progression makes sense would be appreciated also.
Thanks, Wombat140

marcusdkane

I would suggest the rank of Lieutenant Commander, which I believe, historically comes from times when a Lieutenant would be given command of a (sometimes captured) vessel for the purpse of moving it, thus making them a Lieutenant-Commander(of a vessel) (or to put it another way, making them a 'lieutenant-in-command') Hope that might be of help

[Edit to add] It would also make sense for someone being assigned duties by themself to have a rank with enough clearance to provide the autonomy they need to complete their assignment on their own authority, unless coming up against a notably superior officer (ie base/ship commander with higher rank or the same rank, but more time-in-grade)

markhawkman

Well, if she's in charge of flying a ship, then yeah, officer. You could use any branch really, it's a matter of writing. Also it's linked to the specific reason that officer was chosen for the mission.

artan42

Lieutenant Commander or above. I know occasionally Archer class patrol boats can be commanded by Lieutenants, but big ships you're not looking at anything below a OF-4.​​

starswordc

wombat140 wrote: »

I'm trying to write an origin story of sorts for my main character. Can anyone who knows something about the Navy/Air Force/whatever sort out a question of ranks for me, please? She starts out as a young scientist running colony errands for the Environmental Division in a J-Class, first by herself, then (when the war situation makes that too dangerous) with two other people, then they get asked to fly a new ship from the dockyards to where it's wanted as nobody else is available (and then things get complicated). Is she an officer? If so, at what point, and what kind of an officer? Any other advice about what kind of career progression makes sense would be appreciated also.
Thanks, Wombat140

Yeah, I'm gonna concur with the others at lieutenant commander. IRL that's generally the minimum rank for command of a capital ship in wet-navies (i.e. destroyers are typically an LCDR's job). For Starfleet she'd also have had to take the bridge officer's test to become eligible for field command, within her specialty.

Some useful information on US Navy officer specialties (called "designators", as opposed to "ratings" for enlisted crew): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Naval_Officer_Designators

thunderfoot

Some things which have not been mentioned.
- Most military organizations are chronically undermanned.
- Most people who've had limited contact with the military persistently overlook noncommissioned officers and warrant officers.
- During WWII, the RAF and the USAAF both had Pilot Officers. This was an enlisted rank.
- Battlefield commissions have normally been given to enlisted personnel who perform in an exceptional manner under difficult circumstances.
- Sometimes the skill set or job position is more important than the rank. If your character was the best pilot available at the time and was designated to be in command of the misson by higher authority, your character will have all the authortiy and privileges needed to successfully acomplaish the task.

jonsills

Also note that traditionally, no matter the rank of the person involved, the commander of a ship is called "Captain", and is the only "Captain" on board (other captains are referred to by other ranks - Capt. Decker in ST:TMP wore the rank of Commander on his uniform, while in Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers, Capt. Jelal was referred to by Naval personnel aboard the Rodger Young as "Major", as "the Captain" was Capt. Delacroix). This is why all my "admirals" in-game wear Captain's pips, as they're starship commanders, not desk jockeys. Their "permanent rank" is Rear Admiral or full Admiral or whatever, but their service rank is Captain.

So your Lieutenant Commander, even with her small command, is going to be called "Captain" by the crew, and in any official communiques from Starfleet Command.

wombat140

Thanks very much, all six of you. That's a help (and an encouragement, thanks Thunderfoot especially for making it clear that this kind of thing can work given some alterations for what people have said here - I was on the point of doing what I usually do i.e. TRIBBLE it all into a ball and starting yet again).

I had to look up both "Archer class" and "OF-4", so I've learnt something!

jonsills wrote: »

Also note that traditionally, no matter the rank of the person involved, the commander of a ship is called "Captain", and is the only "Captain" on board (other captains are referred to by other ranks - Capt. Decker in ST:TMP wore the rank of Commander on his uniform, while in Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers, Capt. Jelal was referred to by Naval personnel aboard the Rodger Young as "Major", as "the Captain" was Capt. Delacroix). This is why all my "admirals" in-game wear Captain's pips, as they're starship commanders, not desk jockeys. Their "permanent rank" is Rear Admiral or full Admiral or whatever, but their service rank is Captain.

So your Lieutenant Commander, even with her small command, is going to be called "Captain" by the crew, and in any official communiques from Starfleet Command.

And she would have to have a heart of stone not to like that.

Cheers everyone.

thunderfoot

Glad I could help out and you're welcome.

staq16

thunderfoot006 wrote: »

Some things which have not been mentioned.
- Most military organizations are chronically undermanned.
- Most people who've had limited contact with the military persistently overlook noncommissioned officers and warrant officers.
- During WWII, the RAF and the USAAF both had Pilot Officers. This was an enlisted rank.

Just for accuracy, while the RAF did indeed have non-commissioned aircrew in WWII, Pilot Officer was (and is) a commissioned rank - albeit a very junior one. Today it's mainly held by officers in training.

But yeah, don't overlook the abilities of non-commissioned people. It's a bit wierd that the only ones ever to have a recurring role in Trek are Rand and O'Brien.

wombat140

I heard that it was because Roddenberry was thinking of real-life astronauts who are mostly from the Air Force, where almost everyone is called an officer, which then looked very odd translated onto a starship where the situation was much more like the Navy - so they seem to have settled into a nonsensical compromise of the crew are stated to be not all officers, but every named character IS an officer!

thunderfoot

staq16 wrote: »

Just for accuracy, while the RAF did indeed have non-commissioned aircrew in WWII, Pilot Officer was (and is) a commissioned rank - albeit a very junior one. Today it's mainly held by officers in training.

But yeah, don't overlook the abilities of non-commissioned people. It's a bit wierd that the only ones ever to have a recurring role in Trek are Rand and O'Brien.

Oops. I forgot. The RAF enlisted pilots were called Flight Sergeants, weren't they? Only recalled the Pilot Officer thing because Chuck Yeager mentioned it in his biography. Yeager started as an enlisted man.

artan42

It's because Starfleet is neither an Air Force nor a Navy. It's populated by officers and crewmen. There are NCOs but they're few and far between. I assume Officers do all the important jobs and crewmen all the mucky jobs with NCOs being shift leaders and whatnot.​​

thunderfoot

Starfleet does not have what might be considered a regular organization because Hollywood writers, and other writers as well, assume nearly every job in any uniformed service has to be done by a commissioned officer. This is a typical mistake and is made by a lot of other people as well. A Captain's Gig is usually commanded by a senior petty officer, not an Ensign. Because the Ensign is not qualified by training and experience to do so.

Take Harry Kim for example. In Star Trek:Voyager, he is the junior most officer on the Bridge and it seems more often than not he is in learn mode. Harry is about as close as Star Trek has ever come to accurately portraying a junior officer correctly. I like Harry a lot. Reminds me of my last platoon leader. Smart, educated, and willing to take on any challenge. But Harry's lack of experience occasionally works against him when he has to make a judgement call. And he gets it wrong sometimes.

starswordc

thunderfoot006 wrote: »

Starfleet does not have what might be considered a regular organization because Hollywood writers, and other writers as well, assume nearly every job in any uniformed service has to be done by a commissioned officer. This is a typical mistake and is made by a lot of other people as well. A Captain's Gig is usually commanded by a senior petty officer, not an Ensign. Because the Ensign is not qualified by training and experience to do so.

Take Harry Kim for example. In Star Trek:Voyager, he is the junior most officer on the Bridge and it seems more often than not he is in learn mode. Harry is about as close as Star Trek has ever come to accurately portraying a junior officer correctly. I like Harry a lot. Reminds me of my last platoon leader. Smart, educated, and willing to take on any challenge. But Harry's lack of experience occasionally works against him when he has to make a judgement call. And he gets it wrong sometimes.

There's also the conflation of the rank "captain" (O-6) with the form of address "captain" for the CO of the ship. As usual DS9 is the one series that got it even close to right: Ben Sisko is initially a commander (O-5) when he gets command of the station and later Defiant, which really is a good rank for the latter especially: it's a glorified corvette with a crew of 50 or less (I believe the DS9 TM said 35 crew members), not a thousand-man Galaxy-class (basically the Starfleet equivalent of an Iowa-class battleship) which would, indeed, rate a full captain as the CO, and realistically would probably have an O-6 for the first officer at minimum, as well. (That one's probably excusable because multiple four-pin captains might confuse viewers with little military knowledge, though the TOS movies admittedly got away with having four captains on the command crew until Sulu left.)

Though I will note that Starfleet ships frequently have much smaller crews than scaling from US Navy ships would suggest: a GCS is twice as long and over forty times the mass of a Gerald R. Ford- or Nimitz-class carrier, but has less than a quarter of the crew, while a Defiant-class is said to be about the size of a Ticonderoga-class missile cruiser, which has a crew of ~400. Which raises interesting questions about what Starfleet has managed to automate.

markhawkman

starswordc wrote: »

thunderfoot006 wrote: »

Starfleet does not have what might be considered a regular organization because Hollywood writers, and other writers as well, assume nearly every job in any uniformed service has to be done by a commissioned officer. This is a typical mistake and is made by a lot of other people as well. A Captain's Gig is usually commanded by a senior petty officer, not an Ensign. Because the Ensign is not qualified by training and experience to do so.

Take Harry Kim for example. In Star Trek:Voyager, he is the junior most officer on the Bridge and it seems more often than not he is in learn mode. Harry is about as close as Star Trek has ever come to accurately portraying a junior officer correctly. I like Harry a lot. Reminds me of my last platoon leader. Smart, educated, and willing to take on any challenge. But Harry's lack of experience occasionally works against him when he has to make a judgement call. And he gets it wrong sometimes.

There's also the conflation of the rank "captain" (O-6) with the form of address "captain" for the CO of the ship. As usual DS9 is the one series that got it even close to right: Ben Sisko is initially a commander (O-5) when he gets command of the station and later Defiant, which really is a good rank for the latter especially: it's a glorified corvette with a crew of 50 or less (I believe the DS9 TM said 35 crew members), not a thousand-man Galaxy-class (basically the Starfleet equivalent of an Iowa-class battleship) which would, indeed, rate a full captain as the CO, and realistically would probably have an O-6 for the first officer at minimum, as well. (That one's probably excusable because multiple four-pin captains might confuse viewers with little military knowledge, though the TOS movies admittedly got away with having four captains on the command crew until Sulu left.)

Though I will note that Starfleet ships frequently have much smaller crews than scaling from US Navy ships would suggest: a GCS is twice as long and over forty times the mass of a Gerald R. Ford- or Nimitz-class carrier, but has less than a quarter of the crew, while a Defiant-class is said to be about the size of a Ticonderoga-class missile cruiser, which has a crew of ~400. Which raises interesting questions about what Starfleet has managed to automate.

There seem to be large sections of the ship interiors which people only enter for maintenance purposes.... like the entirety of the nacelles.

thunderfoot

I know why the Starfleet crews are so small - "Look, Sir! Droids!" :P

starswordc

markhawkman wrote: »

starswordc wrote: »

thunderfoot006 wrote: »

Starfleet does not have what might be considered a regular organization because Hollywood writers, and other writers as well, assume nearly every job in any uniformed service has to be done by a commissioned officer. This is a typical mistake and is made by a lot of other people as well. A Captain's Gig is usually commanded by a senior petty officer, not an Ensign. Because the Ensign is not qualified by training and experience to do so.

Take Harry Kim for example. In Star Trek:Voyager, he is the junior most officer on the Bridge and it seems more often than not he is in learn mode. Harry is about as close as Star Trek has ever come to accurately portraying a junior officer correctly. I like Harry a lot. Reminds me of my last platoon leader. Smart, educated, and willing to take on any challenge. But Harry's lack of experience occasionally works against him when he has to make a judgement call. And he gets it wrong sometimes.

There's also the conflation of the rank "captain" (O-6) with the form of address "captain" for the CO of the ship. As usual DS9 is the one series that got it even close to right: Ben Sisko is initially a commander (O-5) when he gets command of the station and later Defiant, which really is a good rank for the latter especially: it's a glorified corvette with a crew of 50 or less (I believe the DS9 TM said 35 crew members), not a thousand-man Galaxy-class (basically the Starfleet equivalent of an Iowa-class battleship) which would, indeed, rate a full captain as the CO, and realistically would probably have an O-6 for the first officer at minimum, as well. (That one's probably excusable because multiple four-pin captains might confuse viewers with little military knowledge, though the TOS movies admittedly got away with having four captains on the command crew until Sulu left.)

Though I will note that Starfleet ships frequently have much smaller crews than scaling from US Navy ships would suggest: a GCS is twice as long and over forty times the mass of a Gerald R. Ford- or Nimitz-class carrier, but has less than a quarter of the crew, while a Defiant-class is said to be about the size of a Ticonderoga-class missile cruiser, which has a crew of ~400. Which raises interesting questions about what Starfleet has managed to automate.

There seem to be large sections of the ship interiors which people only enter for maintenance purposes.... like the entirety of the nacelles.

Well, that and the fact the Federation builds its ships like hotels with warp engines rather than like current-day warships. Even the Defiant's interior is pretty spacious for a ship not designed with exploration in mind: compare the quarters on a modern nuclear sub (HMS Victoria):


... with Defiant-class living quarters:


Still cramped but you're by no means having multiple crew members use the same bunk in rotation.

Granted, Starfleet ships are frequently multipurpose vessels, designed for long-duration exploration in peacetime. You might get nasty cases of cabin fever otherwise, even with holodecks (which were new in TNG).

artan42

Automation. I think it's mentioned in TNG that the main computer does an awful lot of the day to day tasks with the crew manly maintaining the parts or running the labs etc.​​

khan5000

This is actually not true...in the real navies and in star trek...in Undiscovered Country Kirk, Spock and Scotty all had the rank of Captain.
During my time in the Navy I served on an Aircraft Carrier...on my Ship the Commanding Officer, Operations Officer, Carrier Air Group Commander and Admiral's chief of staff (Carriers always have an admiral onboard) all had the rank of Captain. This is why the Navy has the term Commanding Officer.

as to the OP's question...it's true that most Naval officers gain command at LCDR rank but as it's your story and also a time of war you could push it so that she is a Lieutenant and the only one available to take command of the ship if you want.

jonsills wrote: »

Also note that traditionally, no matter the rank of the person involved, the commander of a ship is called "Captain", and is the only "Captain" on board (other captains are referred to by other ranks - Capt. Decker in ST:TMP wore the rank of Commander on his uniform, while in Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers, Capt. Jelal was referred to by Naval personnel aboard the Rodger Young as "Major", as "the Captain" was Capt. Delacroix). This is why all my "admirals" in-game wear Captain's pips, as they're starship commanders, not desk jockeys. Their "permanent rank" is Rear Admiral or full Admiral or whatever, but their service rank is Captain.

So your Lieutenant Commander, even with her small command, is going to be called "Captain" by the crew, and in any official communiques from Starfleet Command.