Talk:United States Army officer rank insignia

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Contents 1 Silver & gold 2 Merge 3 Change of text position 4 Abbreviations 5 Missing Rank 6 General of the Armies 7 General of the Armies Insignia 8 What are these insignia?

[edit] Silver & gold

The "gold" rank is not actually gold for the grades of 2LT and MAJ. The color is actually bronze and the reason it is considered inferior to silver is the bronze rank required polishing to keep from tarnishing while the silver ranks did not. This is what is currently being taught in the Officer Candidate School at Ft. Benning.

That conflicts with the explanation from the Institue of Heraldry [1]]. If the original insignia was embroidered on the epaulettes, then silver and gold are colors, not metals. --Gadget850 ( Ed) 12:05, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

Why was this merged into the U.S. Army article when U.S._Army_enlisted_rank_insignia was not? I think this page was valuable as a quick reference and a nice printable list of officer ranks. Perhaps it can be linked somehow to the chart in the main army article or otherwise reverted? Thanks. - 64.247.236.234 23:18, 10 January 2006 (UTC) Wow I was just about to ask about that Bushido Brown 22:27, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Change of text position

This change:

  (diff) (hist) . . m U.S. Army officer rank insignia; 16:32 . . Nricardo (Talk)   
     (moved intro., so as not to be obscured by table.)

Not sure I understand the motive. The text should wrap around the two tables. It did not? I ask because there are many other pages with the same style. If there's a problem, I need to identify it. The text wasn't intended to be a header, but I was hoping someone would fill in more text later. - Wguynes 00:36, Mar 28, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Abbreviations

I've always had an issue with adding abbreviations, even before putting content on wikipedia. I've never found an official source for any abbreviations for any branch. Adding them is dooming you to endless edit revisions as personal opinions creep in. I used to host my own military rank pages and got endless "corrections" all contradicting each other. - Wguynes 07:52, May 15, 2004 (UTC)

Hi, Wguynes. Below are official sources (i.e., the Department of Defense). These use the military's standard, which may deviate from civilian style guides. Also note that different branches have different abbreviations and that capitalization counts.

* http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/insignias/officers.html

* http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/insignias/enlisted.html

---

does the rank of General of the Armies, belong here as well? Xtra 02:53, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Missing Rank

The highest rank ever achieved in the army is General of the armies. 1 above general of the army. --68.44.106.218 01:47, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] General of the Armies

I think that this rank should be removed, it has not been held in years and is not currently active in the US Armed Forces, Plus it Messes up the Other Ranks on the Template Feeblezak 10:43, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

It should be mentioned, but not included in the table. There is no current authorized insignia for the rank, but it is still recognized as the highest U.S. Army rank ever held. Caerwine Caer’s whines 18:00, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] General of the Armies Insignia

I think this rank should be added to the template, if you go to Rank Insignia of the Chineese Army Page the design for General of the Armies Insignia can be found there —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.188.212.157 (talk) 13:30, 3 May 2007 (UTC).

• The page in question is Ranks of the People's Liberation Army and the image should not appear there, as there is no insignia for the General of the Armies. — MrDolomite • Talk 21:18, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What are these insignia?

As the copyright templates for these images are deprecated I was trying to find a suitable replacement tag. My problem is I don't know what these insignia images are of and thus can't find their source. They are similar in appearance to Shoulder Marks as shown in http://www.army.mil/symbols/Downloads/r670_1.pdf (page 204). Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 01:12, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Update - I also found the insignia at http://www.army.mil/symbols/Downloads/Ranks.pdf which is a 5 megabyte file but again does not have the exact images that are being shown here. The insignia themselves seem correct (and are public domain) but it's still not clear what the images on the article page are of. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 05:31, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

They're being shown on the green shoulder tabs used with the Class A and Class B uniforms. Caerwine Caer’s whines 06:36, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Can you provide a source/citation for this? In the first PDF I noted above [2] there is no mention of "shoulder tabs." There are "shoulder marks" which are black - see section 28–8. "Other grade insignia / a. Shoulder marks. (1) Officers. Shoulder marks for officers are black with a 1⁄8-inch yellow stripe below the embroidered grade insignia (see fig 28–64)." These images are not shoulder marks as they don't have quite the right shape, don't have the yellow stripe, and are not black. There is also "Figure 28–67. Shoulder boards" but that's the wrong shape. This looks close "Figure 28–137. Wear of combat leaders identification on shoulder loops" though it's about a green cloth loop that would have the insignia (again a feature not visible on the wikipedia images).

I also just realized when jumping from tab to tab in the browser that the wiki images jump around. The implication is they were scanned and cropped from printed material. That tells us nothing about the source/copyright but I had been thinking someone just photoshopped these up for wikipedia.

I'd propose removing these images and replacing them with images from http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/insignias/officers.html and believe someone is already doing that. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 07:36, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

The Class A's and B's are covered under chapters 15 and 16 and the rank insignia thereof in sections 28-5 and 28-6. See particularly Figures 28-32 and 28-46, although they cut off the top of the shoulder loop above the button. Caerwine Caer’s whines 23:49, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I found http://www.uniforminsignia.net/index.php?p=show&id=65&sid=1271 which has the same images and calls them Officers Class A shoulder rank insignia. It's not clear who took the images from who though the uniforminsignia files are dated Oct. 24, 2004 and they showed up on Wikipedia in 2005. The files are bit-for-bit identical except the ones on Wikipedia each have two bytes appended to the end. I don't know if these bytes are something Wikipedia appends during upload. The uniforminsignia site also has shoulder marks. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 19:08, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmm - Let me back up a little - I have two goals in mind which I believe will help improve this article

1. Are the images shown in the article unambiguously accurate?
   It seems after discussion and research that the article images are supposed to be of shoulder loops for which, as Caerwine noted, there's Figure 28–32 (page 212 of the PDF [3]) and Figure 28–46 (page 217 of the PDF). I believe that the images shown in the article are not accurate as
   1. The article images show a flat bottom while the PDF shows that they bottom is angled so that the loop will fit on a human shoulder.
   2. The article images have a pronounced slope on the left/right sides while the PDF loops slope much less.
   3. The article images have a pointed top with the point starting at or just below the level of the button. The PDF shows the sides of the loop continuing straight past the button and does not show how the top is shaped. For all we know, it could be a straight or angled cut that fits flat under the edge of the collar.
   4. I also looked for photos of these loops on http://www.army.mil/institution/leaders/
      1. Photos [4] and [5] - The top is under the collar and if it's pointed like what's in the images the point starts above the level of the button. It's not clear from this picture but it seems the sides are more straight and not angled out.
      2. Photo [6] - Here the sides look straight.
      3. From [7] this image [8] shows that the sides appear pretty straight. It’s a group of people in uniform.
      4. The PDF does not seem to describe the dimensions of officer’s shoulder loops. Enlisted personal shoulder loops are described on page 125 as “The loop is 21⁄2 inches wide at the outside shoulder edge, 11⁄2 inches wide at the inside collar edge, and piped all around with gold-colored nylon or rayon cord edge braid, 1⁄8 inch wide.” You can see pictures of these at [9] and [10] where you can see they are worn outside the collar, have rounded tops, clearly sloped sides, and gold braiding on the outer edges.
2. Can the actual images being used in the article be traced back to a source that gives the Wikipedia the rights to use them?
   1. I have determined that the images came from http://www.uniforminsignia.net/index.php?p=show&id=65&sid=1271
      1. The Wikipedia files are byte-for-byte identical to these files except on Wikipedia two bytes that seem to be a sequence counter.
      2. The files on that site are dated Oct. 24, 2004 and were uploaded to Wikipedia in April 2005. I recognize that file dates can be modified to give the appearance that they pre-dated Wikipedia though I will trust Wikipedia's upload log.
      3. At the bottom of the page is a copyright statement "Copyright © 2000-2006 WORLD INSIGNIA COLLECTORS UNION / The information on this page may not be reproduced, republished or mirrored on another webpage or website without written permission from the editors."
      4. I have looked fairly hard for another source of these images, particularly on .mil sites without success.
   2. I do not want to get into "images of military insignia can't be copyrighted" as the existing article images seem to be of artistic renditions of shoulder loops containing insignia and also that no one has been able to cite, chapter and verse, a verifiable source for the claim that "images of military insignia can't be copyrighted."

With these points in mind I believe the images on Wikipedia should be deleted and replaced with known public domain images from http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/insignias/officers.html. Marc Kupper (talk) (contribs) 01:58, 18 June 2007 (UTC)