Old Insignia Poster

[The CyBorg is destroyed]

I remember when the stripes changed in the 1990s.

A lot of people were unhappy with that, NCO's especially, because getting their "star" when making E-4 (Buck Sgt) was something to be remembered - becoming an NCO.

I personally feel it was a bit stupid to phase out "bucks," especially since it made the Air Force the only service not to have E-4's as a noncommissioned rank (except for those in the Army who became Specialists instead of Corporals).  Nomenclature-wise, going from Senior Airman to Staff Sergeant without a basic "Sergeant" rank in between just seems odd.

Then again, the Australian Army is phasing out Staff Sergeants (promotions will be directly from Sergeant to Warrant Officer Two - their warrants are more like our SNCO's), so who said there was anything logical about military rank?

After all, my dad was one of the earliest Specialist 4's, and he said at that time it was to be like an enlisted warrant officer corps for, well, specialists (he was a radio repairman).  Now promotion to Specialist E-4 is the rule instead of the exception.

[ColonelJack]

Regarding the Army's Specialist ranks ...

They were indeed a kind of enlisted warrant corps, or at least that was the intention.  They had their base in the Technician grades during WWII.  The grades were supposed to go all the way from E-4 to E-9, with Specialists and NCOs getting the same pay, but Specialists would not have any of the command authority or responsibility that NCOs have.  The grades of Specialist 8 and Specialist 9 existed only on paper, as no one was ever actually promoted to those grades.  When the Army phased out the Spec. 5 through 7 grades, they transferred the people in those grades to corresponding NCO grades and kept only Specialist 4.  Now called just "Specialist," it is (as we all know) the E-4 pay grade for those who are not NCOs, which are corporals.

Thus endeth the history lesson...

Jack

[TeamBronx]

As a cadet and senior member in NY City, we always took the subway to go see Harry at S. Mitchell's.  He was always friendly and would allow some of us to pick items off of his storage shelves.  When he was getting ready to retire, he offered the business to a good CAP friend of mine, but they could not come to terms.