A Thorough Exploration of Ranks in Wing Commander

For a few years I've been sharing random Wing Commander deep dives on Twitter. There's nothing I love more than taking some specific question or subject that maybe no one cares about and then looking at it as thoroughly as I can… and Twitter has always fit like a glove for that because it lets me kind of project out what I'm thinking about to the world and the inevitably forget about it when I lose steam. I'm a very long winded cross-every-dot writer and just doing stream of consciousness posts that forced me to think about what I was saying was a lot of fun.

So I thought that maybe in addition to that I should start doing longer form versions right here where people actually care about the tiniest bits of Wing Commander errata… and where I'd have some more space for explanatory notes. And I can answer questions and people who actually understand what they're talking about can contribute! Plus, the odds are that the CIC is going to long outlast Twitter as an archive. (And frankly, it was very nice to see folks asking after me after I did that movie post; like John Prine sang, everybody wants to be wanted.) So will I keep it up? Who knows! But let's get started… with a spreadsheet!

I was looking for something to think about last night and I decided it might be fun to 'update' the ranks chart originally published in Victory Streak for the 21st century. And I was right, it was fun! The overall reference needed some nips and tucks because of continuity introduced after Wing Commander III and I thought it would be fun to expand it a little beyond the original categories. Here's a snapshot:

The retcon for Wing Commander III forward in 1994 was that the Confederation is a /little/ different from the real world in that carriers are crewed by navy personnel but that they (can) have air wings that come from a different service, the Space Force. And the game included a rank chart that was originally put together for the costuming department showing the comparative ranks between the Navy, Space Force and the Kilrathi. You can find the original in Victory Streak, on page 8.

Keeping sense of this hasn't gone /great/ since then, though, and we've had various additions that have to be considered - like later seeing actual naval (and even marine!) aviators… and I feel like each one takes you a LITTLE further away from the original direct analogue. AND THAT'S GREAT! Wing Commander shouldn't just be American in space. (In fact as I look through the wikipedia for reference I see real rank systems have changed time and time again just in recent history… but I digress!) You can find the full sheet here. I've included columns showing the modern United States Navy and Air Force ranks from which the original systems were derived. You can unhide them at the top! I'm considering adding the US Army and the one thing that's stopping me is that I'm having trouble figuring out how their cadet ranks work out! (And maybe the RAF would be a good addition here? I'll circle back next post.)

ADDITIONS

• Marine ranks! Yellow ranks are ones that have not been identified in the WC canon. The names are taken from the real systems and can be contradicted in the future safely if needed. But it helps you see the structure of the thing, I think! Obviously we see far fewer enlisted ranks and ranks from services like the marines because of the usual perspective the stories are told from… so creating the marine column piecemeal from a bunch of sources was pretty fun!
• The movie establishes the rank of "Spaceman 2nd Class" among the Tiger Claw's crew. There was originally a more extended series of 'lower decks' cuts where we would follow missile loaders/engineers/etc. in the crew. You can see clips of these in the battles in the final film but there's a lot less than what was shot/imagined. The script introduces one of these characters thusly: "Spaceman RODRIGUEZ, 2nd class, a young Latino crosses himself." The novel makes that rank canon and unfortunately it isn't on the chart! The TCSN's O-1 rank was just "Spaceman" and per the logic used everywhere else Spaceman 2nd Class (as it is written in the novel) would be lower. So I've added that as an additional O-1 rank junior to the others. I'm not TOTALLY sold on this, though, since Rodriguez' emblem in the movie has three stripes which doesn't feel right for the lowest rank. Of course, perhaps there's an even lower Spaceman 4th class (one stripe) and 3rd class (two stripe) which would frankly explain everything perfectly. And it would help address the fact that the TCSN ranks are totally missing senior NCOs!
• The movie also refers to Blair and Maniac as "Lieutenant Junior Grade" (and confusingly 1st Lieutenant). There was no Lieutenant JG in the current setup and I opted to put it in the Navy schema to match the other movie ranks that are in the Navy (Lt. Commander Devereaux, etc.). And what do you know, that makes it the same as a TCSF First Lieutenant AND it reduces over to 2nd Lieutenant correctly (ie, the same as Angel, Hunter, etc.) when you convert the movie ranks to the game versions.
• WARRANT OFFICERS. The Wing Commander IV novel establishes that warrant officers exist in the TCSF so I've carried over the modern systems. We know very, very little beyond a single reference to Blair thinking that Seether might be a warrant officer. (Spoiler: he wasn't. Actually this is one of those writing-the-book-without-the-visuals things because if you actually play WC4 and look at Seether's uniform his rank is right there..)
• Officer Cadet ranks! This is super fun because we see cadet ranks at the TCSF flight school and we see an extensive explanation of naval academy's midshipmen in the Wing Commander I & II guide which matches right up with Annapolis (something Harrison researched specifically). The only confusing part is, of course, that Blair and Maniac explicitly went to the Space Naval Academy where they were midshipmen and not to some equivalent of the Air Force Academy… so again it seems like the service you end up in isn't as uniform as real life.
• Added "Hyilghar" as a Kilrathi O-1. From False Colors, describing Murragh who was on his first space assignment: "He was only a Hyilghar—the word translated very approximately as a lieutenant, but with a modifier that implied staff rather than combat duties and some sort of special aristocratic social status Graham didn't entirely understand—but despite his youth and modest rank he handled Kilrathi combat veterans three times his age with a natural aplomb that Graham still found himself envying after all these months."; I suspect the 'complete' Kilrathi rank chart would have many such variants for every rank.

OTHER NOTES

• Other services exist! In some cases, they use the same rank systems as the Confederation (the UBW Navy, InSys, etc.) and in others we just don't have reference to more than one or two ranks (the CIS from Privateer 2, the Confederation army, various pirate organizations, etc.)
• The double O-4 in Victory Streak used to bug me until I referenced the actual DoD rank charts which have plenty of double or triple ranks per grade per service sometimes. So I've continued that here with abandon to explain new ranks!
• Before anyone corrects it, Victory Streak does flip "Lieutenant General" and "Major General". This makes military historians cringe but WC has been pretty consistent with this since… it's still listed that way in Prophecy's design documents, for example!

Wing Commander III

• Rollins is only ever referred to as "Lieutenant" so his specific rank is unknown. I've marked him as a 2nd Lieutenant because it matches the WC3 TCSF 2nd Lt. insignia but that can be easily changed.
• Paladin is credited as "Major Taggart" but he does not wear the same insignia as Maniac. He has a gold version of Tolwyn's Admiral insignia and is obviously supposed to outrank you. He is specified to be a Brigadier General in the novel.
• Ralgha is said to be a Lieutenant Colonel in the novel. I don't believe this is ever established in the game but his rank insignia is (always?) flipped from Blair.
• Lieutenant is a bit confusing and has at least one Return of the Jedi-style error. Cobra, Flint, Vagabond and Vaquero are all called Lieutenants but never anything more specific (ie, 1st or 2nd Lieutenant). Flint, Vagabond and Vaquero all have the same insignia but Cobra has the same one as Flash and Maniac (who are both Majors). I've made the known insignia 2nd Lieutenant but it could easily be changed.
• I am listing Tolwyn as a Rear Admiral because that's his rank at the start of False Colors (and in the WC4 novel). I acknowledge that the production probably intended for him to be a full admiral here (or even a 'Sky Marshal' per the BTS notes).
• No live action characters are TCSF Captains. Presumably because the distinction would be too confusing!

Wing Commander IV

• The insignias I have assigned to TCN Lieutenant Commander and TCSF 1st Lieutenant are only visible on extras; they could be moved.
• Dekker has a very unusual double insignia (precursor to Blair's Commodore one in Wing Commander Prophecy?) seemingly made up of a Colonel above a 1st Lieutenant insignia. It's very tough to pick out but it does appear in multiple cutscenes.
• Flag ranks all seem to use the same (new) insignia. I'm considering Tolwyn to be a Rear Admiral (per the novel) and then a Space Marshal at the end, plus Wilford as a Vice Admiral.

Wing Commander Prophecy

• TCSF Lieutenant Colonel is only seen on extras (Bob-O-Matte!) and could easily be changed.
• Dekker's Colonel insignia (identical to the CAG) is visible only in the lost 'tiger in your tank' scene. But since it was published, it's canon!
• There's a major Major/Colonel problem that's likely a confluence of multiple factors. Maniac (Major), Spyder (Major) and Hawk (Colonel) all wear the same insignia which is mirrored from the Major rank from Wing Commander IV. The BTS material suggests Maniac was intended to have the same WC4 rank and that the others were intended for Colonels (with Spyder listed as such). My thought is that Maniac's is just worn backwards (it's visible only in the scene where he takes off his jacket) and that Spyder was only made a retcon in material published after the shoot. I think the 'right' thing is probably that Maniac should have his WC4 insignia, Spyder should have Maniac's insignia and Hawk is a Lieutenant Colonel rather than a Colonel (with Bob-O-Matte's insignia actually being Colonel). Or maybe Maniac was promoted to Colonel when he took over the Black Widows…