There's an international aspect too: When you send people to missions together with other countries, if your boat skipper is a Lieutenant Commander and the other nation uses Commanders or Captains, your guys sometimes get less precedence or respect and that tends to push a bit of 'keeping up with the Smiths'. Also, everyone likes to get promoted, get more money, etc. and when we start bumping from entry ranks faster (which has happened at times) to aid in retention (people like to progress), then you almost need to move up your 'command' level postings to a higher tier of rank so that there is more ground for non-commanders to cover in the trank structure. I've seen that too.

TomB

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 11:18 AM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

Friday, July 31, 2020, 05:35:56 AM MST, Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

On 31Jul2020 2222, Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml
list) wrote:
> There might be relation ship to the rank of the commanding officer
> aboard USN ships.
>
> During WWII, a LtCmdr would command subs & escorts, while a Cmdr would
> command destroyers & a Capt the rest.
> Hence LtCmdr was a 'commander'.
>
> Since then, I believe that the minimum ranks have been raised (Tom
> Rux?) as I believe that for attack subs it's now a Cmdr while the
> 'boomers' have a Capt.
>
That's fairly normal in peacetime, because everyone wants a sea command,
and there are only so many ships. Add in a tendency of peacetime
militaries to become top heavy, and you get a sort of 'rank inflation'
for command appointments.
--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Well, yes & no.

During the '20's & '30's the USN pretty much maintained the same command structure as WWII despite the much reduced force levels.
IMO, the big change came with the drastic draw-downs that have happened several times since the end of WWII.
Esp in the post-VietNam era, when all the left-over ships from WWII were finally retired &, pretty much, not replaced.

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