Hello, sorry if I have phrased this wrong. In either case, What was the ranking(Non-Com) system like for enlisted soldiers? I don't need an explanation on how the modern or say post vietnam era ranking system works.
I have a bit of past Army experience myself..so I understand Modern Non-Com and Commissioned officers and how that works.
Specifically, I would appreciate any info on how the Tech Specialist/NCO thing worked. I see they had Spec 4,5 and etc.
They had sergeants and tech sergeants at one point?
Did they have a warrior leadership course..did they even have promotion boards in that time period?
Also, I have read articles and the like that state of multiple soldiers going from like Corporal to 1st LT. What factors or influences allowed this to happen? Thanks Much.
Hey pal, I need just a little bit more information to fashion you an answer. What time period are you wanting to know about? The Revolution's different from the Civil War which is different from WWII.
Edit: Okay, nuts and bolts time.
During WWII, the Army decided to create a new class of quasi-NCO, the Technician, as a way of rewarding highly skilled soldiers who did not necessarily need authority over troops. These grades were T-5 (equivalent to corporal), T-4 (equivalent to sergeant), and T-3 (staff sergeant). These grades were totally separate from the rank of Technical Sergeant, which was a normal NCO rank equivalent to the modern Sergeant First Class.
This held true for Korea as well. But in 1955, the army changed the name to Specialist, and reorganized the grades so that it went from Spec-3 (E-4) to Spec-1 (E-6) and Master Specialist (E-7). In 1958, they reordered it further, so that Spec-4 (E-4) was the lowest grade, and Spec-9 (E-9) was the highest. The idea, as in WWII, was to reward very skilled personnel with additional pay and prestige. This is the system present in Vietnam, but Spec-8 and Spec-9 were eliminated in 1968, Spec-7 in 1978, and Spec-6 and Spec-5 in 1985.
On promotions more generally, I'll talk a bit about the system in place in WWII if that's alright; I'm not as up on the Cold War army. Anyway, in the 1930s and 1940s US Army NCOs were chosen at the discretion of the regimental commander, with strong influence from the company commanders. It was entirely decentralized. No promotion boards; no length of service requirement. Each regiment had an authorized number of slots and could promote whoever they wished to fill those slots. Even still, long-service men tended to become NCOs, giving them a saltier aspect than in WWII, when many NCOs were former junior enlisted or recent draftees themselves.
Pre-war officers mostly came from the US Military Academy, ROTC programs, and college graduates who were accepted into OCS. The outbreak of war in Europe changed all this. Almost overnight, the United States began to rebuild its tiny, impoverished Army of 300,000. The United States enacted the first peacetime draft in its history, and the US Army swelled by December 1941 to 1,300,000 men, exclusive of the Air Corps. This would later rise to over 8 million. This caused a huge need for trained officers. The Army drafted many college men and sent them to OCS, but they also allowed desirable enlisted men to apply for OCS, and many were accepted and became officers, in addition to rarer battlefield commissions; in the case of battlefield commissions, OCS was obviously waived.