Max still out ranks Hikaru

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, peter said:

I have to brush up on mil history, I had no idea there were non-comms flying planes back then, but I guess that sort of made sense because they had to take whoever they could find, sort of like in SDFM.

By World War II, national militaries could afford to be a bit choosier about their pilots... since the hardware had improved enough to give pilots a reasonable expectation of not dying messily as a result of their own aircraft's hardware in normal operation.  Enlisted pilots were usually pilots who'd been civilian-certified for things like crop dusting, airmail, etc., while officer pilots usually attended military flight school to learn to handle fighters, bombers, etc.

The rank of Flight Sergeant was abolished by the US in 1942 with the Flight Officer Act of 1942, which promoted all enlisted pilots to a new warrant rank of Flight Officer and discontinued the rank of Flight Sergeant, and after 1945 the warrant position ended up being abolished because there were enough officer pilots around that it wasn't necessary anymore.

 

2 hours ago, peter said:

The whole reason I started down this rabbit hole was because I was trying to create a meme where Max is barking orders, but as a Corporal, that doesn't leave a lot of personnel he can order around, lol!

Ah, that'd do it... lol

Well, Max did have the VF-1A as a Sergeant and 2nd Lieutenant too, which gives him a bit more latitude... it wasn't until after he'd been promoted to 1st Lieutenant that he finally got the VF-1J.

Max was also a former Destroid driver in Macross the First too, so they'd have reason to listen to his input regardless.

 

2 hours ago, peter said:

I was also thinking that Max seems like a pretty chill dude, so someone would have to fuk up pretty bad to get the knife hand from Max.

I dunno, he is pretty serious on the job... DON'T TAKE YOUR EYES OFF THAT MONITOR!

 

 

25 minutes ago, camk4evr said:

At a guess the reason Hikaru started as a Sargeant instead of a Corporal lime Max and Kakizaki is because he already knew how to fly (and he'd already been in combat in a valkyrie) so he didn't have to go through badic flight training so was able to get some additional officer/NCO training.

*coughNEPOTISMcough*

I mean, it helps that he's besties with the CAG...