Category talk:British five-star officers

May 2008

User:Nobunaga24 previously empitied this category and it was then nominated for speedy deletion. As it was not empty for 4 days I asked the deleting admin to re-instate the category. The proper course of action for those who think that the category should be deleted or renamed is either discuss it here or to take it to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion.

I far as I can detect most of the objections centre around the idea that five star (and four, three, two and one star) ranks are American and not British. Whilst it's true that stars are not worn as a rank insignia they are still used. The most obvious place being for vehicle star plates. The RAF ones are in light blue, the Army ones are in red and I've never seen a Navy one but would guess that it is in navy blue.

MRAF star plate

Furthermore the use of the term a "2 star officer" is in common modern usage in the British Armed Forces to refer to a rear admiral, major general or air vice-marshal. The same is true of the other numbers except that 5 star officers are somewhat thin on the ground these days. Here are some links from the .mod.uk domain to verify this point:

• http://www.royal-navy.mod.uk/server/show/nav.3649
• http://www.army.mod.uk/servingsoldier/career/mcmdivs/msa/postprom_sys/rcds_hcsc.htm (All links are out of date)
• http://www.raf.mod.uk/purpose/developmentplan.cfm

Plus lots more are available. Greenshed (talk) 20:47, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

In addition, here (http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/Templates/LargeImageTemplate.aspx?img=/NR/rdonlyres/2C08077F-CE10-4767-8EFE-83EC339B875D/0/090_08_Out_Unclass_004Ecrop.jpg&alt=Air%20Commodore%20Mike%20Harwood) is an image of an RAF air commodore wearing a single star on his uniform. Greenshed (talk) 23:33, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

And the follow link shows a British Army general wearing 4 stars on his combat uniform, following the US pattern: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/3197562/Army-interpreters-bizarre-character.html Greenshed (talk) 21:21, 16 October 2008 (UTC)