I do not like telling people they are wrong, but you are.
The official title for a five star is "General of the Army."
General's stars are silver. The US Army officer ranks that are gold are Second Lieutenant (2LT), represented by a gold bar, and Major (MAJ) represented by a gold oak leaf. All enlisted and NCO ranks are gold.
You are quite right about the thought of MacArthur being a six star general............it is disturbing!
Mea culpa. You are quite right on both points. However, when Pershing was promoted to five-star rank he was made 'General of the Armies', so a different title will have to be devised.
Huh, so its a problem here, too.The five-star rank is entitled "General of the Army" (singular).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_of_the_Army_(United_States)
So that's the insignia he'd wear when he is elected God-Emperor and President for Life of America?
Huh, so its a problem here, too.
The software on forums like this does not like to have a closed parentheses ')' at the end of a URL, for some reason. To get it to work, you need to ad a space between the paren and the end bracket, like this: ...(United States) ]. If you don't, it moves the paren to after the bracket, like this: ...(United States]), and the link doesn't lead directly to the page.
For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_of_the_Army_(United_States)
Mea culpa. You are quite right on both points. However, when Pershing was promoted to five-star rank he was made 'General of the Armies', so a different title will have to be devised.
The WW2-era five-star rank was created to standardize the general-officer rank structure among the Allies: Britain, France, and Russia had five tiers of General Officer ranks (e.g. Brigadier, Major General, Lieutenant General, General, and Field Marshal in the British Army), whereas America only had four active ranks, and it was an important matter of protocol to clarify that Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Bradley were equivalent in rank to the top commanders of the other allied armies, not to the next rank down...
Only acceptable if Nimitz is promoted to Admiral of the Navy at the same time to retain some amount of sanity at the high command.
MacArthur as a six star general? Excuse me a moment, I just have to do something.Let's just suppose that Japan did not surrender and an invasion of Japan happened. Let's also assume that MacArthur gets the six star rank and becomes the first and possibly only officer to hold that rank. Considering how big his ego got in OTL, the possibilities are interesting.
So what happens in a world with a six star MacArthur who is ultimately successful in taking Japan?
MacArthur as a six star general? Excuse me a moment, I just have to do something.
Was he really so bad? I thought he did a reasonable job in Japan.
No doubt there were times when he'd have been the better for a red-hot poker shoved up his backside, but isn't that true of most brasshats?
No doubt there were times when he'd have been the better for a red-hot poker shoved up his backside, but isn't that true of most brasshats?
It's actually a good thing most brasshats don't seem to have been like MacArthur or God forbid, Patton. They may have been good at what they did, but they serious problems.
I'm reminded of an AH proposal where MacArthur and Patton run against each other in...'48, I believe.