Rear Admiral (United States) - History

History

During World War II, the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard both had a temporary one-star rank of commodore that was used in limited circumstances. By the end of the war, all incumbents had been advanced to the rank of two-star rear admiral and the commodore rank was eliminated in both services. Both the Navy and the Coast Guard divided their rear admirals into "lower half" and "upper half", the former being paid at the same rate as a one-star brigadier general in the U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps and the newly independent U.S. Air Force. Lower-half rear admirals were eventually promoted to upper half status, where they would receive pay equivalent to a two-star major general. However, both categories of rear admiral wore two-star insignia, an issue that was a source of consternation to the other services.

At the same time, the Navy also bestowed the title of commodore on selected U.S. Navy captains who commanded multiple subordinate units, such as destroyer squadrons, submarine squadrons and air wings and air groups not designated as carrier air wings or carrier air groups. Although not flag officers, these officers were entitled to a personal blue and white command pennant containing the initials, acronym abbreviation or numerical designation of their command.

In 1981, Pub.L. 97–86 expanded commodore from a title to an official permanent grade by creating the one-star rank of commodore admiral. After only 11 months, the rank was reverted to just commodore but kept the one-star insignia. However, this caused issues with the Navy due the difficulty in discriminating those commodores who were flag officers from commodores who were senior captains in certain command positions. Then in 1985, Pub.L. 99–145 renamed commodore to the current grade of rear admiral (lower half). Up until 1981, all rear admirals wore two stars on their shoulder bars and rank insignia. Since then, rear admirals (lower half) wear one star while rear admirals wear two; verbal address remains "rear admiral" for both ranks. On correspondence, where the rear admiral's rank is spelled out, the acronym (LH) and (UH) follows the rear admiral's rank title to distinguish between one and two stars.

Beginning around 2001, the Navy, Coast Guard, and NOAA Corps started using the separate rank abbreviations RDML (one star) and RADM (two stars), while the Public Health Service continued to use the abbreviation RADM for both.

As flag officers, the flags flown for rear admirals of the unrestricted line of the U.S. Navy have one or two white, single-point-up stars on blue fields for the lower half or upper half, respectively. The flags of restricted line officers and staff corps officers have blue stars on a white field. 10 U.S.C. § 5501 and 37 U.S.C. § 201 officially lists the two-star grade as rear admiral and not rear admiral (upper half). However, the four uniformed services tend to list the rank as rear admiral (upper half) to help the general public distinguish between the two grades.