United States
The ranks of ensign and cornet were abolished in the U.S. Army in 1800.
In the U.S. Navy, the rank of "ensign" superseded "passed midshipman" in 1862. Ensign is the junior commissioned officer rank in the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard, the NOAA Commissioned Corps, and the PHS Commissioned Corps. This rank is also used in the U.S. Maritime Service and the U.S. Naval Sea Cadet Corps. Ensign ranks below lieutenant junior grade, and it is equivalent to a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army, the Marine Corps, and the Air Force.
Depending upon the warfare community, an ensign may go directly to a warship after being commissioned to serve as a division officer, or he or she may serve up one to two years of specialty training before reporting to a combat unit (e.g. flight school, weapons systems school, navigator school, submarine school, amphibious warfare school, radar school).
Ensigns who become division officers are responsible for leading a group of petty officers and enlisted men in one of the ship's divisions (for example, engineering, navigation, communications, sensors or weapons) while at the same time receiving on-the-job training in leadership, naval systems, programs, and policies from higher-ranking officers and from enlisted men and women.
Navy and Coast Guard ensigns wear collar insignia of a single gold bar and because of this share the nickname "butterbars" with Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps second lieutenants, who wear the same insignia.
Within the U.S. Public Health Service, those wearing the rank of ensign are part of a commissioned officer student training, and extern program (COSTEP), either junior, for those with more than a year remaining of education in a commissionable degree (JRCOSTEP), or senior, for those within one year of graduating with a commissionable degree (SRCOSTEP). Some officers may hold a permanent rank of ensign based on their experience and education, but than can hold the temporary rank of lieutenant, junior grade.
Read more about this topic: Ensign (rank)
Famous quotes related to united states:
“The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
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—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)
“The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected President of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of soft illusion.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a voter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1816–1902)