Enemy of the State: Royal Navy officer faces jail after being caught trying to pass nuclear submarine secrets to Russians in MI5 sting
Tsk.
Petty Officer Edward Devenney, 30
Sigh. A petty officer is not an officer.
You\’d expect the Mail to know that, seeing as how it\’s written for the non com classes…..
I thought it was written for “the wives of the people who run the country”?
There are commissioned officers who hold the Queen’s commission and there are non-commissioned officers (NCOs) who do not.
Petty Officers are non-commissioned officers, but officers none the less (the clue is in the title). Therefore the report is correct, if misleading.
NCOs work for many years to achieve their rank and should be given the respect they deserve. As they will tell you, if given the opportunity, unless commissioned officers, they work for a living.
It’s written for Americans then? I have never heard anyone in the British forces refer to Other Ranks as non coms…
Nor is he both a “Petty Officer” and a “Chief Petty Officer”. And he was probably serving at HMS Drake not “HMS Rake”.
Written by clerks for clerks. Very petty too.
There are commissioned officers who hold the Queen’s commission and there are non-commissioned officers (NCOs) who do not.
True, but the term “officer” used in almost every military context refers only to commissioned officers.
Frankly in the Navy you can’t always tell anyway…
I have a drinking buddy who was RSM in one of the Parachute Regiments. If you described him as an officer, he would disagree.
An essential requirement for an RSM is a voice that can carry across a parade ground. The aforementioned disagreement would probably leave you with one, possibly two, burst eardrums.
I think that’s exactly why they aren’t called officers – why should they share with some pimply faced subaltern fresh out of high school?
It’s all irrelevant – the guy is clearly a ‘pinky tiff’.
RSMs aren’t officers but you do call them “Sir”.
NCOs of my acquaintance used to go apeshit if you called them “Sir” during training (those misguided souls who did so only did it once) or in any other way confused them with an officer. As one instructor said to us: “since you are going to be officers it is custom and usage for me to call you Mr so-and-so. Don’t you dare start thinking I mean it or you deserve it”.
We used to look forward to our annual dinner as guests in the Sergeants mess at Christmas. Being mere officers we lived like pigs in comparison. Why? Because the NCOs were in charge of appointments. So if a good cook arrived on the base, guess where he ended up…
As above. NCOs train them and then run the army at the sharp end, bless ’em.
Reminds me of the old story about officer training in the British Army, where the trainee was asked “how do you dig a trench?” The correct answer was, “I say Sergeant, dig me a trench!” The point being, parsing of rank aside, does a Petty Officer make the decisions or boss the work?
I find being a site engineer remarkably similar. We have electricians (privates), supervisors (NCOs) and engineers (commissioned officers). Yes, technically the engineer is in charge. But woe betide the young engineer who second guesses an experienced supervisor…
I find being a site engineer remarkably similar. We have electricians (privates), supervisors (NCOs) and engineers (commissioned officers). Yes, technically the engineer is in charge. But woe betide the young engineer who second guesses an experienced supervisor…
Heh heh! Too true…especially in Russia.
As a petty officer he isn’t an officer, he’s a senior rating.
In this guy’s case – neither. He’s a tiff (a technician – ‘artificer’ in Jackspeak). Although some of them do come out of the factory as Killick Tiffs, Petty Officer is pretty much the bottom of the pile (although at 30, I’d have been expecting him to get his buttons up reasonably shortly.) So they do skilled maintenance work. Chief Tiffs are the supervisors and you used to have Charge Chief Tiffs to do the bossing and the (engineering) paperwork (now been replaced by the introduction of the WO2 rank to the RN.)
Somewhere else, with the MoD telephone directory close at hand in case of an emergency spanking, would be the DWEO – a Lieutenant. In charge of the rest of the paperwork.