Talking about rank. I was a lowly Sergeant flying Lincolns and Mustangs many years back. Nowadays it makes me laugh to see all the gold wings and braid around Cessnas and Pipers. A bloke on my course was a Flying Officer captain of a Hercules in the circuit at Fiji. His rank meant one thickish stripe on his green flying suit. His co-pilot was a really big bloke with the one skinny stripe denoting the rank of Pilot Officer - sometimes known as Bog Rat. Bog-rat had 300 hours.
Well, they are downwind right circuit when a PanAm B707 is downwind left circuit. Obviously conflicting. Bruce (C130 skipper -and that was his real name) tells the 707 to land first. But Bruce's co-pilot missed the call and turned inside the 707 forcing the 707 into a go-around.
Choice words from the PanAm 4 bar captain.
10 minutes later, with both aircraft parked near each other, the pumped up 20,000 hour PanAm captain (very short in stature) and sporting more braid than Idi Armin himself is spotted striding purposely toward the C130 whose crew are blinded by the tropical sun reflecting off the scrambled eggs on his Sandhurst type hat.
Bruce delegates the big Bog-Rat to descend the stairs of the Hercules and greet the approaching scowling highly plumaged short one. As the passengers climbed into buses they were treated to the priceless sight of a large 21 year Air Force Pilot Officer with one itsy bitsy faded blue stripe on his shoulder telling the short highly plumaged PanAm senior captain to **** off or get thumped. After much fist waving the Pilot Officer and the Four Bar captain stalked back to their respective aeroplanes.
Rank meant nothing - it's character that counts...and size helps.