They only ever called her "Commander", so I'm assuming that, if it's the same as the Naval ranks, she'd be the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel. Then again, where Prophecy is concerned, no one really seemed to have any type of distinguishing rank insignia.
The square gold and silver insignias on pilots' chests are the ranks in Wing Commander III/IV/Prophecy. You can find a chart of them (where known) here:
https://www.wcnews.com/articles/ranks.shtml Drake wears a silver rectangle divided horizontally, which makes her a TCSN Commander (O5).
So is an "air group" the same as a "wing" or is it one level up? In Prophecy, the CAG, or "Commander Air Group", seems to be in command of all the fighters on the Midway, which you said comprise three "wings" (which are mistakenly referred to as squadrons), each of which probably contains multiple squadrons... Is this distinction relevant for the first time on the Midway, because no previous carrier has been big enough to have multiple wings? I.e. on any smaller carrier, there is no CAG because the "wing commander" is already in command of all the fighters on board? And what rank does the CAG hold? A wing seems to be commanded by a Colonel (Halcyon on the Claw, Angel on the Concordia, Blair on the Victory/Lexington/Intrepid)...is a CAG therefore a flag rank (equivalent to Brigadier General or Rear Admiral?) How does this compare to moder aircraft carriers?
I think you're on the ball here. Air Group refers the entire fighter complement of the carrier, which in the case of the Midway means three separate fighter wings. Midway has a CAG who coordinates between three separate Wing Commanders (or, Squadron Commanders in the game's unique terminology). We've never seen a CAG before (Angel may be one - we just don't know about the Concordia's organization) because our carriers generally have one Wing. The Vesuvius-class carriers have four, though, so they probably have a CAG position, too...
It is confusing how "wing", "squadron", and "air group" seem to be used interchangebly, especially in Prophecy, when they really shouldn't be. I guess it's just a case of the script-writers not paying as much attention to the continuity experts as they ought.
Yeah... there's a common-man element here, too. Your hero character has to be the 'wing commander', since that's literally the name of the game... so they avoided reusing the term (for instance, Maniac's subplot *should* have read that he finally got to be *Wing Commander*, not squadron commander...).
Tigers's Claw:
More than 4, possibly as many as 10, probably about 6 squadrons of 10-16 fighters each. Each squadron seems to have a single fighter type, for the most part. Tiger's Claw fighters comprise a single air wing, commanded by Halcyon?
TOTAL 104 fighters (at full strength, which probably didn't happen too often).
(this was earlier in the way, and your post implied average squadron size shrunk over the course of the war, so 12-16 fighter squadrons may have been possible).
I believe the Tiger's Claw is fixed-by-continuity at six squadrons. As mentioned earlier, some of them do seem to use multiple fighter types... the training squadron in Academy and the Black Lions in the movie seem to regularly include a pair of Broadswords alongside their standard fighter type (Scimitars and Rapiers, respectively). As per squadron size, I think the Tiger's Claw is also the case where it varies the most. The cadet squadron in Academy had twelve pilots and Pilgrim Stars has (operational) squadrons on the 'Claw ranging from twelve to sixteen fighters each.
Concordia:
Probably 10-12 squadrons of 10-12 fighters each, making up 1 air wing, commanded by Angel.
TOTAL: 120 fighters
Yeah, hard to know. Could even be as many as three ~40-fighter wings with Angel as CAG. Note that the *Tarawa* (the carrier in many of the novels which is largely based on things from WC2) has three squadrons of fifteen fighters each. The Concordia might have 8 fifteen-fighter squadrons.
Victory:
4 squadrons of 10 fighters each, making up one air wing commanded by Blair.
TOTAL: 40 fighters.
That's right.
Lexington/Intrepid:
What I meant by "special case" was that half or more of the Lexington's fighters and pilots seemed to be not under Blair's command, and seemed to be part of Tolwyn's "black ops". So her wing wasn't set up like normal wings? Did she actually have two "wings"--one black ops and one normal (commanded by Blair?) And the Intrepid wing was sort of pieced together by whatever they could find, without a clear chain of command.
We have the details for all this in the WCIV novel. Two of the Lexington's squadrons were reassigned to leave room for the black ops test unit. Blair was Wing Commander of the Lexington proper and commanded four squadrons of sixteen fighters each (Thunderbolt, Longbow, Arrow, Hellcat). Intrepid did have a chain of command with a Captain, Wing Commander and Squadron Commanders.
Midway:
Three wings (~84 fighters each?), each composed of about 5 squadrons of 16 fighters each? Black Widow "wing" was briefly commanded by Maniac. All three wings were commanded by the CAG.
TOTAL: 252 fighters
Is this right, then?
That's right. We also know that the junior "wing" was commanded by Stiletto when the game started.
