Highest Ranking Union Officer Killed

[samgrant]

Originally Posted by Freddy

Here is another candidate.
On July 12, 1862, General Jesse Reno was promoted to Major General and given command of the IX Corps. Reno was killed at South Mountain on September 14, 1862.

Good, another one.

Jesse L. Reno:

Major General, USV 07-18-1862 (Posthumously)

Don't see how that put's him a 'candidate' for the distinction. Thanks, for naming him tho, he was apparently a great fellow and a "soldier's soldier".

( Hopefully you are not confusing him with the Jesse Reno who invented the escalator! )

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[Dred]

Absolutley it does. If a general gets promoted and retires 6 months later, and another general gets promoted but retires a year later, the one with the 1 year in rank would outrank the other if they were called back for duty, regardless of the promotion date. The date of promotion still matters IF they are both still in service, but once one of them leaves, the other begins to "catch up" to his senior.

[Freddy]

Originally Posted by samgrant

Good, another one.

Jesse L. Reno:

Major General, USV 07-18-1862 (Posthumously)

Don't see how that put's him a 'candidate' for the distinction. Thanks, for naming him tho, he was apparently a great fellow and a "soldier's soldier".

( Hopefully you are not confusing him with the Jesse Reno who invented the escalator! )

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I checked at least six sites and all of them put his promotion to Major General in July of 1862 and he died three months later on September 14 at the Battle of South Mountain. Someone may be confused but it is not I. From wikipedia:
"In 1892, Jesse W. Reno, son of American Civil War General Jesse L. Reno, and an 1883 engineering graduate of Lehigh University, patented the "notable Endless Conveyor or Elevator."

[samgrant]

Yes another posthumous USV, 18 July 1862, but that still puts him behind these, I think:

Sedgwick 07-04-1862
Kearny 07-04-1862 (posthumously)

Just for fun, I'll challange you about the elevator; Jesse W. Reno was responsible for the escalator (that scourge of acrophobiacs like myself), not the elevator.

Now I can't use this nugget in a WBTS Trivia game, nuts!
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[cw1865]

What about Sumner?

[cw1865]

If I recall the movie correctly, I think in Shaka Zulu, the two British officers who are defending the position against an assault have a minor seniority dispute at the beginning of the film. They held the same rank but went back to date of commision.

Does it matter how long you're a major general here or how long you've held a commision (even as a lieutenant) in the army?

Is this rule written down somewhere?

[PINCKNEYUSMCRET]

Back a long long time ago if I recall the Marine Corps Manual pretty much spells it out that if you have two folks of the same rank then the one who has the senior date of rank is senior. There are exceptions, but time and tequila have dimmed my memory.

Pinckney

[Dred]

Its called Time in Grade. They did the same thing in the Air Force, and I'm sure all other military branches. It's only been ten years, I haven't had as much tequila as Pinckney

And if your time in grade happens to be the same, they would go by time in service, your sign up date. And if that was the same, its alphabetical, and if thats the same they go by age. So by that point, unless you had Siamese twins born through a C-section then seprarated successfully and were able to get into the military at exactly the same time and receive promotions to the exact day, They got pretty much everything covered.

[ole]

The movie was Zulu and one of the officers was the first appearance of Michael Caine. Stanley Baker was the engineering officer and it depicted a particularly heroic stand at Rorke's Drift. And Baker's character did have a date of commission a few days earlier than Caine's.

ole

[ole]

Forgot what I was going to post. Seems that a posthumous promotion hardly qualifies a dead general to be included in the "highest ranked."

ole