Chiefs ≠ Sergeants

I like to read books about Navy SEALs. (I think I’ve mentioned my unhealthy obsession with Navy SEALs before.) For the most part, I overlook inaccuracies in the same way that I do when I watch Army Wives. These things are for entertainment and not meant to be documentaries. But when authors make little errors that are stupid things that could be easily checked, it annoys me.

Examples:

A Sergeant is the equivalent of a Chief.
No, a Sergeant is the equivalent of a Petty Officer Second Class.

A Senior Chief is the king of Chiefs.
Really? I bet a Master Chief would be surprised to hear that. And if you want to get really technical, there’s only one King of Chiefs and he is the MCPON.

We’ll determine who sleeps on the floor by rank and rating.
Ok, let’s try that. You’re a CDR, I’m a CTI, and he’s an IS. Who gets the floor? Chris says, ‘One of the enlisted people, duh.’ Yes, but which one? Rating is a job. Rate is the enlisted equivalent of rank; only officers have rank. The terms are not interchangeable.

Yes sir, Chief.
Uh, have you ever called a Chief sir? They *hate* that. I called a Chief sir once when I was at OCS [because I had no contacts and could only make out khaki... figured it was better to assume officer since it was at OCS] and was quickly reprimanded and told “I work for a living; don’t call me sir.” So noted.

Anyway, I will get off my soapbox now. These are just basic things that should be caught if you have a military advisor (which this particular author did). I get caught up in the book and then I run into one of those errors and it snaps me back into reality. Way to ruin the book.

This must be how Chris feels when he watches movies about the Navy and says, “That’s not really like that. That could never happen. That’s so not realistic.” I always shush him because he’s interrupting my movie, but I guess those things are interrupting the movie for him too.

So what about you? Do things like that ruin books/tv/movies for you or can you overlook them?