Historical Naval Rank Flags 1956-1979 (Thailand)

Last modified: 2023-06-03 by zachary harden
Keywords: rank | military | navy | admiral of the fleet | admiral | vice admiral | rear admiral | commodore | chakra | marshal's staffs: crossed (white) | wreath (white) |
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• Admiral of the Fleet 1956-1979
• Admiral 1956-1979
• Vice Admiral 1956-1979
• Rear Admiral 1956-1979
• Commodore 1956-1979

See also:

• Chakra (wheel) on Thai Military flags
• Historical Naval Rank Flags
• Naval Rank Flags
• Historical Flags
• Military Flags
• Thailand

[According to Album 2000], a blue flag with five white chakras in circle surrounding two white admiral's staffs in saltire within a white wreath. The wreath seems to be of flamules of a kind (of these are just some kind of leaves looking similar to three flames), the two staffs are topped with the Royal Garuda shapes. On FOTW the image shows [Ed.: formerly] much simpler wreath and the two charges in saltire are cannon barrels. This may be result of over simplification in the source already, rather then the different design used previously.

The Flaggenbuch 1939 does not show "five-chakras" ranks yet, and apparently neither does the Singha Beer source. As it was in 1979 that a major update of the flag was made, raising the number of chakras for each rank, we may suppose that it is also when this was introduced – the earliest possible instance, that is.

The ratio of this and subsequent flags is given as 1:1 or 30:37. I am not sure if it means that Armand got ambiguous data from various sources, or that there exist both versions, possibly for different occasions (e.g. like when used hoisted on ship and when displayed as car flag or something of the sort).

As shown in Album 2000

5:6  image by Jaume Ollé, Calvin Paige Herring and Eugene Ipavec

Source: Barraclough and Crampton 1981.

Calvin Paige Herring, 29 May 1998

image by Suttipong Phuensean, 19 Aug 2007, modified by Peter Hans van den Muijzenberg, 10 November 2014

This variant is based on an actual flag where the flag is perfectly square and the lines in the chakras are blue as in the field.
Clay Moss, 10 November 2014