Commander Air Force's mid-rank officers' ranks are modelled on those of the Royal Navy, the term wing commander is used as a rank, and this is the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel in the army or a commander in the navy. The rank of wing commander is above that of squadron leader and below that of group captain. In the former Royal Naval Air Service, which was merged with the Royal Flying Corps to form the Royal Air Force in 1918, the pilots held appointments as well as their normal ranks in the Royal Navy, and they wore insignia appropriate to
Group captain the rank until the unification of the Canadian Forces in 1968, when army-type rank titles were adopted. A Canadian group captain then became a colonel. In official French Canadian usage, a group captain's rank title was "colonel d'aviation". In the Argentine Air Force "commodoro" (commodore) is the rank in Argentine Spanish while in the Chilean Air Force, the rank in Chilean Spanish is "colonel de aviacion" or "colonel of aviation". Until 1973 it was used by the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF), today the sleeve insignia is that of a full Colonel. In addition to the equivalents used in most