They were gold originally because it was straight from the Royal Navy but it didn’t work well in the field & got easily marked so it was only retained on mess dress. The original fluffy shako busby also went with the exceptions of musicians.
The pale blue colour for officers’ uniforms was unpopular and impractical[4] and John Slessorwho was later promoted to Marshal of the RAFdescribed it as “a nasty pale blue with a lot of gold over it, which brought irresistibly to mind a vision of the gentlemen who stands outside the cinema”.
From Wikipedia
Only since WW2 when we had multi crew aircraft and greatly increased ground crew numbers, which resulted in hundreds of personnel on a bomber sqn. When the Service was created, all Sqns were roughly the same size and probably equated to Army/Navy equivalent units at the time. It’s sort of stuck for most of the flying Sqns now. I may be wrong, but only the helicopter Sqn in Cyprus was still a Sqn Ldr post?
4 Likes
Honestly couldn’t tell you.
Ironically, First World War Army officers had braid around their cuffs (in addition to their pips and crowns), denoting their equivalent naval rank.
In this image you can see Captain Blackadder has two rings around his cuffs, indicating his equivalency to a lieutenant RN. I have seen similar examples up to four rings (full colonel ≡ capt RN). However, the rank on cuffs arrangement only seemed to have applied in the field, with staff officers like Captain Darling wearing their rank on the shoulders instead.
At some point, the Army seems to have binned this off but I think it would have been useful to have kept, especially after the formation of a third service.
The only examples I’ve seen of this braid in my service life has been on the shoulders of cadet under officers in the ACF.
1 Like
Can confirm that the post you mention is a sqn ldr post.
Phase 2 flying squadron bosses (tutors) were also, I believe, sqn ldrs.
1 Like
