An officers No.1’s thread

Everyone Uniform and Drill
1

Anyone have any experience of buying a second hand No. 1 officer jacket?

I guess the danger is it might look crap without the trousers?

What is the difference between standard trouser and no. 1 trouser? I know from a new set they would be from same material, so assume they are just better quality than the issue trouser?

Where would you get a jacket correctly ranked?

I’m very tempted to buy my own set, but think there are likely lots of pit falls.

This is the trouble with lock down - need something to take my mind off it and just wait for issue, unless the rumours are true and it’ll go to private purchase!

2

I got my re-ranked at Turner & Virr who have an office local to me to to the surrounding RN presence.

If it goes to Private Purchase, that would be a good move and hopefully the funds can be used to issue No3 to all.

My view is that there is never a requirement for private purchase of No1 or No5 as they get such little use and if there is ever an appropriate event there will be no expectation that it will be worn etc.

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3

Not a bad idea at all.

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4

I have one knocking about at my parents, only worn for a couple of years and issued new, not the best fit on me anymore so I had to “upgrade” to adult sizing :joy:. I was a 30-32 waist when it was fitted so if you’re of a similar size then I’m sure we could come to an arrangement (jacket and trousers. Ranked as flt lt I believe)

5

Might squeak in them if I take the diet seriously… expanding rapidly with lockdown!!!

6

Through considerable weight loss I had to buy new no. 1’s. Thankfully the local station Tailors had a very good condition second hand set that could be adjusted for me, they even gave me a part exchange price for my too big original no. 1’s. Would be a little concerned about an ebay purchase, but certainly one set of trousers wouldn’t have matched the other jacket.

7

Called a cynical old duffer, but I suspect that it is a lot more attractive to the grown ups to chop the initial issue of 1’s full stop.

After all, we’ve survived nearly 80 years without being issued No.3s, so we can’t miss what we we’ve never had.

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8

Call me a cynic… but money saved on no. 1 would either end up being clawed back by the long arm of the mod, or weed up the wall on something pointless.

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9

It would go back into the huge black hole the MOD has and needs to claw back instead of being respent

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10

There is no money changes hands. I heard it directly from our recently departed boss that the RAF gives us all our uniforms completely FOC.

So even if we said no issuing No1’s, there is no budget to transfer to pay for Anything else, just less money spent by the RAF.

When I was speaking to her, she was trying to fix the problems with units getting uniform from bases by putting it all into RFCAs. But they wanted paid for the privilege and as our budget for uniforms is £0 then it was a non starter.

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11

They really ought to be cut from the same length of fabric, otherwise there’s a fair chance there’ll be a noticeable difference in the colour

12

It’s noticeable in 99.9% of occasions where its not from the same cloth

13

I’ll hold off then from a silly purchase… and wait and see what happens…

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14

Same rules apply for no5s really if you ever enter that game…complete set or nothing at all

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15

I’m not popular enough for that, or that interested in socialising…

Just the No. 1’s that I’m interested in.

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16

I thought I read somewhere this happened in some areas of Scotland where they are quite far from their parent station?

17

Yeah - RFCA are responsible for uniform up here, certainly for WSW and SESW.

Trust me, you don’t want that. It’s usually 6 months from placing an order before we get half of it.

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18

That was the plan she mentioned, it was 5 years ago so it sounds like something has at least been achieved :joy:

19

Aren’t you going to be issued a set?

20

Conflicting reports on that.

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