[quote=“merlin456” post=2259]
Correct Grp Cpt and Air ranks would wear the female Officers hat but with a shiny peak and appropriate cap badge and “egg yoke” Please refer to AP1358, Chapter 7.[/quote]
Aha, so does that mean that the female hats illustrations summary is incomplete?
Hence why you (and I, and incubus) all thought, in error:
[quote=“merlin456”]Negative wilf_san no such hat for females regardless of rank has a “shiny” peak[/quote]…which is now proven not to be the case from the text of the reg, and also by known custom/practice.
So that still brings me back to the OP. Why on earth would female WOs wear Officers’ style cloth-covered peak-caps, and not shiny patent-leather peaks, in the pattern worn by male WOs?? Is AP1358 actually wrong on this point? That female WOs, when/if wearing peaks, should actually be wearing a black-peaked Groupie-and-upwards-type hat, but obviously without gold egg??
This is a genuine rank-recognition/logic puzzler.
And another ‘hat fact’ has suddenly occurred to me, which also maybe shows an error in AP1358 (or at least perhaps an omission from that illustrations summary). It says that female WOs may wear the Airwoman-pattern ‘folded bowler’, obviously with the WO badge. But it then neglects to say that female Officers can also have that same option, obviously with the commissioned officer cap-badge. I am 100% certain that I have seen female RAF and RAuxAF Officers wearing the Airwomens’ hat, albeit in No2 dress, and as recently as (??) 2005. Has that dress option been formally withdrawn for female Officers??
Ah, but here’s the thing. Irrespective of any errors on the part of a military tailor’s shop, as a VRR FTRS Officer, she may not have been entitled to any scaling for new uniform at all. Perhaps in the same way that FTRS appointees are not meant to receive any OJT, it is entirely possible that they don’t get any uniform issue unless they’re DEs (and that breed is of course as rare as anything you can think of)
wilf_san