Back in the day when I was a lad, we had silver ATC buttons for greatcoats and No1 HSD. They seemed to disappear in the late 70ās and using the gold RAF buttons was acceptable. Never seen the smaller ones on a chip bag, but they were used on the pockets of No1 dress.
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They were from the battle dress uniforms. When battle dress was replaced with the shirt, woolly pully and trousers, we didnāt need silver buttons any more
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We must have invented the little jumper button for lanyards at the same time as battle dress was discontinued. Wonder why those ended up black? They could go on the chip bagā¦ but wouldnāt look good.
I was thinking Storm Shadow. Allows for a Launch the can hit anywhere in the nation.
When I wore battle dress at the time, the small pocket buttons were black plastic or maybe even Bakelite 
Iām that old.
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Some Regiments of the army allow this
as an order of dress
Replace the shirt with a Working blue shirt (or maybe short Wedgewood 
) and the Pants for Blue PCS
If weāre keeping Dark blue go for a navy PCS,
If weāre scrapping Dark blue, get some Blue Grey PCS on order
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Why would the RAF wear navy blue trousers? (Please donāt cite the GPJ as a precedent, itās an abomination!)
purely for cadets in 2C, iād argue that our current Dark shirt teeters on Navy
So we should just adopt navy pcsā¦job done
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At least some of what weāve been issued is from RN stock. If we
form up a flight in 2C there will be several shades of blue!
I think currently the 2C shirt is a joint venture with The RN, IIRC
Youāre likely right. I do recall seeing RN on the labels of some we picked up.
Just become the Fleet Air Arm Cadets?
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Not any more. They replaced that order of dress with RNPCS.
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It changed in the mid 90s circa 95. The old style RAF working blue shirt had smaller buttons & similar to those used on the wedgewood shirt.
It then changed to the dark blue with large black buttons.
There was a batch of working blue that came in a over dark shade (nearly black) which may explain some of the recent discrepancies.
The working blue shirt is still technically a joint venture but it only supplies the sea cadet corps & RN Cadets.
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I stand corrected. I hadnāt thought about Sea Cadets.
Now you mention it, Iāve never seen an RAF working blue shirt other than on cadets.
Thatās Coz techies all just turn up in shorts and flip flops and whack overalls on 
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Wonāt happen; thereād be too great a risk of actually getting some flying done.
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I actually did, once, at Benson. I should have stopped the guy for a photo to prove it.
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In my day (those of us of a certain age), it was worn by those with RAF Station rather than flying squadron roles and trades: stores, armouries and MT personnel, for instance.
With it went the inverse snobbery of people who work with their hands rather than in an office - the dark blue shirt was the symbol of the manual worker, like wearing a Donkey Jacket in civvy street in the 1970s or '80s, or these days, trousers with lots of tool pockets attached.
Those jobs in the era of Lightnings, Jaguars and Tornados have probably long been civilianised, if one was not on an operationally deployable unit or post, of course. 
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