[quote=“Gunner” post=7322]This video shows the exact uniform and RAF tartan kilt that ATC pipe band members wear. My eldest lad is one of the pipers.
[/quote]
Yes: our Pipes and Drums are wearing what tends to be called within Scottish military pipe bands ‘blue patrols’, for jackets, with their kilts (which are of the tartan sett known now as ‘Modern RAF Pattern’). And very good they look in it, too.
Strictly-speaking, their jackets are really tailored Argyll pattern Highland jackets, rather than ‘patrol’-style, since they’ve got turned lapels, they’re not high-collar. I’ve sometimes seen Black Watch RRS pipers wearing proper blue patrols that have a stand-up collar, there may be other formations that also still do this.
The wearing of a semi-dress highland uniform by military (and civilian) corps of pipes and drums is a tradition that goes back many years, and is a good practical alternative to the full-dress doublets worn by, say, the massed pipes and drums of the RAF on formal parade (that being the combined cadres of volunteer highland bandsmen from across the wider RAF).
Yes, not worn on undress ‘blue patrols’, but the status of the individual ACO bandsman is indicated by the wearing of their personally-appropriate capbadge.
I’m puzzled by this quote:
[quote]
[quote]Highland Dress
(1) Pipe bands, subject to the approval of OIC Air Cadet Pipe Music, may wear Highland Dress as follows:
a. Glengarry with appropriate hat badge
b. Blue grey Highland Jacket
…[/quote][/quote]
The ‘Highland Jacket’ worn by the ACO is most certainly not Blue-grey: it’s (in RAF terms) Midnight Blue, from a distance almost black. The only time I’ve ever seen actual blue-grey (standard RAF pattern colour) highland jackets being worn has been by the band of 2622 Sqn RAuxAF Regt, and they were probably tailored from No1s.
Back in the earliest days of the ATC, any Cadet bands only tended to be military (brass/percussion/woodwind/lyre) as opposed to being highland pipes and drums. Single ATC pipers in the 1940s would just have worn normal issue Service Dress uniform with forage caps. This was despite the fact that in that era Auxiliary Air Force pipers and escorts from Scottish squadrons were wearing (on some duties) Grey Douglas kilts with BD blouses and blue bonnets (oddly, not forage caps or glengarrys). It wasn’t until the 1950s, when the ATC was issued with BDs, that kilts started to be seen being worn by Air Cadets, and only rarely at that. Any pictures I’ve seen appear to show a range of tartans, including Ulster Irish variations, but apparently never the ‘true’ Grey Douglas Air Force tartan (which pre-dates the ‘new’ RAF tartan by over 60 years, in appointment).
And oddly, onwards from that time, all of the (then many) established and volunteer RAF pipe bands in the late 1950s and '60s (especially from the Apprentice Schools) appeared to just wear No1 dress, but with added shoulder-coves, plaids, cords/lanyards…and standard SD peak caps (which in that era already looked quite ‘Scottish’, since rather than having normal black mohair cap-bands, they were wearing multicoloured diced designs on the cap-band, similar to Police/Fire uniform caps- this was standard wear for those Airmen, not just on bandsman duties).
Back to the OP: The situation for kilts being worn (or not) as part of RAF mess dress is rather odd. The regulations might be viewed as being too restrictive (compared to, I believe for example, the RN). There are traditions as old as the RAF itself (or close to that) which have seen the kilt worn as part of certain Air Force orders of dress, and it’s possible that this very non-operational area of concern justifies representations being made in it’s favour (optionally, of course).
wilf_san
[ps perhaps it’s worth noting the irony that within Scottish Army highland regiments that traditionally wore the kilt, normally this would never be worn in the mess after 1800hrs, being replaced by tartan trews to avoid fines and other penalties. On a related note, Lowland regiments never wore the kilt at all: this was perhaps just a combination of traditional custom, and the fact that at one time it was an offence for which the wearer could have been executed (maybe a bit extreme in the context of a modern-day mess function !-) . All this Highland/Lowland Army differentiation was swept aside by the Royal Regiment of Scotland restructure, with traditionally-unkilted soldiers being kitted with kilts, and I’ve no idea how the most recent Future Army Dress revision perhaps also affects that- in fact, does that bin all the Army’s rainbow range of mess-dress?]