As a sergeant ATC if I have saluted the OC and another junior officer enters do I salute him also
I would say no, as you are “accompanied” by a more senior officer. Similar story for walking around a station where the most senior officer is responsible for returning the salute
No. You have saluted the OC as it’s his/her office. Another officer comes in, he/she salutes OC also (if they are wearing headdress) you do nothing other than acknowledge their presence. You leave, you salute the OC, nobody else.
The other officer only salutes if the OC isn’t junior to him.
“There is no regulation or custom which calls upon an officer to salute an officer of junior rank, such as when entering or leaving an office; however, it is common courtesy for an officer to salute when entering or leaving the office of another officer of equal rank.”
We’ve had this discussion on here before Matt and it’s interesting that the “common courtesy” is now written down, it never was and I think it’s a bit of a shame that it now is.
Certain little quirks of officer behaviour were passed on from the ‘old and bold’ to the new chaps without any need for hard and fast written rules, even in the VR(T), and it made things more personal. In my era (commissioned early '80s) we were told to salute ANY officer when you entered their office, regardless of relative ranks. I was told this by my WSO who was an ex Regular wartime officer and as a Sqn Ldr he saluted me, a Flt Lt at the time, when he came into my office and he explained why when I asked; I have always done the same and still do.
We have no doubt lost those ‘old and bolds’, the sort of officers who had a wealth of Service knowledge (except Wilf of course), who took the time to have a fatherly chat with the newly commissioned as soon as you went into uniform or on your first Summer Camp with them, the sort of officer that jnrs looked up to and were a bit in awe of. Arguably have many in the organisation these days who think they know how things should be done such that writing things down is the best way to get matters across, but that as we have seen on here leads to dogmatic adherence to things that are often ridiculous.
Still a shame we don’t have our quirks though!