I’ll join BV in pre-empting a standard whinge. Mine is ‘Why have they put a bomber number plate on a fighter squadron? What about
43/111/74/19 etc etc...’.
Leaving aside the seniority rules that make it an uphill struggle for any of the above numbers to return, does anyone really think that a single-digit squadron, with the longest run of unbroken service of any currently active, that was selected alongside 617 for special duties in WW2, whose mission on night one of Op ELLAMY was one of the outstanding operational achievements of recent years, and whose former Boss is the senior military officer in NATO was going to be allowed to disappear? The next F35 unit is RN-plated and I strongly suspect the Air Force Board will have seen it as too risky to lay IX(B) up for the one after that. [Anyway, a tenuous little bit of fighter history is that Dowding was briefly OC9 before becoming OC16!]
As for the Tranche 1 limitations vs the ‘Bomber’ suffix, well, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a reshuffle of Tranche 2/3 Typhoon airframes across all Sqns some years down the line, perhaps facilitated by still-greater use of synthetics. And 18(B) has managed all these years with no bombs!