Originally Posted by
meleagertoo
I rather doubt that.
"Wings" are awarded for the successful completion of the designated military flying course. Once awarded they cannot be removed, and certainly not for failure to qualify as "combat ready" (which, after all, would be hard for a creamie or transport pilot). One assumes you meant "operational", but even so - have wings keep wings.
No one took my wings away when I was chopped on (RN) AFT - which is the course before OFT. Nor could they.
And the CAA recognised them as qualification for a CPL to boot. Without them there would have been little or no credit towards a CPL at all.
Unless the regulations have changed since I left the RAF (they might have, it was almost thirty years ago), the pilot flying badge can, or could, most definitely be taken away after being awarded by the RAF.
My own "Wings" presentation (at RAF Shawbury, rotary wing AFTS, late 1970s) coincided with a Royal Visit. Teeteringhead may well recall this because he was a Wessex QHI there at the time.
Because there were only two of us who were to be awarded with the flying badge (the rest were re-roles and already had theirs), members of the previous course were called back to be re-presented by the said Royal.
Official signals were passed to said officers, telling them to return to Shawbury on said date, minus their recently sewn on wings, but with a "Velcro" patch sewn on their No1 uniform, to receive a new set. Velcro was fairly new back then. The obvious question in reply was - which half of the Velcro? A certain mischievous course member (not me) decided to get in and have fun with this and initiated a series of "spoof" signals, each contradicting the previous one, causing much confusion further down the line. On the Royal day, with hours to go, a certain pilot (who I knew from BFTS) turned up with the incorrect half of the Velcro sewn on his chest. He had to be sent off rather rapidly to get this fixed, to his great annoyance. Thankfully, said presentation went ahead without a hitch and his wings didn't fall off on the day. However, maybe it was a bad omen....
Immediately after my graduation I was posted to the Puma OCU. My predecessor on that course was said pilot with the "wrong" Velcro. Unfortunately, although he passed the Puma course, he didn't make it on the Squadron. He was grounded and subsequently lost the right to wear the wings. He re-roled and did very well elsewhere in a ground branch. I met him a few times afterwards and he definitely didn't wear a flying badge.