"I reckon that the quality of the SD hats you buy from stores is cr@p - they make you look as though you have just climbed off a Russian submarine."
This is true - but pull them down at the front and they're very useful for hiding behind if you ever need to do an Axminster Shuffle.... Allegedly!
A chap I once knew held at the MoD-box back when the awful forage hat 'c**t caps' were just about to be approved and went to some meeting about the things. In came various tailors with various ideas; the best was just like the Yank one and could be rolled up and stuffed into a flying suit pocket or hidden underneath normal blues doubled over....
But then the abortion with buttons and gilded duck appeared - as did the version for AirWheels with blue piping and gaudy little badge.
Guess which 'they' approved?
SD cap with cabbage kit? Why not? Berets are for the lower orders, Frank Spencer and French onion sellers. I last wore one in 1973. If an RAF Officer has to stoop to the level of wearing dung eaters' cabbage kit, he can at least retain some dignity by wearing a proper RAF Officer's SD cap.
Much to the annoyance of the Bwigadier, my boss at Base Aerea Gringo in the Islas Malvinas refused to wear either cabbage kit or a beret - so we always wore flying suits and SD caps. It demonstrated that neither of us was Wupert of the Wedgiment from the umpty-umpth Queen's Own Chinless Pwancers or some other dung eating mob but were officers of the Fuerza Aerea Malvinas!