Effortless said,
I have rather enjoyed this thread but I have a question, if I may presume? Why did our colonial cousins feel it necesary to make WOs "officers"?
Isn't this a different paradigm to the one used by those systems derived from the British military?
I have always equated a US Army WO with an equivalent officer rank and treated them accordingly in terms of privelege.
WO1 = 2LT
CW2 = LT
CW3 = CAPT
CW4 = MAJ
CW5 = LTCOL give or take.
And they are, after all, employed for their technical proficiency much the same way that specialist RAF aircrew are employed. (Now there's a thought, why are RAF spec aircrew commissioned? Seems to me that the AAC has got it right.)
Finally, I guess they earned the right to use whatever rank system they wanted to after beating you last time round...