Air of Authority - A History of RAF Organisation In particular.....
RFC, RNAS & RAF Ranks and Insignia. See the interim, Initial and Final Uniform Designs.
The original proposal (by Lt-Gen Sir David Henderson) was to use a combination of Naval and Army ranks for the new service. However, the War Office felt that the new service should have its own rank titles and also that the original list gave senior officers naval ranks and junior officers military ones. On the other hand, the Admiralty objected to the use of naval ranks, even with the addition of the word 'Air', and also suggested that the RAF adopt its own titles.
The final choice of titles are those still in use today and shown below. However prior to arriving at these an initial list of titles was suggested:-
Ensign, Lieutenant, Flight-Leader, Squadron-Leader, Reeve, Banneret, Fourth-Ardian, Third-Ardian, Second-Ardian, Ardian, Air Marshal.
Ardian was derived from the Gaelic 'Ard' meaning Chief and 'Ian' or 'Eun' meaning Bird...............
