I don't recall it being a big deal - by the time we got to AMTC I think that the rear crew and captains had already been crewed together. I think that there were 3 or 4 captains on our OCU course - one was ex-Gannets and one day wasn't there because he'd LMFd a long range navex.
I had to choose between a posting to 35 (which meant flying with Flatiron on the course) or going to 50 (which meant flying with..well, let's just say 'someone else' - a Sqn Ldr whose sole interest was promotion. He called himself a 'senior pilot' when asked what he did by a gang of PMRAFNS in the pub at North Luffenham...
).
The real crew constitution didn't happen until you got to the squadron - whereupon you were simply told which crew you were going to. So I flew with an ex-Blue Tool Nav Radar (just back from a ground tour in RAFG), an ex-Canberra Nav Plotter, an ex-Kipper Fleet AEO and a Captain who was a total Walt...... It seemed to work though - until we were reconstituted after Walt wired Honington after an air show; he'd failed to tell the crew that the aircraft was redlined for an undercarriage snag ('not to be raised except for rear crew escape') and he'd been told to fly it with the gear down...which he'd ignored.
Looking back now, those days in the V-force were probably the best times I had in the RAF. I only did 3 years before mistakenly having another go at the FJ world - but it was a truly epic 3 years of fun. I think the main difference was that, in those days there were enough people in the RAF to meet the commitments. Not long after the infamous cuts started turing septic, then came the 'moriarty' and finally the creeping cancer of contractorisation which has led to the dismal state of the tiny little top-heavy over-committed RAF of today with its tired old aeroplanes long overdue for replacement....
