Evalu8ter,
And best wishes to you and the brood, mate. I fully agree that trying to make too much out of any 'all arms' campaign is fraught with danger. I can't agree that shells will have been fired by DD/FF to make the post war stats look good. Given the economics of firing NGS (those barrels ain't cheap), and the dire consequences of a ship running out of rounds or barrel life while on the gun line, every round will have been called for.
MGD,
The FAA has not, and never has, gone down a path of 'endless spin and
PR'. In the past, the traditions of the 'Silent Service' kept such facts as 'all enemy aircraft shot down in air to air combat since the end of WW2 were shot down by the FAA' well below the radar. It's not always been reciprocated. I once sat at a major RAeS event in London and heard a previous CAS inform the audience that 'the RAF had supplied all the helicopters that were based in Split' - no mention of the FAA's SK4s whatsoever. A straight lie.
These days, where their people have done a good job, (e.g. the good job done by the SK7s in the Gulf) the RN has made sure the public know about it. That's because a lamentable lack of knowledge about the armed forces leads many UK citizens to assume that all aircraft are owned by the RAF.
The point here is that the FAA (and the Army) do not want a fight. CAS does, and has started a highly damaging one. It's not 'blowing itself out', either - I agree that it will subside, but at some cost in loss of mutual trust and tons of extra work for hard pressed MoD staffs (and unnecessary expenditure of dry powder). The 'dark force' behind this round of backbiting is one person, and one alone.
Best Regards as ever,
Engines