LMF
Cliff, I have never seen any hard and fast written rules on the subject. I am quite sure that you are right that all air crew were volunteers. From the age of 18 until the first "conscription" age you could volunteer for the Service as well as the job which was the carrot in front of the donkey for the would be Pilots especially as about from 20 onwards you became liable for conscription and had no escape from being sent down the mines if they so desired.
As to the LMF factor, once again I never ever came upon anyone who had been labelled with that "Shame". I cannot ever even remember hearing of anyone in a crew being removed from "Ops" with the stigma of "LMF" so cannot comment on the punishment factor. There were, of course, loads of stories flying around about places such as Brighton , in particular, and also dreadful tales of the treatment handed out. I am sure that there were such nasty scenes of parades with the hapless man being stripped of all insignia but I never met anyone , or wanted to, who had ever seen such a happening. I would say that the vast majority of Squadron Commanders were exactly what one would expect and were compassionate in their treatment of the borderline cases that must have come up . We were fortunate in the immediate leaders of our Forces which speaks volumes for the quality of all the "volunteers". Reg.