SFO
The beret plot is indeed a true story - and resulted from a clash between the old culture (in which aircrew looked like aircrew), and the new nonsense of everyone having to look like an infantry "grunt" regardless of the fact that you might be in an office, flying an anti-submarine airliner, or cooking dinner for the hungry masses 1000 miles from the front line.
Dcember 2001, and 206/3 under the leadership of Sqn Ldr K**** P***, were despatched via BA Club Class to finally terrorise the Taleban into submission.
I was substituted in as P1, and as an "old school" FTRS geezer the captain and I had issues with the enthusiasm with which the young thrusting P2 had swallowed the whole gung-ho Americanised version of modern warfare. We therefore insisted on being officer-like and continued to wear our SD caps while decrying berets at every opportunity. fed up of having the p*** taken and being accused of being old farts (though to be fair, we were old farts even then), we hatched a suitable revenge with the connivance of our naval observer Nav 1, and indeed the rest of the crew.
Said P2's beret was removed from his headset bag and taped to the inside rear of a bomb door during the walk-round. Two hours later, over a secret desert airfield in another Stan just south of A*****stan, I asked the P2 to cycle the bomb doors to meet an engineering requirement - which he immediately did without question (clearly not thinking it an odd thing to do at FL260 at night over land).
As soon as the rumble was felt through the airframe - our dark blue colleague called "Co - note down this Lat and Long" and reeled off the numbers. When asked why, the response was " Because that's where your f****** beret is!"
The resultant sulk lasted for days.