ARXW,
Thanks for the source. Warren is a good mate of mine and is the living expert on the Korean air war among historians and authors. We've even written a book together (Korea the Air War, published a few years back by Osprey)! I'm sure he wouldn't mind my pointing out that his speciality has been collecting photos from the conflict and in amassing an unequalled 'oral history', having spoken to most of the surviving aces. His interest in the nitty gritty of the statistics (and in foreign participants) is not so intense.
Tourist,
I don't claim to be a WAFU loafer god, like you, but, in point of fact, I have also passed selection as aircrew for one service, inevitable after spending three happy years on a UAS. I made many good friends who went on to serve in the frontline. Surprisingly, these god-like 'self respecting pilots' - and others - do spend time chatting to me. There are a few arrogant tossers who think that they're too grand to talk to mere civilians, but I've encountered mercifully few of them, and I'm convinced that outside your crew room, they're very much of a rarity. And strangely enough, even as a simple journo one is welcomed in many crew rooms (most aircrew are keen to educate and inform, once they realise that you are eager to learn and open to explanation) and one is exposed to many crewrooms in many air arms. And while we may fly only as interested observers, some of us may even have experienced more different military cockpits than you may have. Some may even feel that UAS flying experience and vacation attachments (and successful FHTs, PIFGs or even PFBs in some cases), or PPLs (or in some of my colleagues cases, CPLs) might give some journos some very basic and tenuous insight into what they write about.
But my experience or lack thereof is entirely irrelevant. Even if I was no more than a 'paid spotter', you don't need much flying experience to realise that the unfortunate comment which provoked this thread ("Do you know how many a/c the crabs have shot down since 1945? 2, and they were both British.") was childish, inaccurate and grossly offensive. I don't need to be your equal to have an opinion on this. Ward has let Royal Navy aviators down rather badly with this kind of inane nonsense, and those who have defended him and justified this kind of 'crab bashing' merely compound his original offence.
While saluting all members of the armed forces (whether they qualify for a brevet or not) the comment that: "RAF pilots ... made up less than a quarter of the aircrew and accounted for just over a quarter of the kills" adequately salutes the capability of those who Ward insulted, and does so without casting any aspersion on FAA aviators.
Perhaps it might even be a good note to end on?