FED, take cover indeed you should.
Personally I think the Captain got the credit as the rest of the crew had no choice but to follow. OTOH if the rest of the crew would have pressed on but the pilot chose not to . . .
Undoubtedly where the pilots did deserve the medals was when they brought the kite home safely or kept it up long enough for the crew to bail out and frequently lost their lives in the process.
TTN, you would need to establish the proportion of NCO to Officer pilots. Also don't forget that Master aircrew were drawn from the pool of NCOs which would reduce the number of eligible SNCO Pilots whereas the officer cadre would cover the whole range of ranks.