Fareastdriver,
Ref your:
"In those days with a large number of second world countries coming into existence and forming their own air forces the RAF had a nice little earner training their personnel"
At Strubby sometime in '55 - '58, we were earning an honest penny in this way, but the A.M. had a mental aberration (not all that unusual in those days). They programmed two such AFS Courses to run concurrently - one Israeli and the other Iraki IIRC ! (may have been Syrian, but they'd be more likely to go to France, I suppose).
Even though no live firing was part of the Courses, we deemed the risk too great and put the stoppers on it .
D.