Danny's thoughts go back to basic RAF Demographics.
If you can imagine an "ideal" Air Force (which in reality can never be), you might posit that the normal career in it would be from age 20 to 50, and that the Years of Birth of its members would be a smooth spread over the 30 years.
The RAF in 1946 consisted overwhelmingly of the wartime generation. There were comparatively few of the pre-war ones left in it. They had been small in number to begin with, most of them had been killed or captured, and the rare survivors had (deservedly) reached high rank.
I would wager that 90+ % of the rest had been born in the years between '19 and ' 23. Only a tiny minority would be outside this 5-year period. Over '45-'49 the RAF savagely contracted. When I was "demobbed" in'46, I think that there were 100,000 names in the Air Force List; when I came back in '49 it was down to about 10,000 (which would reflect, I suppose, a reduction in total strength from a million to around 100,000). So the post-war RAF was left with one/tenth of the cake - but it was still the same cake mix as in '45. They would have to fit this very square peg into the round hole of a peacetime (?) service.
All sorts of consequences would flow from this. Some were wholly beneficial. Almost everybody was ex-war; they'd brought the old wartime spirit of easy camerarderie along with them: it was still a case of "Not to worry - press on regardless". I wouldn't say that the old way was carefree, but at least your care was not about a "career" (rather, your "career goal" had been to stay alive - always subject to the Exigencies of the Service). The old "band of brothers" still lived on. It was "one for all, and all for one".
And it provided (for example) ideal candidates for the new Branches of ATC and Fighter Control: people who Knew What it was All About and could easily be moulded into these novel tasks without the necessity of ab initio training.
But there was a "Flip Side" to all this. Looking back to the horrific training loss statistics of the early '50s, it is easy to demonise the High Command for its scant regard for Flight Safety. But they were thinking with the mindset of '42-'44, when the only way to live with the figures was to put them out of mind. Callous as it may now sound, in those days there was no point in grief - it was simply: "c'ést la guerre" - and that was that. It was not until the mid-'50s that public opinion became aroused and the RAF had to accept that there was not an infinite supply of Bloggs (as there had been of Prunes), and they had better start looking after the ones they'd got.
But of course the real "Elephant in the Room" was the Age Block. Today it may not be always appreciated how young the wartime Air Force actually was. Of course, this has always been the case - for old men start wars, young men have to fight them. But in the war, Squadron Leaders of 21 were by no means unusual, Gibson (and others) was a Wing Commander at 23, there were 25 year old Group Captains, "Don" Bennett (the "Pathfinder" chief) made AVM at 33 - the youngest ever to reach that rank (having started as a Halton apprentice).
Nobody then grudged them their youthful ranks (and as these were mostly "acting", or at best "war substantive"), they went out of the window when hostilities ended. Even though nearly all those who stayed on (or who got back in) the Service, with the intention of making it their career, had to drop a rank or two, it did not help much. For now the "middle management" was largely set in place for the next twenty years or so, until the whole group was thinned-out from the mid-'60s onward by retirements.
It is with this in mind that I've tried to find one of my old Posts written (it ought to be somewhere aroung Page 165 on this Thread, but seems to have vanished - or did I dream it ?) It was about my first refresher Course in August'49 after coming back in. In this I described sharing a room at Finningley with a recent Cranwell graduate, who told me that it was the opinion of the directing staff at the College that: "we'll do no good with this Air Force until we get rid of all these old wartime people".
I remember Chugalug emphatically disassociating himself from these remarks, which on the face of it do look churlish and ungrateful in the extreme (and not particularly encouraging to "old" re-entrants like me). But now I can see that it is possible to regard them in a more charitable light. They may not have been made in a perjorative or contemptuous sense at all, but merely an acknowledgement of the consequential difficulties which had to arise.
Promotions would inevitably be much slower (or non-existent) for the "old brigade". For where would be the sense of replacing one old-timer with another who's going to retire 2-3 years after the first anyway ? The beneficial effects would accrue to the small number of new young people who managed to get in in the early post-war years (and of course to the much larger intake in the'60s), when it became increasingly obvious to the new ('64) Ministry of Defence that there wouldn't be a RAF soon unless they did something about it.
Don't misunderstand me: there is no element of "sour grapes" in this. The "Right Stuff" was as "Right" as ever it was: it cannot be held against it that it was lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Even the "base of the pyramid" benefited to some extent (viz the offer of a 5-year "extension" to me). But it cannot be denied: the'49 Cranwell conclusion was essentially correct.
I left in '72, pretty well in the middle of the clear-out of the "Old Guard". The new generation picked up the baton: they seem to have done pretty well with it.
That's it, folks.
Goodnight, chaps,
Danny42C.
The Old Order Changeth, Giving Place to New.