tmmorris (your #44),
...they were certainly good enough for pretty much all royals and policitians to be seen in RAF uniform in ww2...
On "Pilot's Brevet" (p.120 #2398), I say:
...At that stage of the War, the RAF enjoyed enormous prestige. Only eighteen months before, against all the odds, it had won the Battle of Britain and saved the country from invasion. "I do not say that the French cannot come", old Admiral St.Vincent had said a century and a half before, "I only say they cannot come by sea". To this we had added: "Or by air".
Moreover, we were the only Service fully on the offensive. Bomber Command was hitting back, night after night, far harder, but in exactly the same way, as the enemy had bombed (and were still bombing) us in the "Blitz". Nobody felt the slightest guilt about it at the time - that was a luxury we could allow ourselves post-war, long after the danger was past.
The other two Services simply could not compete in the glamour stakes.....
We were the "blue-eyed" boys then (didn't last).
Danny.