Excellent stuff, FED.
I, for one, was savouring every detail of that Valiant saga.
In the spirit of crew-room chat, as mentioned by Danny above, I noticed your mention of the RAAF Sabres on your arrival at Butterworth.
The Australian CAC CA-27 Sabre was a somewhat different animal to the Canadair CL-13 version in that it was significantly modified to take the RR Avon powerplant.
Later marks of the Canadair Sabre were similarly modified to take the Avro Canada Orenda engine.
Compared with the original GE J-47 powered F-86 and CL-13, these modified aircraft offered an approximate 40% improvement in performance.
The Oz version, also, was armed with 2 x 30mm Aden cannon as opposed to the others' 6 x .50cal machine guns.
I'll leave it to the experts to speculate on the relative merits of the Orenda vs the Avon.