Some of the top fighter Squadrons surely deserved the protection that was accorded to No.120 and No.617 Squadrons?
When I was young and slim, the foremost fighter squadrons (most of them flying silver-painted Lightnings with gaudy checkerboard markings) were the great squadrons from the Battle of Britain and the war years, and were, pretty much, the same squadrons, with the same gaudy checkerboards that my Dad had seen as a boy when they were flying Furies and Gauntlets and the like.
How can it be that 19 and 92, 56 and 74, 43 and 111, 41 and 54 are all moribund when the frontline includes the relatively undistinguished 1, II, 3, and 11, and 31?
RAFEngO74to09 makes a good case for 92, but an equally good case could be made for 19 (first Spitfire Squadron, Duxford wing, prominent in the BoB), or for 74 (Sailor Malan's outfit) and for 56, 43 and 111.
Not for the first time, I'd strongly support an adoption of the French system, with individual Flights being given squadron identities, and with squadrons carrying one unit's markings on one side of the tail, and another unit's colours on the other. OC 'B' Flight on what is now No.3 Squadron might thus become OC 111 Squadron… a Squadron Leader commanding something called a Squadron. Twice as many squadron number plates in use and saved from oblivion. It will never catch on.