WW2 Mobilisation Regulations
 

No 10 Squadron has a Memorial Plaque commissioned in 1940 in memory of its first crew lost on the night of 2 October 1939, after the first leaflet raid over Berlin. Embedded within it is a metal squadron badge, with words indicating that it had been taken fron the crew's Whitley aircraft on the outbreak of war. The unit 540 mentions mobilisation being ordered on 1 September and completed on 3 September, but with no additional detail given. As the squadron aircraft had unit identifiers, I'm slightly curious as to why badges would have been removed from them and have not yet found an authoritative source on this aspect of mobilisation. Any suggestions will be welcome.

(And if anyone knows when the plaque was returned to 10 Sqn from the Station Church at RAF Dishforth, that would be good to know. All appears to be deep and silent on that so far.)

When you say "unit identifiers" I presume you mean the two-letter codes - these were changed on the outbreak of war, presumably on the basis that the Germans would have been able to link codes to units in the pre-war period and thereby work out the RAF's order of battle. Squadron badges were removed at the same time, to avoid giving away the unit denoted by the new code letters.

Thanks, and yes, I did mean the 2-letter codes which, in 10 Sqn's case, changed from PB to ZA. I had assumed it was a security-related decision but, with the new code remaining in place throughout the war, the removal of these badges must have been of short-lived security value .... albeit understandable if the hope was, going back to 1914, that it might all be over by Christmas!

ICM the following link might help:-
Code Development_P

MReyn: Many thanks for that, one of the corners in the treasurehouse of RAFWEB that I had overlooked, and I think that it answers my main question as fully as might be expected. (In passing, having read through all of those AMOs, the spread of nose art strikes me as even more unofficial than I'd imagined!)