> > > >3. Australian privates were paid 6 shillings per day ($0.60) > > Ronn: > I don't suppose that had anything to do with the song "I've got sixpence"?
Doubt it. Sixpence is half a shilling, a shilling was usually called a bob. The Aussies called themselves "six bob a day tourists." > Ronn: > That sounds like the unit I was in when I was in the US Air Force, though > the reason there was that the unit was an engineering unit involved in > flight test (of such things as cruise missiles and some of the > predecessors > to UAVs and UCAVs like the "Predator" that we are using in > Afghanistan), so > out of about 30 people, about 25 were commissioned officers, most with > advanced degrees (masters or doctorate) in some area like electrical > engineering or the sciences, and of the handful of enlisted > personnel, one > was a senior master sergeant whose insignia stripes reached from shoulder > to elbow, where his service stripes picked up and reached the rest of the > way to his cuff, and the rest were the drafting section. > I think the air forces, being so technology dependent have always been less rigid across the ranks. You also see the same thing with submariners, armoured units and the like. In WW2, the RAF was much less rank segregated than even the US Air Force. The RAF always looked at the pilot being the captain of an aircraft, regardless of his rank, while any crew position could be held by anyone from (at the very start of the war only) Aircraftsman 2 right up to Wing Commander. The US air force crews, say on B17s or B24s, were almost always: Pilot (officer), 2nd pilot (officer), Navigator (officer), Bombardier (officer), Flight engineer (sergeant), Wireless Operator (sergeant), four gunners (sergeants). An RAF crew could be made up entirely of sergeants, or could be almost any set of ranks in any position. The following was fairly frequent on say a Lancaster: Pilot (Flight Sergeant), Navigator (Flight Lieutenant), Bomb aimer (Flight sergeant), Flight Engineer (sergeant), Wireless Operator (Flight Sergeant), Mid Upper gunner (Flying Officer), Rear gunner (Sergeant). My cousin's crew in a pathfinder Lancaster in 1945 were all Flight Sergeants apart from the pilot (Flying Officer) and Bomb aimer (Flying Officer). My cousin was a Flight sergeant navigator. BTW, I used to work at an aircraft factory where we made Jindivik target drones and Ikara anti-sub missiles. Brett
