History
The rank was devised in the British Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in 1912 and passed to the Royal Air Force (RAF), on its formation in 1918. RFC flight sergeants wore a four-bladed propeller between the chevrons and the crown.
On 1 July 1946, aircrew flight sergeants were redesignated Aircrew I and replaced their chevrons with three six-pointed stars within a wreath and surmounted by an eagle and a crown. This proved unpopular however, and in 1950 they reverted to their old rank and badge, although Flight Sergeants Aircrew wear an eagle between chevrons and crown. Flight Sergeants in ground trades wear only a crown above the three chevrons.
Between 1950 and 1964, the rank of Chief Technician was equivalent to flight sergeant and was held instead of it by technicians, but now chief technician is a junior rank (still held only by technicians), although classified by NATO in the same grade.
Read more about this topic: Flight Sergeant
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–c. 120)
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)