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:
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)
“I believe that in the history of art and of thought there has always been at every living moment of culture a “will to renewal.” This is not the prerogative of the last decade only. All history is nothing but a succession of “crises”Mof rupture, repudiation and resistance.... When there is no “crisis,” there is stagnation, petrification and death. All thought, all art is aggressive.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)