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Flight officer cap badge question


Tonomachi
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I understand that the USAAF rank of Flight Officer only existed from 1942 through 1945 and was the equivalent to a Warrant Officer Junior Grade. So my question is did Flight Officers wear the warrant officer cap badge?

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PacificGunner

I believe that USAAF flight officers did wear the same cap badge as US Army Warrant Officers. I have seen pictures of air crews that have a flight officer present that appears to be wearing the same badge, as well as seen groupings from flight officers with crusher hats that have the same Warrant Officer Cap badge.

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I believe that USAAF flight officers did wear the same cap badge as US Army Warrant Officers. I have seen pictures of air crews that have a flight officer present that appears to be wearing the same badge, as well as seen groupings from flight officers with crusher hats that have the same Warrant Officer Cap badge.

Many thanks for the information.

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Tonomachi,

Your answer will vary by command and location. While the Flight Officer rank was equivalent to the Warrant Officer rank, it was actually rather common to see FOs wearing commissioned officers' eagle cap devices and winged prop branch of service devices. I can tell you with great certainty that most glider pilots wore eagles and winged props. In fact, as I looked for vintage photos of GPs wearing the "squashed bug" of the Warrant Officer Corps, I couldn't find a single photo to show it.

 

Here is a photo of WWII Glider Pilot Charles Skidmore. I pulled the photo from this site- https://ddaysquadron.org/flight-officer-charles-e-skidmore-jr/

 

Allan

post-151-0-36069800-1570815231_thumb.jpg

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Thanks for this clarification and I guess some glider pilots also bloused their boots based on this photograph.

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  • 3 months later...

I understand that the USAAF rank of Flight Officer only existed from 1942 through 1945 and was the equivalent to a Warrant Officer Junior Grade. So my question is did Flight Officers wear the warrant officer cap badge?

 

Fifty-fifty. I am writing now something about such things and researched tons of the AAF FOs images. Half of them wore WO Eagles on their service caps, the second half wore Officer's Eagles.

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