Page 69 - Demo

69Martial would be convened with both national and RAF officers, and interpreters and national lawyers would be provided where needed. While serving with RAF units, or on stations commanded by an RAF officer, Allied personnel were subject to RAF law, but within national squadrons their own regulations were permitted.33 In practice, the settling of legal questions often became a matter of trust; it was thought that the Free French, for example, were prone to political considerations in their legal proceedings, while, by the middle of 1943, the Dutch, Poles and Norwegians had all been given free reign to implement their own laws within their own squadrons.34Judging from the Norwegian response when this concession was granted in May 1943, RAF law evidently had something to be said for it. Nos 330 and 333 Sqns in Coastal Command, which were manned largely by ex8Royal Norwegian Naval Air Service personnel, were happy with this arrangement, whereas the two squadrons formed from ex8Royal Norwegian Army Air Service personnel serving in Fighter Command (Nos 331 and 332 Sqns) opted to retain the RAF system.35@4(+%u0015%u00168? The third principle, that of Equality, was particularly difficult to implement. With so many nations coming together, some of them with more than one air service, standardising rates of pay related to disparate rank structures created many problems, but these had to be solved in order to prevent jealousy and resentment.36 With the proviso A Spitfire IX of No 331 (Norwegian) Sqn.