It is indeed an interesting topic- having served in the 1970s alongside Observers who saw action during the D Day landings (still wearing, even in my time, the 'Seaborne' badges on their uniforms) and some who even saw service during the Battle of Britain, it's an extremely-personal one for me.
I take your point regarding the potential changes during WW2 for the Special Duties badge styles. It seems like an entirely-possible sequence.
I'm still tempted to wonder whether Special Duties Civilian Officers, in Air Force service, might've worn an ROC-style black rank ribbon at the cuff.
A possible supporting bit of evidence towards this could've been a similar such rank indicator worn by Officers of the Civilian Technical Corps (CTC), but I've never seen any evidence in photographs of anyone being appointed to Officer-equivalent rank, in this short-lived and entirely-forgotten Air Force Corps, with a four-bar "cauliflower" badge being the highest non-commissioned rank.
As you'll already know, this exotic style of rank was worn by us in the ROC up until the mid-1990s. If there had ever been ranks (well, grades) used within non-Officer Special Duties or Factory Works staff in uniform it could've made sense for them to have worn similar flat non-chevron rank indicators to those of the ROC and CTC (all of which have a strong ARP/CD Corps style similarity)...but I've never seen any evidence of this (so far)
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