[Arthur R]

Originally Posted by milhistry

I thought it might be a plaque badge or possibly a prototype senior officers cap badge when they changed to the new style badge.

Could be. The current badge was introduced in 1959, although the fish eagle had been adopted around 1950 as the emblem of the SAAF and it appeared on the officers' embroidered cap badges from around 1952.

Interesting to read about the eagle WO badge design. Do you have a copy of the picture/article?

I don't have a copy. It was a newspaper clipping from Die Burger (18 May 1957).

I have a copy from an Old Kommando magazine somewhere in my files which also showed eagles being worn on the cuff of the proposed new SAAF blue uniform (a la Australia in WW2) sometime in the 1950s. They did of course introduce the blue-grey uniform but with standard army-style ranks.

I think I know which article you mean. The SAAF introduced the blue uniform around 1951, when it ceased to be a corps in the army and became a separate branch of service. They decided to wear RAF rank insignia, and there are a few photos in Kommando showing senior officers wearing them, but the idea was abandoned after a few months and they carried on with the army-style insignia instead.

The senior NCOs used to wear eagles above their chevrons. At first it was the RAF-style eagle, as in the cap badge, and in the 1950s it was changed to the fish eagle as in the new cap badge. They're shown in the chart published in 1957, but were dropped a few years later.

Would the eagle and wreath design have been considered around the same time as the Lion in wreath WOII badge worn briefly by the Navy?

It wouldn't surprise me. It was the Erasmus era, when everything in sight was tinkered with. It would suggest that each of the three services was to have a different badge for its WOs.