The International Association of Amateur Heralds

I very much doubt if those stars are compass roses. They don't look anything like a compass rose - see the Special Forces School.

The Armour School arms worry me a bit. The South African army never had WW1 tanks, indeed it didn't have any armoured formation until February 1943 and that didn't see action for another 15 months. I suppose, at a stretch, one can accept the use of a WW1 tank as generic. The British Royal Tank Regiment uses a WW1 tank on its cap badge, but then their parent unit the Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps did use such tanks.

I am afraid that the Defence College arms must surely have been borrowed from a company manufacturing ice cream. If one can struggle past the ice cream cone symbolism, what colour are torches 2 and 3? bleu celeste and azure?

Chris Green wrote:I very much doubt if those stars are compass roses. They don't look anything like a compass rose - see the Special Forces School.

They appear to be 4-pointed stars superimposed on 4-pointed stars placed saltirewise. I wonder if the 4 points might refer to the four arms of service : army, air force, navy, and military health service.

I suppose, at a stretch, one can accept the use of a WW1 tank as generic.

That appears to be the case. The SA Army never used the muzzle-loading guns depicted in the Artillery School badge either (though its colonial predecessors did in the 17th and 18th centuries). Apart from the SA Tank Corps (1940-43)'s cap badge, which was cribbed from the RTR's, the use of the WW1 tank as a symbol appears to date from the adoption of the School of Armour's cloth sleeve patch in the late 1960s/early 1970s. The patch was simply converted into a shield to form the coat of arms.

But the RAF doesn't use air force blue in any coat of arms that I've ever seen.

AIr force blue and bleu celeste are not the same colour, though. 'Air force blue' is the greyish blue colour of the RAF uniform; 'bleu celeste' is sky blue.

I have split off the posts about RAF Staff College Bracknell to a new thread called RAF Blue. I had muddied the waters of the existing South African Army Schools thread - sorry.

The Infantry School shield shows the colours of the Infantry Corps under the old regime. The SA National Defence Force uses only black and green for infantry. I imagine a different badge is in use at Oudtshoorn now.

The SA Tank Corps was disbanded in 1943 to provide extra personnel for the 6th SA Armoured Division.
When it was revived after the war, it was called the SA Armoured Corps.
My father was an instructor in the Tank Corps, starting as a lance-corporal and rising to the rank of sergeant before being commissioned. He transferred to the Royal Natal Carbineers and served with them in Italy as a platoon commander. (His transfer preceded the disbanding of the corps.)

While the Defence College shield does look as if it has three ice cream cones, there is probably a better rendition around. The red torch is for the army (the senior service in South Africa), the pale blue for air force (founded second) and finally azure for the navy (younger than the air force).

The Women’s College was abolished under the new regime, and women undergo training together with the men.
The flower on the shield is the blushing bride protea (Serruria florida), a particularly beautiful member of the protea family. It is largely white, but has a subtle addition of pink.