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A little tale of Schadenfreude to cheer you up. Unusually and for no reason I can recall, I started with the first of the clues instead of the last. Having solved the first three across it was abundantly clear, from their misprints, that we were here celebrating this week's centenary of the creation of the Royal Air Force. Note that this experience tends to disprove the proposal in the quotation!

Not an easy puzzle. I limped rather than cantered over the line.

At least it’s a theme everyone has heard of.

can you give me a hint for 15a, please?

15a is entered thematically. It is a Christian name of a relevant person in the clue.

Thanks. Am I right to assume that all final entries are to be words found in Chambers?

No.

They aren’t all real words.

The entries for the eight answers that suffer thematic effects are not real words. As the preamble states, the four answers that are jumbled after replacing some letters are real words. Of the other entries, one is in the list of first names in Chambers, and another is a name that appears only as an adjectival form and in expressions.

You're all ahead of me. I have little done in the SW corner, and I'm struggling to get a coherent phrase out of the letters I have, though I can see where Durban is coming from

Made a good start but getting bogged down now. I know the answer to 6a but can't see how it fits the 7 cells. Any hints please.
Correct letters don't seem to make much sense yet. Are they real English words?

fgs, no, it's not in English. I saw the quotation pretty soon, but had an advantage, as it's in my second language! The quotation is in ODQ, in English