John Lloyd Waddy

Who was John Lloyd Waddy?

John Lloyd Waddy, OBE, DFC was a senior officer and aviator in the Royal Australian Air Force, who later served as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly and Minister of the Crown. As a fighter pilot during World War II, he shot down fifteen enemy aircraft in the Desert War, becoming one of Australia's top-scoring aces and earning the Distinguished Flying Cross. He went on to command No. 80 Squadron in the South West Pacific, where he was awarded the US Air Medal. He was also one of eight senior pilots who took part in the "Morotai Mutiny" of April 1945.

Discharged from the Permanent Air Force at the end of the war, Waddy took a commission in the RAAF Reserve, leading the organisation as a group captain in the early 1950s. He was active in business and in veterans' groups, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1955. As the Liberal Member for Kirribilli from 1962 to 1976, he held cabinet posts in the New South Wales Parliament, including Minister for Child Welfare and Social Welfare, Minister for Health, and Minister for Police and Services. He retired from politics in 1976, and died in 1987 at the age of seventy.