Edgar McCloughry

Who was Edgar McCloughry?

Air Vice Marshal Edgar James Kingston McCloughry CB, CBE, DSO, DFC & Bar was an Australian World War I fighter pilot and flying ace. He shot down 21 aircraft and military balloons during the war, making him the 6th highest-scoring Australian ace. He was also awarded the Distinguished Service Order and the Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar as well as being Mentioned in Dispatches.

He joined the AIF in 1914, and served as a military engineer in Egypt and France before transferring to an RFC in December 1916. He graduated from there in August 1917 and was posted to the 23rd Squadron of the RFC on the Western Front. He was seriously injured in a crash shortly thereafter, and, after recovering in hospital, was assigned as a flight instructor. He was reassigned again in the summer of 1918 to the AFC. He scored most of his victories there in the last few months of the war.

He left the AFC in August 1919 and pursued a career as an engineer in the UK before joining the RAF in 1922. He served there in a strategy-planning capacity through World War II. In 1940, under the influence of Lord Beaverbrook, he circulated an series of anonymous memos which was highly critical of senior RAF figures; in response, he was posted to South Africa, but the fallout continued and by the end of the year the Chief of the Air Staff and several other commanders had been replaced.