Edgar McCloughry


Edgar James Kingston-McCloughry, , born Edgar James McCloughry, was an Australian fighter pilot and flying ace of the First World War, and a senior commander in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. He shot down 21 aircraft and military balloons during the former 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 Despatches.

Military career

McCloughry joined the Australian Imperial Force in 1914, and served as a military engineer in Egypt and France before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps in December 1916. He graduated from flying training in August 1917 and was posted to 23 Squadron RFC on the Western Front. He was seriously injured in a crash shortly thereafter and, after recovering in hospital, was reassigned as a flight instructor. He was reassigned again in the summer of 1918 to the Australian Flying Corps. He scored most of his victories there in the last few months of the war.
McCloughry left the AFC in August 1919 and pursued a career as an engineer in the United Kingdom before joining the Royal Air Force in 1922. He served there in a strategy-planning capacity through the Second World War. In 1940, under the influence of Lord Beaverbrook, he circulated a series of anonymous memos which were 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.
McCloughry retired from the RAF in 1953 as an air vice marshal, and died in 1972 in Edinburgh.