Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Lieutenant J. H. Thomas, Royal Air Force, late Liverpool Regiment and Royal Flying Corps, who served as a pilot in No. 8 Squadron 1916-17

1914-15 Star (2108 Sjt. J. H. Thomas, L’pool R.); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut. J. H. Thomas, R.F.C.), the last with officially re-impressed naming, good very fine (3) £300-350

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Awards to the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force.

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John Howard Thomas, who was born in September 1888 and a native of Wallasey, Cheshire, enlisted in the Liverpool Regiment on the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914 and first went out to France as a Sergeant in February 1915. Subsequently commissioned in the Manchester Regiment, in July 1915, he is believed to have witnessed further active service in the 2nd Battalion before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps in July 1916.

Having then obtained his aviator’s certificate and been appointed Flying Officer, he was posted to No. 8 Squadron out in France that November, and flew in B.E. 2s on artillery spotting and photographic missions until wounded in a crash landing in a snowstorm on returning from a sortie on 10 April 1917. Thereafter passed only for light duties, he was serving as a Supply Officer in the Department of Air Production at the War’s end. He was demobilised in January 1919; sold with a file of research.