Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Second War A.F.C. attributed to Captain O. M. G. Murphy, Royal Artillery

Air Force Cross, G.VI.R., reverse officially dated 1946, in Royal Mint case of issue, with named Buckingham Palace enclosure, nearly extremely fine £800-£1,000

A.F.C. London Gazette 8 August 1947 (to be dated 1 January 1946): Captain (temporary) Oliver Michael Gerald Murphy, Royal Regiment of Artillery.

Oliver Michael Gerald Murphy ‘was born in Finglas, County Dublin, in 1921 and was educated at St Gerard's School in Bray, County Wicklow, and then at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He was called up in 1939, commissioned and then joined the Royal Artillery in France. At the Dunkirk evacuation he woke on the sand dunes to discover that his platoon had disappeared overnight so alone he swam out in the morning light, climbed on a merchant vessel, was transferred to a Royal Navy destroyer and made a safe return to England. He was next involved with the production and installation of a decoy near Sheffield to distract German bombers, and was then posted to a searchlight regiment in Dorset, where he invented an electrical device to improve reporting of the position of enemy aircraft.
Murphy then volunteered to become an Air Observation Post officer and initially flew an Auster aircraft, becoming the personal pilot of General Sir Miles Dempsey, the Second Army commander. After D-Day he went to India, Malaysia and Singapore, where he flew a Douglas DC3 Dakota, still for General Dempsey. Later they were deployed to Cairo and Palestine. He was awarded the Air Force Cross for his wartime flying activities’ (the recipient’s obituary in Veterinary Record, February 2015, refers).

Sold with copied research.