The Roy Bartlett Collection of Awards to the R.N.A.S., R.F.C. and R.A.F.

An unusual family group:

A post-war O.B.E. group of six awarded to Group Captain Otto Maxwell Berkeley, Royal Air Force, late Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, O.B.E. (Military) Officer’s 2nd type breast badge; 1939-45 Star; France and Germany Star; Defence and War Medals; Air Efficiency Award, G.VI.R., 1st issue (Act. Wg. Cdr., R.A.F.V.R.), generally extremely fine

The Great War Iron Cross awarded to Lieutenant Georg Ernst Eberhard Ottomar Brand von Berckefeldt, 233rd (Prussian) Field Artillery Regiment - Otto’s father
Iron Cross 1914, 2nd class, together with a Third Reich badge, dated 1937-38 and one of his Great War uniform epaulettes of the 233rd (Prussian) Field Artillery Regiment, this last worn, otherwise very fine or better (9) £300-350

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Roy Bartlett Collection of Awards to the R.N.A.S., R.F.C. and R.A.F..

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O.B.E. London Gazette 2 January 1950.

Otto Maxwell Berkeley (previously von Berckefeldt) was born in Calcutta, India in February 1908, the son of Georg Ernst Eberhard Ottomar Brand von Berckefeldt, who would serve in the Prussian Army in the Great War, and an English mother, Edith Winn. His great grandfather had risen to Colonel in the Royal Hanoverian Army, while his cousin, Gerhard Rudolf Albrecht Paul von Berckefeldt served as an officer in the Wermacht and was killed in action on the Russian Front in October 1941.

Otto’s movements between the wars remain largely unknown, but according to an announcement in the London Gazette of 21 June 1938 - in which he renounced his family name in favour of ‘Berkeley’ - he was then an accountant and resident at Thorpe Green, Chertsey in Surrey: the reasons for him renouncing his family name are also borne out in the London Gazette, for in the following month it was announced that he had been appointed an Acting Pilot Officer in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. In January 1940, Otto was advanced to Flying Officer, the first of several rapid advancements, and by July 1944 he was serving in the Equipment Branch as an Acting Wing Commander. Granted a permanent commission as a Squadron Leader in the Royal Air Force in January 1946, he was awarded the Air Efficiency Award in March 1947 and the O.B.E. in the New Year’s Honours in 1950. Later that year, he was posted to the R.A.F. Headquarters at Oslo in Norway, as part of Allied Air Forces Northern Europe, where he served as Head of Logistics, and on returning to an appointment in the Air Ministry in London in early 1954, he was advanced to Group Captain. Otto was placed on the Retired List in October 1958 and died in March 1961.

Georg Ernst Eberhard Ottomar Brand von Berckefeldt was born in Hameln, Germany in September 1877 and served as a Lieutenant in the 233rd (Prussian) Field Artillery Regiment on the Western Front in the Great War, winning the Iron Cross. He died in Dortmund in November 1950.