ALLIED AIR CHIEF

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20129, 26 December 1939, Page 3

ALLIED AIR CHIEF

A LIKELY CANDIDATE SIR CYRIL NEWALL DISTINGUISHED RECORD Natural choice for the head of the unified air command, a post reported by cable message to have been decided upon by the Allied Supreme War Council, would be Air Chief Marshal Sir Cyril Louis Norton Newall, supreme head of the Royal Air Force. A tough, dark, tight-lipped man who hates war. Sir Cyril is a colonel’s son. Born in an Indian hill station 53 years ago, he joined the Army as a second lieutenant in 1905, and four years later was skirmishing with the Indian Army. He first grew interested in learning to fly when on leave, and after taking a course at the Upavon Flying School finally earned the Royal Aero Club certificate No. 144. Back he went to India to open a school of aeronautics, but in September, 1914. he transferred to the old Royal Flying Corps. Attached to the Wing at Nancy he raided German military objectives as reprisals for the Zeppelin bombings of Britain. Awarded Albert Medal In 1916, when Sir Cyril was commanding Squadron No. 12 at St. Omer. tire broke out in a bomb dump. The key could not be found. Sir Cyril and a mechanic climbed on the roof and played a hose through a hole burned by the flames. He then led three others into the building and together they put out the flames. For this feat he was awarded the Albert Medal, first class, usually associated with peace-time heroism. He is the only British high-ranking officer to-day who holds this distinction.

By 1917 lie was given command ot the 41st Wing at Nancy and the E'hinela id still remembers him for the punishment his wing delivered

to industrial and military targets. On three occasions during the last war, Sir Cyril was mentioned in dispatches. After the war he had a succession of high posts in the Air Force, and for a lime was A.D.C. to King George V. Then he was sent to Geneva for special duty on the League of Nations Disarmament Committee. When that well meant movement failed, Sir Cyril had a spell of service in the Middle East, and or. his return he was put in charge of Air Force expansion in 1925, becoming Air Chief Marshal in 1937. Defence of the Empire With younger officers he is stern, but popular. “If you marry too young you are doing yourselves no good,” he tells them. He was married himself to Miss Olive Tennyson Foster, of Boston, when he was 39. They have a son and two daughters, Sir Cyril is athletic, a good mixer, an expert polo player, an angler and a gardener. Before getting up in the morning—he always rises early—he drinks three cups of tea in rapid succession. Last June Sir Cyril wrote that ‘ our responsibility is the defence of a great Empire,” and in the years since he became the guiding light of Britain’s strengthened air force he has done everything within Lis power to ensure that his arm of the service will .play its part to the discomforof the Nazi chiefs. Red-faced, grey-haired, taciturn, Sir Cyril is a model of a gallant airman, and if the Allied Supreme War Council has decided that the guiding of our destinies in the air shall be the responsibility of a British officer, Sir Cyril would seem to be the man for the job