Orders, Decorations and Medals

War Medal 1939-45, unnamed as issued, extremely fine £50-70

O.B.E. London Gazette 3 June 1925.

Recommendation states: ‘Squadron Leader Spratt has served for over 3 years in the Directorate of Technical Developement, Air Ministry, and during that period he has been responsible for the installation of all new and experimental and service machines. His duties are of an onerous nature calling for sound practical knowledge and attention to detail. He has carried out this work with unfailing energy and devotion to duty and has achieved most satisfactory results’.

Flight Lieutenant Norman Channing Spratt (late Captain, R.F.C., Special Reserve), was mobilised for services in the Great War on 5 August 1914 and served with No.7 Squadron in France. In May 1914 he had set an altitude record in one of the earliest RE5s when he achieved a height of 18900 feet. On 31 July 1915, Captain Spratt, in a Bristol Scout attacked a hostile biplane, forcing it to decline battle and run for home. On 26 September 1915, Captain Spratt with Duncan Bell-Irving, flying a RE5 on reconnaissance, was attacked by a Fokker Eindecker. ‘When half a drum had been fired at it the Fokker went down gliding steeply’. Two days later, Strutt was not so lucky, and he and his observer, 2nd Lieutenant Stubbs, were posted missing. The two were made prisoners of war, being captured at Ghent.

In the interwar years, Spratt’s service with the R.A.F. earned him the O.B.E. He died on 28 June 1944, as a Group Captain with the R.A.F. The husband of Blanche Spratt of Ippleden; he was buried in Ippleden Churchyard.

Sold with medal forwarding box addressed to ‘Mrs N. C. Spratt, Little Swallows, Ippleden, Newton Abbot, Devon’, and with condolense slip, named to ‘Group Captain N. C. Spratt, O.B.E.’ - this in glazed frame. Also with a quantity of copied research, which ncludes the ‘Recollections of an Airman’, ‘I cannot remember whether this machine was the Albatross that Spratt brought down. He flew a Sopwith Tabloid and forced the enemy to land by circling round above him and making pretence to attack him. As a matter of fact, he had run out of ammunition, but the bluff succeeded and the occupants of the German machine were taken prisoners’.