Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Four: Lieutenant W. H. J. Eldridge, Royal Air Force, late Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and Royal Naval Air Service, who was awarded the 5th Class of the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun for his services in the Great War, and elevated to the 4th Class of the Order for his services in the British Aviation Mission to Japan in the early 1920s

1914-15 Star (A. 258 C.P.O., R.N.V.R.); British War and Victory Medals (Lieut., R.N.V.R.); Japan, Order of the Rising Sun, 4th Class breast badge, silver-gilt and enamel, the first with signs of re-engraved naming over earlier erasure, generally good very fine and rare (4) £500-700

William Hugh Jackson Eldridge, who was born in February 1881, entered the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in October 1914, when he was appointed a Chief Petty Officer in the Anti-Aircraft Corps. Commissioned in the same branch of the “Wavy Navy” in October 1915, he transferred to the Royal Naval Air Service in June 1916, soon after which he was posted to Eastchurch for armament duties (‘Gunnery & Bombs’), and was advanced to Lieutenant.

Then in January 1917 he took up a similar appointment at Vendome Air Station in France, in which capacity he served until February 1918, when he returned home to the R.F.C’s School of Armament, Uxbridge, where he served as a bombing instructor, latterly in the acting rank of Major. Having then transferred to the newly established Royal Air Force, he was placed on the Unemployed List in May 1919, but not before being recommended for the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun, Fifth Class, ‘In recognition of valuable services rendered in connection with the War’ (London Gazette 4 January 1921 refers). Most probably, therefore, he had sometime given valuable advice to the Japanese on gunnery and bombing matters.

Nor was this to be a passing token of Japanese recognition, for in 1921-23 Eldridge joined the British Aviation Mission to that nation, as an Armaments Specialist, was appointed a Lieutenant-Commander in the Imperial Japanese Navy and was promoted to the Fourth Class of the Order (London Gazette 9 May 1924 refers), which decoration he probably received from the hands of Rear-Admiral Tajiri at a special parade held at Kasumigaura Flying Station; see Wing Commander Jim Routledge’s excellent article regarding the Mission in the O.M.R.S. Journal, Summer 1997, including a group photograph of the 30 British officers so employed, among them Eldridge; so, too, Frida Brackley’s biography of her husband, Brackles, Memoirs of a Pioneer of Civil Aviation, in which is printed a report by Eldridge regarding armaments (relevant photocopies included).