Orders, Decorations and Medals

The British War Medal awarded to Lieutenant J. E. A. Vowles, Royal Air Force, late Royal Naval Air Service, who was killed in action in a dogfight with the German ace Oberleutnant Friedrich Christiansen in July 1918

British War Medal 1914-20 (Lieut. J. E. A. Vowles, R.A.F.), refixed suspension, edge bruising and polished, thus good fine £80-100

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

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Joseph Albert Edward Vowles, who was born in April 1895 and enlisted in the Royal Naval Air Service as an Air Mechanic 1st Class circa 1915, was appointed a Probationary Flight Officer in November 1916. Having then served at R.N.A.S. Vendome from December of the latter year until March 1917, he returned to the Home Establishment and was appointed a Flight Sub. Lieutenant, thereafter serving at Calshot, Grain and Westgate.

And it was while stationed at the latter R.N.A.S. establishment, as a Short 184 Seaplane pilot, that he was killed in action while on an anti-submarine patrol off Kentish Knock on 18 July 1918 - he and a fellow pilot were jumped by seven enemy seaplanes, Vowles being driven down onto the sea by German ace Oberleutnant Friedrich Christiansen, who then destroyed the Short 184 with further gunfire. Vowles’ Observer, 2nd Lieutenant J. G. M. Farrall, was also killed, but not before he had released a carrier pigeon which, though itself injured, made it safely to the nearby Lighthouse - and subsequently returned to Westgate to receive a mention in “Pigeon Despatches”.

Vowles, who had been advanced to Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force in April 1918, and mentioned in despatches (London Gazette 1 May 1918 refers), has no known grave and is commemorated on the Hollybrook Memorial in Southhampton.