Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A rare and well-documented civilian pilot’s group of four awarded to First Officer R. G. Elliott, Air Transport Auxiliary

1939-45 Star; France and Germany Star; Defence and War Medals, together with Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, 10 Years Long Service Medal, with clasps for ‘1938’, ‘1939’, ‘1940’ and ‘1941’, the reverse inscribed ‘R. G. Elliott’, extremely fine (5) £400-500

Rowland George Elliott served as a Ferry Pilot in the Air Transport Auxiliary from June 1942 until March 1946, attaining the rank of First Officer. During that period he notched up well over 800 hours flying time and flew some 60 aircraft types, including the Albermarle, Avenger, Barracuda, Beaufighter, Blenheim, Boston, Dakota, Firefly, Halifax, Hudson, Hurricane, Lysander, Mitchell, Mosquito, Mustang, Seafire, Spitfire, Swordfish, Tempest, Typhoon and Wellington, in addition to the delivery of a Vampire jet to No. 247 Squadron in March 1946: it should be noted that the majority of these flights were completed without any prior aircraft-type flying experience and, in the case of multi-engined bombers, sometimes as sole crew member.

It is clear, too, that Elliott met many of the great characters who came to serve in the A.T.A., among them Jim Mollison, the pre-war record breaking pilot and onetime husband of Amy Johnson - who was killed in 1941 while serving with the A.T.A. On setting a new record of 19 hours from New York to London in 1936, an exhausted Mollison was asked by an over eager reporter what he felt like - climbing exhausted from the cockpit of his Bellanca aircraft he famously replied, “A scotch and soda.”

Unusually, Elliott was one of a limited pool of A.T.A. pilots employed to ferry assorted aircraft over to North West Europe, his first such flight being to Brussels in September 1944, and by the end of hostilities he had completed similar trips to France and Holland on numerous occasions, activity that qualified him for the 1939-45 and France and Germany Stars.

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, including R.A.F. Pilot’s Flying Log Books (2), covering the periods June 1942 to June 1944, and June 1944 to March 1946, the latter with pasted down A.T.A. endorsement, and both with a fascinating array of identified and coded aircraft types with their respective destinations and squadron allocations; Ministry of Supply forwarding letter for the recipient’s 1939-45 and France and Germany Stars, dated June 1948; a copy of Aircraft and The Air, by Eric Sargent (fourth edition, circa 1942), with around 40 signatures of fellow A.T.A. pilots and other aviators, often with amusing commentary, and including such personalities as Jim Mollison, John Cobb and aviation artist Stanley Orton Bradshaw (see Lot 1255); a canvas “Emergency Map Pack” containing a dozen or so wartime maps; and assorted aircraft / pilot manuals; together with a pair of aviator’s sunglasses and original A.T.A. bullion / cloth “Wings”.