Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Pair: Second Lieutenant D. R. Pobjoy, Royal Garrison Artillery, who later became an important aero-engine designer and who was killed in the Northwood disaster of 1948, which was deemed to be the greatest aircraft disaster at the time to have taken place in Britain

British War and Victory Medals (2. Lieut. D. R. Pobjoy.) nearly very fine (2) £60-£80

Douglas Rudolf Pobjoy was born in 1894 in Bristol. He studied engineering at Bristol University but enlisted as a Private in the Army Service Corps when war broke out. He went to France in July 1915 and in due course became a Captain in the Royal Garrison Artillery. Pobjoy's Sam Browne belt played a part in saving his life, when some some shrapnel from a nearby explosion flew towards him and caused a severe dent in the brass buckle, which otherwise would have been embedded in his flesh.

After the war Pobjoy joined the Bristol Aeroplane Company. He began to design aero engines and went into the R.A.F. as an education officer at Cranwell. He piloted a Pobjoy-engined plane at trials in 1926, and in 1931 a Pobjoy-powered Comper Swift flew from London to Australia in a record-breaking 9 days 2 hours.

The Pobjoy aero-engine factory moved from Wirral to Rochester, Kent, in 1934. When the war came, however, it was big firms like De Havilland that got government grants, and Douglas worked on vital de-icing equipment. After the war he designed a revolutionary tractor, but in July 1948 the airliner in which he was returning from a sales trip to Helsinki was involved in a mid-air collision in cloud over Ruislip aerodrome. All 39 passengers were killed in what was at that time the greatest air disaster to have occurred in Britain.