A Collection of Awards to the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force

A rare and important 1914 Star trio awarded to Major E. N. Fuller, Royal Air Force, late Royal Flying Corps, a pre-war aviator who flew reconnaissance sorties with No. 3 Squadron during the retreat from Mons and who later commanded No. 17 Squadron in Salonika and No. 103 Squadron in France

1914 Star (2 Lieut. E. N. Fuller, R.F.C.); British War and Victory Medals (Major E. N. Fuller, R.A.F.), with named card boxes of issue, good very fine (3) £600-800

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Awards to the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force.

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Edward Newman Fuller was born in September 1888 and was educated at Merchant Taylor’s School and Magdalene College, Oxford.

A pre-war aviator who took his pilot’s certificate (No. 325) in a Graham-White Biplane at Hendon in October 1912, he was appointed a 2nd Lieutenant on the Special Reserve (Royal Flying Corps, Military Wing), and was immediately called-up on the outbreak of hostilities, when he joined No. 3 Squadron out in France on 16 August 1914.

By any standards, he subsequently participated in an important chapter of operations in the history of the fledgling R.F.C., completing a number of reconnaissance sorties in the unit’s Henri Farman Biplanes in the period leading up to the end of October - indeed the very first wartime reconnaissance ever undertaken by the R.F.C. was flown on Wednesday 19 August 1914, by Captain Joubert de la Ferte in a Bleriot monoplane of No. 3 Squadron, and Lieutenant G. W. Mappleback in a B.E. 2b of No. 4 Squadron. For his own part, according to his squadron’s war diary, ‘Lieutenant Fuller left with Captain Jackson observing’ just three days later, when he reported that ‘shrapnel burst close to aeroplane, also fired on by infantry and anti-aircraft guns’. And the same source reveals a sortie flown with Major H. R. M. Brooke-Popham in early October, one of the first officers to truly appreciate the importance of air power and its potential to assist ground forces, and afterwards a much-decorated Air Chief Marshal, including a D.S.O. won for this very period of operations.

Advanced to the temporary rank of Major and appointed a Squadron Commander in September 1915, Fuller took over
No. 17 Squadron out in Egypt and, after operations against the Turks and Senussi, commanded it on the Salonika front from July-December 1916, where to begin with it was the only R.F.C. unit in that theatre of war.

Back in the U.K. by early 1917, he was next appointed in the acting rank of Lieutenant-Colonel to No. 19 Wing, but returned to active service as C.O. of No. 103 Squadron out in France in May 1918, and remained similarly employed until being admitted to hospital that September, and invalided home.

He was demobilised in October 1919, though his earlier service record is endorsed, ‘Applicant for R.A.F.V.R., 17.7.40’; sold with the recipient’s original commission warrants for the rank of 2nd Lieutenant on the Special Reserve (Royal Flying Corps, Military Wing), dated 24 January 1913, and Major in the Royal Air Force, dated 1 April 1918, together with an extensive file of research.