Trafford Leigh-Mallory

Trafford Leigh-Mallory was born in Mobberley, Cheshire, the son of Herbert Leigh Mallory, (1856–1943), Rector of Mobberley, who legally changed his surname to Leigh-Mallory in 1914.

He was the younger brother of George Mallory, the noted mountaineer.

Leigh-Mallory grew up in a large house with many servants including a butler, a valet and a footman as well as numerous maids and gardeners.

He was educated at Haileybury and at Magdalene College, Cambridge where he was a member of a literary club and where he made the acquaintance of Arthur Tedder, the future Marshal of the Royal Air Force.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory, (11 July 1892 – 14 November 1944) was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force.

Leigh-Mallory served as a Royal Flying Corps pilot and squadron commander during the First World War.

He passed his Bachelor of Laws degree and had applied to the Inner Temple in London to become a barrister when, in 1914, war broke out.

He was commissioned as a second lieutenant on 3 October 1914 and transferred to the Lancashire Fusiliers though officer training kept him in England when his battalion embarked.

Trafford married Doris Sawyer in 1915; the couple had two children.

Leigh-Mallory immediately volunteered to join a Territorial Force battalion of the King's (Liverpool Regiment) as a private.

In the spring of 1915, he went to the front with the South Lancashire Regiment and was wounded during an attack at the Second Battle of Ypres.

He was promoted to lieutenant on 21 June 1915.

After recovering from his wounds, Leigh-Mallory joined the Royal Flying Corps in January 1916 and was accepted for pilot training.

On 7 July 1916, he was posted, as a lieutenant in the RFC, to No. 7 Squadron, where he flew on bombing, reconnaissance and photographic operations during the Battle of the Somme.

He was then transferred to No. 5 Squadron in July 1916 before returning to England.

He was promoted to temporary captain on 2 November 1916.

Leigh-Mallory's first combat command was No. 8 Squadron in November 1917.

In the period after the Battle of Cambrai, No. 8 Squadron was involved in army cooperation, directing tanks and artillery.

At the Armistice, Leigh-Mallory was mentioned in despatches and awarded the Distinguished Service Order.

After the war, Leigh-Mallory thought of re-entering the legal profession, but with little prospect of a law career, he stayed in the recently created Royal Air Force (RAF), with promotion to major on 1 August 1919 (the rank was renamed "squadron leader" on the same date), and command of the Armistice Squadron.

Remaining in the newly formed RAF after the war, Leigh-Mallory served in a variety of staff and training appointments throughout the 1920s and 1930s.

During the pre-Second World War build-up, he was Air Officer Commanding (AOC) No. 12 (Fighter) Group and shortly after the end of the Battle of Britain, took over command of No. 11 (Fighter) Group, defending the approach to London.

Promoted to wing commander on 1 January 1925, Leigh-Mallory passed through the RAF Staff College in 1925 and received command of the School of Army Cooperation in 1927 before eventually being posted to the Army Staff College, Camberley in 1930.

He spent a little over a year in the Protectorate of Uganda, arriving in the country in the late autumn of 1929 and returning to England in December of 1931.

He was now a leading authority on army cooperation and in 1931, lectured at the Royal United Services Institute on air cooperation with mechanised forces.

Promoted to group captain on 1 January 1932, Leigh-Mallory received a posting to the Air Ministry in 1932 and was then assigned to the British delegation at the Disarmament Conference in Geneva under the auspices of the League of Nations, where he made many contacts.

After the collapse of the conference, he returned to the Air Ministry and attended the Imperial Defence College, the most senior of the staff colleges.

However, lack of senior command experience meant a spell as commander of No. 2 Flying School and station commander at RAF Digby before serving as a staff officer overseas.

He was posted to the RAF in Iraq in Christmas 1935, and, having been promoted to air commodore on 1 January 1936, he returned to England to be appointed commander of No. 12 Group, Fighter Command in December 1937.

He was visiting Harlaxton Manor when he received the news that he was now commander of No. 12 Group.

Leigh-Mallory took command of 12 Group and proved an energetic organiser and leader.

On 1 November 1938, he was promoted to air vice-marshal, one of the younger air vice-marshals then serving in the RAF.

He was greatly liked by his staff, but his relations with his airfield station commanders was strained.

During the Battle of Britain, Leigh-Mallory quarrelled with Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, the commander of 11 Group.

Park, who was responsible for the defence of south east England and London, had stated that 12 Group was not doing enough to protect the airfields in the south-east.

Leigh-Mallory had devised with Squadron Leader Douglas Bader a massed fighter formation known as the Big Wing, which they used with little success to hunt German bomber formations.

Leigh-Mallory was critical of the tactics of Park and Sir Hugh Dowding, head of Fighter Command, believing that not enough was being done to allow wing-sized formations to operate successfully.

In 1942 he became The Commander-In-Chief (C-in-C) of Fighter Command before being selected in 1943 to be the C-in-C of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force, which made him the air commander for the Allied Invasion of Normandy.

In November 1944, en route to Ceylon to take up the post of Air Commander-in-Chief South East Asia Command, his aircraft crashed in the French Alps and Leigh-Mallory, his wife and eight others were killed.

He was one of the most senior British officers and the most senior RAF officer to be killed in the Second World War.