Adrian Lindley Trevor Cole, CBE, DSO, MC, DFC was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force. He became an ace, credited with victories over ten enemy aircraft, and earned the Military Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Cole rose to the position of Air Member for Supply in 1933 and gained promotion to group captain in 1935. During World War II, he led North-Western Area Command in Darwin, Northern Territory, and held a series of overseas posts in North Africa, England, Northern Ireland, and Ceylon. Cole served on corporate boards of directors following his retirement from the RAAF in 1946.
About Adrian Cole (RAAF officer) in brief
Adrian Lindley Trevor Cole, CBE, DSO, MC, DFC was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force. He became an ace, credited with victories over ten enemy aircraft, and earned the Military Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross. Cole rose to the position of Air Member for Supply in 1933 and gained promotion to group captain in 1935. During World War II, he led North-Western Area Command in Darwin, Northern Territory, and held a series of overseas posts in North Africa, England, Northern Ireland, and Ceylon. Cole served on corporate boards of directors following his retirement from the RAAF in 1946. He died in 1966 at the age of seventy and was survived by his wife, Helen, and their three children. He was awarded the CBE and DSO for his service in World War I, and the DFC for his distinguished service in the Second World War. Cole was a founding member of the Australian Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which was founded in 1921. He served in the Australian Imperial Force and the Australian Flying Corps during the First World War, and was awarded a CBE for his services to the Australian Army in 1916. He also served with the Australian Royal Air Force during World War I and was a member of Australia’s first air force commission, the Australian Air Force Commission, from 1915 to 1918. He is buried in Melbourne, with his wife Helen, his two children, and his five great-grandchildren.
Cole died of cancer in 1966 and was buried in Glen Iris, a suburb of Melbourne, in the Northern Territory. His funeral was held in the Melbourne suburb of Glen Iris on November 11, 1966. He had served in Australia in the Army from 1914 to 1916, when he was promoted to the rank of second lieutenant. Cole also served as an airman in Australia’s Second Air Force, serving with the 55th Infantry Regiment and the 1st Battalion, the Australian Light Horse. He flew with No.1 Squadron in the Middle East and No. 2 Squadron on the Western Front. Cole and another pilot suffered engine seizures while undertaking a similar rescue of a downed comrade; all three airmen were forced to walk through no man’s land before being picked up by an Australian Light Horses patrol. On 20 April 1917, Cole and fellow squadron member Lieutenant Roy Maxwell Drummond attacked six enemy aircraft that were threatening to bomb Allied cavalry, scattering their formation and chasing them back to their own lines. Cole’s citation was published in a supplement to the London Gazette on 16 August 1917: For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty, he attacked and disorganised six enemy machines that were about to attack our cavalry with bombs. On 8 February 1919, Cole carried out a successful tornado raid through Lilleille, putting several anti-aircraft batteries out of action, before leading his formation back to base at low level.
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