Garnet Malley
Garnet Francis Malley, MC, AFC was an Australian fighter ace of World War I. He was awarded the Military Cross for his achievements in combat, and his subsequent work as a flying instructor in England earned him the Air Force Cross. He became an aviation adviser to China in 1931, and worked closely with Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Soong Mei-ling. After the war he bought a plantation in Fiji, where he died in 1961.
About Garnet Malley in brief
Garnet Francis Malley, MC, AFC was an Australian fighter ace of World War I, credited with six aerial victories. He was awarded the Military Cross for his achievements in combat, and his subsequent work as a flying instructor in England earned him the Air Force Cross. He became an aviation adviser to China in 1931, and worked closely with Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Soong Mei-ling, from 1937. In 1940, he served in intelligence roles with the RAAF and later the Commonwealth government. After the war he bought a plantation in Fiji, where he died in 1961. Malley was born in Mosman, a suburb of Sydney, on 2 November 1892. His father, an ironworker originally from Gosford, founded the whitegoods firm Malley’s. He later served two terms as alderman of Mosman Council. He died in Fiji in 1961, and was buried in a private ceremony at St Vincent’s Anglican Church in Sydney. He is survived by his wife and three children, all of whom were born in Sydney, and a son and a daughter-in-law, both of whom died in infancy. He also leaves behind a son, Peter, who served in the Royal Australian Air Force in the Second World War, and two step-daughters, who died in a car crash in the South African desert in 1973.
He had been a gunner with the Australian Imperial Force in World War I. He transferred to the Australian Flying Corps in 1917, and the following year flew Sopwith Camels with No. 4 Squadron on the Western Front. His final victory, over the Lys on 1 June, was a Pfalz D. III. His official tally was six German aircraft destroyed—four fighters, an observation balloon, and an unidentified observation plane and he was wounded in action twice, by a bullet through the leg in March, and by shrapnel from anti-aircraft fire in May, in May and June. The official history of Australia in the war credits Malley with the destruction of a Pfalz over Wytschaete on 10 May, though it does not appear in other accounts of his final tally. The 1st Brigade took part in the Battles of Pozières and Mouquet Farm in July and August 1916, and Malley transferred to the Australian flying Corps as a mechanic in April 1917, before undertaking flying instruction at the Oxford University air school. On 16 March, he achieved his first aerial victory, sending a fighter belonging to Manfred von Richthofen’s Red Circus out of control above Annoeullin.
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