Jerry Pentland
Alexander Augustus Norman Dudley Pentland, MC, DFC, AFC was an Australian fighter ace in World War I. Credited with twenty-three aerial victories, Pentland became the fifth highest-scoring Australian ace of the war. Pentland served in the fledgling Royal Australian Air Force, and later the Royal Air Force. He died in 1983 at the age of eighty-nine.
About Jerry Pentland in brief
Alexander Augustus Norman Dudley Pentland, MC, DFC, AFC was an Australian fighter ace in World War I. Credited with twenty-three aerial victories, Pentland became the fifth highest-scoring Australian ace of the war. Pentland served in the fledgling Royal Australian Air Force, and later the Royal Air Force, before going into business in 1927. He became a trader in New Guinea when the war ended in 1945, and later a coffee planter. Retiring in 1959, he died in 1983 at the age of eighty-nine. His father was a physician who joined the Australian Imperial Force and served as a major in the Australian Army Medical Corps. His mother Annie Norma was Scottish, and his father Alexander was Irish. He enlisted as a private in the AIF on 5 March 1915, sailing for Egypt with the 12th Light Horse Regiment aboard HMAT A29 Suevic on 13 June. In August, his unit deployed to Gallipoli, where he fought as a machine gunner before being hospitalised the following month, suffering from typhoid fever; he was evacuated to England in December. After recovering, he instructed at London Colney until June 1917, when he joined No. 19 Squadron, flying SPAD S. VIIs. In the early 1930s, he was employed as a pilot with Australian National Airways, and also spent time as a dairy farmer. Soon after the outbreak of World War II, he re-enlisted in the RAAF, attaining the rank of squadron leader and commanding rescue and communications units in the South West Pacific.
His first solo flight in a Maurice Farman Longhorn at Brooklands, after two hours of dual instruction, ended with him overshooting the runway and crashing in a sewage farm, but he was unhurt and immediately undertook a second solo attempt, landing successfully. He was awarded the Military Cross in January 1918 for “conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty” on a mission attacking an aerodrome behind enemy lines, and the Distinguished Flying Cross that August for engaging four hostile aircraft single-handedly. On 20 July 1917, he shared in the destruction of an Albatros two-seater with a new unit at new unit in France. Four days later, after stopping an enemy convoy in tracks by crippling its lead vehicle with machine-gun fire, he reportedly engaged ten enemy fighters off, four bullets had penetrated his leather suit without injuring him while his flying suit had absorbed so much punishment that it had to be scrapped when he got back to base. He followed this up with a solo on 12 August, after sharing another Albatro with Marc Marc Marc on 20 August 20, leading a raid on another base on the outskirts of Paris. On 9 June, he and his observer quickly managed to score the former’s first aerial victory, bringing down a German Eindecker over Habourdin. He was then posted to No 29 Squadron and was converting to DH. 2 fighters when he broke his leg playing rugby.
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This page is based on the article Jerry Pentland published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 29, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
