John Lloyd Waddy, OBE, DFC was a senior officer and aviator in the Royal Australian Air Force. As a fighter pilot during World War II, he shot down 15 enemy aircraft during the North African campaign. Waddy went on to command No.80 Squadron in the South West Pacific, where he was awarded the US Air Medal. He was one of eight senior pilots who took part in the Morotai Mutiny of April 1945. He later served as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly and Minister of the Crown.
About John Lloyd Waddy in brief
John Lloyd Waddy, OBE, DFC was a senior officer and aviator in the Royal Australian Air Force. As a fighter pilot during World War II, he shot down 15 enemy aircraft during the North African campaign, becoming one of Australia’s top-scoring aces. Waddy went on to command No.80 Squadron in the South West Pacific, where he was awarded the US Air Medal. He was one of eight senior pilots who took part in the Morotai Mutiny of April 1945. He later served as a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly and Minister of the Crown. He retired from politics in 1976, and he died in 1987 at the age of 70. He is the great-grandson of General Sir Richard Waddy KCB, KCB. His two older brothers, Edgar and Richard, were also pilots. His elder sister, Lett, was commissioned into the Women’s Volunteer Naval Reserve, and his younger brother Rowen served as an officer with Z Special Unit in theSouth West Pacific. He married Vera Nellie May Dengate on 21 July 1938, and had a son, Lloyd, and two daughters, Denise and Rosalind. His younger brother, Richard, was killed flying a single-engined fighter in Britain in 1941. He had a sister and three brothers. His older brother, Edgar, had taken a short-service commission with the Royal Air Force in the 1930s, while Richard trained in Canada with EATS during the war prior to active duty in Britain.
He enlisted in the RAAF in late 1940, learning to fly under the Empire Air Training Scheme in Southern Rhodesia. In June 1941, Pilot Officer Waddy was posted to the North Africa theatre with No. 250 Squadron RAF, operating P-40 Tomahawks and, later, Kittyhawks. By the end of April 1942, Waddy had scored four-and-a-half victories over enemy aircraft. Promoted flying officer, he achieved four kills in a single sortie on 12 May 1942, destroying two Junkers Ju 52 cargo planes and two escorting Bf 110s from a German air transport convoy operating between Crete and North Africa. Shortly after claiming a victory over a Messerschmitt Bf-109 on 22 May, he was assigned to another RAF unit, No. 4 Air Force, before being posted back to Australia on 19 November 1942. His final tally of fifteen victories made him one of the most successful Allied fighter pilots in the Second World War. In October, he claimed a further three victories with his latest unit, and was only among the second contingent of RAAF pilots to be among the Allied contingent to survive the Battle of the Arabian Peninsula. In 1955, he became an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. In 1962, he served as the Member for Kirribilli in the New NSW Parliament, representing the Liberal Party.
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