Rawdon Hume Middleton

Rawdon Hume Middleton, known as Ron, was born on 22 July 1916 at Waverley in Sydney, New South Wales, and spent much of his boyhood in the central west of the state, where his father managed farming properties. He went to school at Gilgandra and Dubbo, was a keen sportsman, and was working as a jackaroo on a station near Parkes when he enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in October 1940. He trained under the Empire Air Training Scheme, partly in Canada, before reaching England.

Middleton joined No. 149 Squadron RAF in early 1942, flying Short Stirling heavy bombers, and was made an aircraft captain by the middle of that year. On the night of 28–29 November 1942 he captained the Stirling BF372 on a long and difficult raid against the Fiat works at Turin, a target that meant crossing the Alps both ways. Over Turin he made repeated runs to identify the aiming point, and on the final pass the aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire. Middleton was terribly wounded — his right eye was destroyed, his jaw was shattered and he was hit in the body and legs — and he briefly lost consciousness as the Stirling dived.

Despite his injuries he recovered control and turned for home, flying the long route back across France with the determination, his crew remembered, to get them to the English coast. He reached it with the fuel almost gone, and ordered the crew to bale out over the Channel rather than risk a crash among houses. Two of the crew were lost in the sea; Middleton stayed at the controls and the Stirling went down off the coast. His body was washed ashore on 1 February 1943.

For his courage and self-sacrifice in bringing his crew home Middleton was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross, gazetted on 15 January 1943 — the first awarded to a member of the Royal Australian Air Force. He is buried in St John’s churchyard at Beck Row, near his old base at Mildenhall in Suffolk.