Neil Thomson Badger

Neil Thomson Badger was an Australian airman from South Australia, serving in the Royal Australian Air Force under service number 407161. The Australian War Memorial holds his private-record collection, including letters, training material, an individual flight record and his flying log book for 1940-1944. The collection summary records that he received the Distinguished Flying Cross for exceptional skill and courage on numerous sorties.

Badger was lost on operations over Dutch New Guinea on 8 May 1944, aged 27. Aircrew death indexes and Australian memorial rolls identify him as an RAAF flight lieutenant and place his commemoration on the Lae Memorial, Panel 6. His public record is unusually personal because the AWM collection preserves letters and logbook material rather than only a casualty listing. It also places his final service in the Pacific air war, where Australian airmen flew in difficult conditions across New Guinea and surrounding islands. That collection is the key biographical source.