Jefferson Heywood Wedgwood

Jefferson Heywood Wedgwood was born in London on 28 May 1917 and educated at Holyrood School and Lancing College before joining the Royal Air Force on a short service commission in March 1936. After pre-war flying and instructional postings he flew Hawker Hurricanes with No. 253 Squadron during the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940, claiming several enemy aircraft, and in January 1942 he was given command of No. 92 (East India) Squadron, which he led on Supermarine Spitfires. Attached to the fighting in the Western Desert in 1942, he proved a formidable fighter pilot, leading his squadron against larger formations of enemy aircraft and personally destroying a number of Messerschmitt Bf 109s; in all he was credited with around thirteen enemy aircraft destroyed. For this record he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, gazetted on 2 October 1942, and a Bar to the DFC announced posthumously in the London Gazette of February 1943 (Issue 35891, page 653). Squadron Leader Wedgwood was killed on 17 December 1942 when the Handley Page Halifax of No. 138 Squadron carrying him crashed near Luqa, Malta, on a transit flight home, reportedly brought down by friendly anti-aircraft fire. He is buried in the Malta (Capuccini) Naval Cemetery. (Note: our database records a DSO for him, but every independent source consulted shows his decorations were the DFC and Bar to the DFC, with the cited Gazette reference corresponding to the Bar to the DFC, not a DSO.)