Thomas Elmhirst

Air Marshal Sir Thomas Walker Elmhirst, KBE, CB, AFC, DL (15 December 1895 – 6 November 1982) was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force in the first half of the 20th century and the first commander-in-chief of the newly independent Indian Air Force where he organised the funeral of Mahatma Gandhi following his assassination in 1948. He later became the Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Guernsey from 1953 to 1958.

Family

Thomas Elmhirst was born on 15 December 1895 to Reverend William Heaton Elmhirst (b. 1856) and Mary Elmhirst (née Knight) (b. 1863),^[1][2] a landed gentry family in Yorkshire, where the family seat is Houndhill. He was the fourth of eight boys and had one youngest sister. The children were:

• William Elmhirst (1892–1916), who was killed on the Somme during the First World War^[3]
• Leonard Knight Elmhirst (1893–1974), a noted philanthropist and educational reformer who married Dorothy Payne Whitney^[2]
• Ernest Christopher "Christie" Elmhirst (1895–1915), who was killed at Gallipoli during the First World War^[3]
• Thomas Elmhirst (1895–1982)
• James Victor Elmhirst (1898–1958)^[1]
• Richard Elmhirst (b. 1900)^[3]
• Alfred O. Elmhirst (b. 1901)^[3]
• Irene Rachel Elmhirst (b. 1902)^[3]

Military career

Elmhirst studied at the Royal Naval Colleges at Osborne, Isle of Wight in 1908, and at Dartmouth in Devon.^[4]

First World War

In April 1912, Elmhirst joined his first ship, HMS Cornwall.^[5] He was commissioned as a midshipman in the Royal Navy in 1913 and was posted to HMS Indomitable in the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron under David Beatty.^[6] When war came he served on HMS Indomitable as the ship took part in the initial bombardment of the Turkish Dardanelles forts and the Battle of Dogger Bank,^[6] where he commanded 'X Gun Turret', the last one to fire at the German ship SMS Blücher before it sank. In 1915 he was selected to be in the first draft of the Royal Naval Air Service where he served until the end of the First World War. He celebrated the armistice by flying an airship (SSZ73) under the Menai Bridge with his friend Gordon Campbell as his passenger. By 1917, he was promoted to flight lieutenant and by March 1918 to major, commanding the Naval Airship Patrol Station at Anglesey in Wales.^[5] He then became part of the newly formed Royal Air Force in 1919.^[6]

Between the wars he trialled the first gyroscopic compass for aircraft in the RAF and became Air Attaché to Turkey in the run up to the Second World War.^[6] In January 1940 returned to the Air Ministry as Deputy Director of Intelligence.^[6]

Second World War

During the Second World War he ran the operations room at RAF Uxbridge during the Battle of Britain. He then commanded the Egypt Command Group under Air Marshal Tedder before becoming Second-in-Command of the Desert Air Force.^[6] He continued in this role through the battle of Alamein until after the Allied invasion of Sicily. He was then Second-in Command of British Air Forces in North West Europe until the end of the war,^[6] serving in D-Day, Normandy, the Ardennes and the advance across the France and Germany. Finally he became Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Intelligence) in August 1945.^[6]

Post war

After the war he was appointed as the Commander of the RAF in India.^[6] As independence approached Pandit Nehru asked him to be the first Commander-in-Chief of the new Royal Indian Air Force upon its inception.^[6]

In 1953, he ran Operation Totem, the first British nuclear bomb land tests in Emu Field, Australia.^[6] Later in 1953 he became the Lieutenant-Governor of Guernsey, welcoming Queen Elizabeth II on her inaugural tour of the island as the new monarch. He held the post for five years, retiring in 1958.

Personal life

He married firstly Katherine Gordon Black, daughter of William Black, on 16 December 1930,^[7] and had two children before Katherine's death in 1965:

• Roger Elmhirst (1935–1999)^[8]
• Caroline Jane Elmhirst (b. 1932),^[8] who married Michael Frazer Mackie^[5]

On 30 October 1968, he married Marian Ferguson (née Montagu Douglas Scott), widow of Colonel Andrew Henry Ferguson. Marian was the daughter of Lord Herbert Montagu Douglas Scott and Marie Josephine Edwards and the granddaughter of William Montagu Douglas Scott, 6th Duke of Buccleuch and Lady Louisa Hamilton. From Marian's first marriage, she was the paternal grandmother of Sarah, Duchess of York, and maternal great-grandmother of HRH Princess Beatrice of York and HRH Princess Eugenie of York. Together they lived at Dummer Down House, at Dummer in Basingstoke, Hants, her dower estate from her first marriage.^[9]

Thomas Elmhirst died at Dummer, Hampshire, on 6 November 1982, in his 87th year. He was survived by his second wife, and his children and grandchildren from his first marriage.^[5]

References

Heads of RAF Intelligence
Medhurst 1941–1942 Inglis 1942–1945 Elmhirst 1945–1947 Pendred 1947–1950 Ogilvie-Forbes 1950–1952 Fressanges 1952–1954 MacDonald 1954–1958 Bufton 1958–1961 Foord-Kelcey 1961–1964 Maguire 1964–1965

Chief of the Air Staff (India)
Commander, Indian Group (1919–1920)	Tom Webb-Bowen
Air Officer Commanding RAF, India (1920–1938)	Tom Webb-Bowen Philip Game Sir Edward Leonard Ellington Sir Geoffrey Salmond Sir John Miles Steel Sir Edgar Ludlow-Hewitt Sir Philip Joubert de la Ferté
Air Officer Commander-in-Chief, Air Forces in India (1938–1947)	Sir Philip Joubert de la Ferté Sir John Frederick Andrews Higgins Sir Patrick Playfair Sir Richard Peirse Sir Guy Garrod Meredith Thomas Sir Roderick Carr Sir Hugh Walmsley
Air Officer Commanding, Royal Indian Air Force (1947–1948)	Sir Thomas Elmhirst**
Commander-in-Chief, Royal Indian Air Force (1948–1950)	Sir Thomas Elmhirst**
Commander-in-Chief, Indian Air Force (1950–1955)	Sir Thomas Elmhirst** Sir Ronald Ivelaw-Chapman** Gerald Gibbs** Subroto Mukerjee
Chief of the Air Staff (1955–present)	Subroto Mukerjee Aspy Engineer Arjan Singh Pratap Chandra Lal Om Prakash Mehra Hrushikesh Moolgavkar I. H. Latif Dilbagh Singh Lakshman Madhav Katre Denis La Fontaine Surinder Mehra Nirmal Chandra Suri Swaroop Kaul Satish Kumar Sareen Anil Tipnis Srinivasapuram Krishnaswamy Shashindra Pal Tyagi Fali Homi Major Pradeep Vasant Naik Norman Anil Kumar Browne Arup Raha Birender Singh Dhanoa (designate)
(**Seconded from the Royal Air Force)