During WWI, many Royal Flying Corps (RFC) pilots, later known as the Royal Air Force (RAF), used to serve on combat tours. In these tours, pilots flew until they had a certain number of operational hours or a predetermined number of victories, or were killed, wounded, or deemed unfit to fly. Thomas Percy Middleton, born on May 10, 1893, in Surrey, appeared in two such combat tours. He first served in the 6th London Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery. In 1916, he transferred to the RFC. Thomas Percy Middleton’s first combat tour in fighter planes was with No. 48 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps. The squadron was the first to use the two-seater Bristol F.2B fighter. With this arrangement, either the pilot or the observer/gunner could shoot down enemy aircraft. So any victories achieved during their flights together would be credited to both crew members.
Ace Journey of Thomas Percy Middleton
Thomas Percy Middleton scored his first victory on April 30, 1917. He achieved four more victories in May and became an ace on May 27 with two wins. He scored two more times in June before taking a break from combat duty, bringing his score to seven in his first combat tour. In April 1918, Middleton returned to fight on the Western Front as a flight leader in No. 48 Squadron of the newly formed RAF. He was still flying Bristols. Shortly after he returned, on April 17, 1918, Thomas Percy Middleton shot down an Albatros D.V and forced another to crash. He claimed nine victories in May, five in June, one in July, and three in September, to end his WWI at a score of 27. Middleton became the fourth most victories among the 44 aces in No. 48 Squadron.
The Legacy
Thomas Percy Middleton had 27 wins, mainly against German fighter planes. Only three of his victories were against enemy reconnaissance aircraft. Among his 27 victories, seven each were Albatros D.Vs and Pfalz D.IIIs, four were Albatros D.IIIs, three each were C-type aircraft and Fokker D.VIIs, two were Fokker Dr.Is, and one was a Hannover C. Thomas Percy Middleton was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) in August 1918, with a citation, “During the past two months this officer has been very successful as a fighting pilot, destroying six enemy machines in that time— two of them being triplanes. On one of these occasions, the formation to which Capt. Middleton belonged to (consisting of nine machines) attacked fifteen enemy aeroplanes, and this officer shot one of them down.” After the war, Thomas Percy Middleton moved to Argentina. In the Aces series, he was a brave pilot and ace who helped his country win a war by serving on two combat tours. Read more stories on Aces HERE.
