GREAT WAR AIR ACE PROMOTED

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23802, 23 November 1942, Page 4

GREAT WAR AIR ACE PROMOTED

* GROUP CAPTAIN BA'NNERMAN’S CAREER New Zealand’s foremost fighter ace of the Great War, Squadron Leader R. B. Bannerman, D.F.C. and Bar, of Gore, is among officers of the Royal New Zealand Air Force whose promotions are announced in the latest Gazette. He has been appointed Air Force member for personnel on the Air Board, and is granted the temporary rank of wing commander (actting group captain). Group Captain Bannerman has been serving in the Royal New Zealand Air Force since September. 1940. He served in the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Air Force and was a flight commander in single-seater fighters, operating in France for about 15 months in 1917-18. The official record gave him a tally of 17 machines destroyed single-handed, and 22 shot down out of control. The Distinguished Flying Cross was awarded to the then Captain Bannerman after an engagement with the famous Richthofen Squadron in which ’ two British fighters were in combat with about 30 enemy aircraft. Three of the enemy aircraft were destroyed and two of them were brought down by i Captain Bannerman. He gained a bar to his D.F.C. for the destruction of six i German aircraft in a month. After the war Group Captain Bannerman began the practice of his profession as a solicitor at Gore, where . he lived until he rejoined the Air Force. He was associated with efforts ! to raise patriotic funds at the outbreak , of this war, and was chairman of the Eastern Southland Patriotic Committee,