Orders, Decorations and Medals

A Great War period C.M.G., D.S.O., A.F.C. group of eight miniatures attributed to Air Commodore E. M. Maitland, Royal Air Force, late Commanding Officer No. 1 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service: an aviation pioneer in every sense – from early balloon and parachute work to the first airship Atlantic crossing - he died in the R-38 airship disaster in August 1921

The Order of St. Michael and St. George, gilt and enamel; Distinguished Service Order, G.V.R., gold and enamel; Air Force Cross, G.V.R.; Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 4 clasps, Orange Free State, Transvaal, South Africa 1901, South Africa 1902; 1914 Star, with clasp; British War and Victory Medals; U.S.A., Distinguished Service Medal (Navy), bronze and enamel, mounted as worn and contained in an old Jarrolds, Knightsbridge glazed display frame, generally very fine or better (8)
£400-500

Air Commodore E. M. Maitland’s full-size Honours & Awards were sold at Sotheby’s on 10 November 1988 (Lot 180).

Edward Maitland Maitland was born in February 1881 and educated at Haileybury and Trinity College, Cambridge. Commissioned into the Essex Regiment, he witnessed active service in South Africa, and was serving as Adjutant of the 3rd Battalion in 1906, when he took up ballooning. Two years later, in the balloon Mammoth, with Professor A. E. Caudron and Major C. C. Turner as passengers, he made a remarkable flight from London to central Russia, covering a distance of 1117 miles in just 36 hours.

He was duly appointed to the Air Battalion of Royal Engineers, and was a natural choice to command No. 1 Squadron when the Royal Flying Corps was established in May 1912, having obtained his aviator’s certificate and privately purchased a Howard Wright biplane. But Maitland led from the front in many other respects, his input in the early months of the War proving instrumental in establishing the R.F.C’s Kite Balloon Section for artillery observation – himself having taken a section of balloons to Belgium in 1914. He, too, who tested Mr. C. G. Spencer’s static-line parachute – the first such descent ever made from an airship, a 2000 feet descent that took six minutes: as a result, parachutes were afterwards supplied to kite balloonists.

In fact, Maitland was a highly resourceful C.O., always ready to undertake dangerous experiments, once making a jump from 10,000 feet to experience the phenomenon of “swinging”, and he later took to visiting R.N.A.S. stations by parachute, sometimes under fire – batman and baggage being compelled to arrive in the same manner. Moreover, he carried out much valuable work in kite balloons, on one occasion cutting the mooring lines to experience a “free run”, and on another slashing a balloon’s diaphragm to test the trials and tribulations of a bad rip – he and his passenger, who were treated to an erratic and swift descent, most of it in a spin, just averted serious injury by leaping from the basket as it hit a live railway line.

In July 1917, he was gazetted for a long overdue D.S.O., the recommendation citing his gallant work in connection with airships and parachutes – ‘he has carried out experiments at his own personal risk and has made some descents under enemy fire.’ In the same year, Maitland joined the Admiralty’s Airship Headquarters Staff, and in early 1919 he was awarded the C.M.G. for his ongoing contribution to the airship service.

By now an Air Commodore, he was placed in command of the R-34, his mission to accomplish the first ever airship trans-Atlantic crossing – an epic journey duly completed with R-34s safe landing at Hazlehurst Field, Mineola that July, but not before riding out a ferocious storm. The flight, which took 108 hours and 12 minutes, soon hit the headlines, and George V sent a personal message of congratulations. Having then safely completed R-34’s return trip to the U.K., Maitland was awarded the A.F.C., ‘in recognition of distinguished services rendered to aviation, in the successful voyages of Airship R-34 from the United Kingdom to the United States of America and back.’ So, too, the American Distinguished Service Medal (Navy).

And it was while carrying out a test flight on behalf of the United States Navy, in the R-38, in August 1921, that Maitland was killed, the airship blowing up over the Humber – remarkably five men survived the inferno.