A Collection of Awards to the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force

The Great War Memorial Plaque to 2nd Lieutenant C. A. Moore, Royal Flying Corps, late Artists Rifles and York and Lancaster Regiment, who was killed in action while serving as an Observer in a No. 36 Squadron during a Zeppelin raid in September 1917

Memorial Plaque (Cuthbert Alec Moore), together with an original portrait photograph in uniform, on card mount, extremely fine £200-250

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of Awards to the Royal Flying Corps, Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force.

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Cuthbert Alec Moore, who was born in Frankfort, Kentucky, U.S.A., in 1897, enlisted in the 28th London Regiment (the Artists Rifles) in August 1915 and went out to France in March 1916, remaining similarly employed until being commissioned in the Field as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 14th Battalion, York and Lancaster Regiment, at the end of the year.

Subsequently transferring to the Royal Flying Corps, Moore qualified as an Observer in July 1917 and was posted to No. 36 Squadron at Seatons Carew, Hartlepool, for home defence duties. With the advent of a Zeppelin raid on the Midlands and North East in the early morning hours of 25 September 1917, Moore, and his pilot, 2nd Lieutenant H. J. Thornton, took off in pursuit of the raiders in F.E. 2d A-6461, but nothing was ever seen of them or their aircraft again, it being surmised they ran out of fuel while trying to regain the coast after chasing a zeppelin out to sea; sold with a quantity of research, including copied official letters regarding his missing status, among them a letter from the American Ambassador in London.