Arthur Coningham was a senior officer in the Royal Air Force. During the First World War, he was at Gallipoli with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, was discharged in New Zealand as medically unfit for active service, and journeyed to Britain at his own expense to join the Royal Flying Corps, where he became a flying ace.
Background
Coningham was born in Brisbane, Queensland, on 19 January 1895.
His early life was one that made him learn to be adaptable. His father, also Arthur Coningham, was noted for playing Test cricket, but was by disposition a con man who was exposed in court for fabricating legal evidence in a trial designed to shake down a Catholic priest, Denis Francis O'Haran, secretary to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney. The resulting scandal drove the older Arthur Coningham to remove the Coningham family to New Zealand while Coningham was still young. The change of scene to New Zealand did not change the father's modus operandi; he spent six months imprisoned there for fraud.
Career
In 1914 he enlisted in the Canterbury Mounted Rifles and served with it in Samoa, at Gallipoli. and in Egypt. From this association with a New Zealand regiment he was nicknamed “Maori,” w'hich fell on English ears as Mary. Being tall, very handsome, urbane, and highly- regarded as a fighter, Coningham did not mind the girlish sobriquet. In August 1916 he transferred into the Royal Flying Corps, and the following December he went to France as a second lieutenant. In seven months as a fighter pilot in No. 32 Sqdn before being wounded, he was appointed to the DSO, awarded the MC. and promoted to captain. After a year in England he returned to France and completed his war service as a major commanding No. 92 Sqdn, winning the DFC. Coningham remained in uniform and in 1919 was given a permanent commission as a flight lieutenant in the new RAF. In 1925 he led a flight from Cairo across Central Africa to Kano, Nigeria, establishing the vital air route used later for supplies from the US to the Middle East, India, and the USSR.
At the start of war in 1939, Coningham was a recently promoted air commodore commanding No 4 Gp of long-range night bombers based in Yorkshire. In July 1941 he went to Egypt as air vice marshal commanding the Western Desert AF in Arthur Tedder's Middle East AF. Inspired by the Luftwaffe’s example, he pioneered development of tactical air support for Allied ground troops. One of Coningham’s many innovations was to send out small bomber formations with exceptionally strong fighter support; this caused disproportionately heavy losses of enemy fighters, which enabled the Allies to use progressively fewer fighters and more bombers. Knighted (KCB) after the Battle of El Alamein (4 November 1942), Sir Arthur continued to provide tactical air support for the 8th Army until after Montgomery occupied Tripoli on 23 January 1943.
Mary Coningham then formed the 1st Tac AF, made up of US and UK formations, establishing headquarters on 17 February 1943 alongside Sir Harold Alexander’s 18th AG Hq in Tunisia. After the Allies won the Tunisian campaign (13 May 1943), Coningham’s tactical air forces made history by forcing the surrender of Panlelleria, a rugged, heavily fortified island 70 miles SW of Sicily. After directing tactical air force operations in the invasion of Sicily and southern Italy, Coning- ham went to England in January 1944 to head the 2d Tac AF, which had a vital role in the Normandy landings and the drive into Germany. During the last year of the war his air force had some 1,800 front-line planes and 100,000 men from seven nations. (DNB.)
Appointed KBE in 1946 for his final campaign and promoted to air marshal, Sir Arthur headed the Flying Training Command until retiring at his own request in 1947. Making his home near London, Coningham died 30 Jan 48 in an air accident while flying as a passenger between the Azores and Bermuda.