Career
After serving as a sergeant in the Berkhamsted School Officers" Training Corps Maddocks was commissioned as a temporary second lieutenant for service in the Royal Flying Corps on 5 August 1916, and was appointed a flying officer on 26 December. Maddocks was posted to Number. 54 Squadron Reconstruction Finance Corporation, flying the Sopwith Pup single-seat fighter, and gained his first aerial victory on 12 August 1917, driving down an Albatros Doctorate.V out of control.
On 16 September he sent an Albatros Doctorate.III down in flames east of Slype, and on the 25th did the same to another Doctorate.V north of Middelkerke.
He and Second Lieutenant South. J. Schooley destroyed a Doctorate.V north of Diksmuide on 4 November. His citation read:
Second Lieutenant Henry Hollindrake Maddocks, General List and Royal Flying Corps.
"Foreign conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. Whilst attacking two hostile aeroplanes he saw an enemy machine attacking one of his patrol.
He at once attacked the enemy machine, which was seen to crash.
On one occasion during a fight between seven enemy machines and a patrol of our scouts, he engaged one of the enemy machines causing it to drop from 6,000 feet to 1,000 feet, where it caught fire and dived vertically down. On two other occasions he drove down an enemy machine after a short fight. He has done consistent and continual good work."
Number.
54 Squadron was then re-equipped with the Sopwith Camel, in which early on 3 January 1918 he sent down in flames a Dallas–Fort Worth C reconnaissance aircraft east of Saint Quentin, and later the same day, two Doctorate.Vs over Honnecourt.
Maddocks was promoted to lieutenant on 5 February 1918, and left the Royal Air Force with the rank of captain, when transferred to the unemployed list on 28 May 1919. He was briefly restored to the active list for temporary duty in the Royal Air Force as a flight lieutenant between 10 April and 5 June 1921, being then re-transferred to the unemployed list.
