Career
Rose joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1917 and was posted to Number. 64 Squadron later that year, flying Dialectics and Humanism.9s. The squadron was involved in the Battle of Cambrai in a ground-strafing role.
lieutenant subsequently re-equipped with SE5as, which led to greater involvement in aerial combat.
He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in November 1918, having become a deputy flight commander. Following the end of the war, Rose became a flight commander with Number.
43 Squadron, Royal Air Force, serving from 1925–1927. After leaving the Royal Air Force with the rank of flight lieutenant, Rose worked in aviation first taking a job at Brooklands in charge of Britain"s first petrol station for aeroplanes which was opened there by the Anglo-American Oil Company in April 1927.
In 1930 he gave several public aerobatic displays at Brooklands.
Initially joining Phillips & Powis Aircraft Limited (later Miles Aircraft Limited) as sales pilot and flying instructor at Woodley Aerodrome near Reading, Berkshire, he became the company"s chief test pilot after the unexpected death of Bill Skinner in 1939 and remained in that position throughout I.
Thomas Rose lived (for a time in retirement) in a house on Alderney, Channel Islands. The house, in Les Venelles, carries a blue plaque on the wall.
