Education
Elmhirst studied at the Royal Naval Colleges at Osborne, Isle of Wight in 1908, and at Dartmouth, Devon.
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Thomas Elmhirst
Edit Profilegovernor lieutenant Central Bank
Air Marshal Sir Thomas Walker Elmhirst Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire, Central Bank, AFC, Doctor of Laws was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force in the first half of the 20th century and the first commander-in-chief of the newly independent Indian Air Force where he organised the funeral of Mahatma Gandhi following his assassination in 1948.
Career
He later became the Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Guernsey from 1953 to 1958. He was commissioned as a midshipman in the Royal Navy in 1913 and was posted to HMS Indomitable in the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron under David Beatty. When war came he served on HMS Indomitable as the ship took part in the initial bombardment of the Turkish Dardanelles forts and the Battle of Dogger Bank, where he commanded "X Gun Turret", the last one to fire at the German ship SMS Blücher before it sank.
In 1915 he was selected to be in the first draft of the Royal Naval Air Service where he served until the end of the First World War.
He then became part of the newly formed Royal Air Force in 1919. Between the wars he trialled the first gyroscopic compass for aircraft in the Royal Air Force and became Air Attaché to Turkey in the run up to the Second World War.
During the Second World War he ran the operations room at Royal Air Force Uxbridge during the Battle of Britain. He then commanded the Egypt Command Group under Air Marshal Tedder before becoming Second-in-Command of the Desert Air Force.
He continued in this role through the battle of Alamein until after the Allied invasion of Sicily.
He was then Second-in Command of British Air Forces in North West Europe until the end of the war, serving in Doctorate-Day, Normandy, the Ardennes and the advance across the France and Germany. Finally he became Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Intelligence) in August 1945. After the war he was appointed as the Commander of the Royal Air Force in India.
As independence approached Pandit Nehru asked him to be the first Commander-in-Chief of the new Royal Indian Air Force upon its inception.
In 1953 he ran Operation Totem, the first British nuclear bomb land tests in Emu Field, Australia. Later in 1953 he became the Lieutenant-Governor of Guernsey, welcoming Queen Elizabeth II on her inaugural tour of the island as the new monarch.
He held the post for five years, retiring in 1958. Thomas Elmhirst was born into a landed gentry family in Yorkshire, where the family seat is Houndhill.
He was the fourth of eight boys and had one youngest sister.
Katherine died in 1965. Marian was the paternal grandmother of Sarah, Duchess of York, and maternal great-grandmother of His Royal Highness Princess Beatrice of York and His Royal Highness Princess Eugenie of New York Thomas Elmhirst died at Dummer, Hampshire, on 6 November 1982, in his 87th year.
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Born
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Died
November 6, 1982 (aged 86) -
Nationality
Indian