George Jones (RAAF Officer) - Later Life

Later Life

Following his departure from the Air Force in 1952, Jones became Director of Coordination with the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation (CAC) and member of the board of Ansett Transport Industries. In the 1953 New Year Honours, he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his military service. He retired from the CAC directorship in 1957 but remained on the Ansett board until the early 1970s. Jones pursued a political career in parallel to his aviation industry work, unsuccessfully standing for Liberal Party pre-selection in the seat of Flinders in 1952. In 1958, he left the Liberals in favour of the Labor Party, contesting the seat of Henty in 1961. He switched parties when his views became too leftist for the Liberals, declaring "They got rather nasty with me and wouldn't give me a fair go, so I resigned and joined the Labor Party". He pursued an energetic campaign in Henty, but lost to his Liberal opponent by fewer than 3,000 primary votes.

Jones also evinced an interest in unidentified flying objects, having first encountered unexplained aerial phenomena at Warrnambool, Victoria, in 1930. He reported witnessing another UFO in October 1957, but admitted that he was "loath to talk about it publicly lest people should think I was either an incompetent witness or getting a little screwy in the head". In the mid-1960s he patronised the Commonwealth Aerial Phenomena Investigation Organisation and joined the Victorian UFO Research Society. In 1988 Jones published his autobiography, From Private to Air Marshal. He was Australia's last surviving World War I ace when he died in 1992, at the age of 95.