Thomas "Loel" Guinness - World War II

World War II

He gained the rank of Group Captain in the service of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. When World War II broke out Loel Guinness went on active duty with the Royal Air Force. In 1940 Loel flew as a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain, famously buying a petrol station near his aerodrome when his driving was restricted by rationing. In 1944 he became commander of a wing of the Second Tactical Air Force and by the war's end he had been mentioned in despatches five times. He was invested as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1942. The Netherlands made him a commander of the Order of Orange Nassau and France made him an officer of the Legion of Honor and awarded him a Croix de Guerre.

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