Ashley Stevenson
RAF Officer
Air Commodore Ashley David Stevenson, (born 30 September 1958) is a retired senior Royal Air Force (RAF) officer and a former Commandant of Royal Air Force College Cranwell.
Military career
Stevenson was commissioned into the Flying Branch as a flying officer from the ranks of the RAF on 25 February 1982. He conducted his flying training in the USA on the T-37 and T-38 aircraft, completing using the Hawk in the UK.
He was awarded the Queen's Commendation for Brave Conduct in 1992 for his actions in an ejection situation following a bird strike of his two-seat Harrier T.4 on 25 September 1991, where he rescued his rear seat passenger (the first woman to eject from a British combat jet) after she landed in the aircraft's burning wreckage. This was Stevenson's second ejection from a Harrier after he had ejected from a GR.5 on 17 October 1990.
As Officer Commanding No. 3 (Fighter) Squadron, Wing Commander Stevenson commanded the detachment of Harrier GR.7 aircraft deployed during the Sierra Leone crisis, the first operation conducted by the combined RAF/Royal Navy Joint Force Harrier.
Stevenson served as Station Commander RAF Wittering for two years and, on promotion to air commodore, was appointed Air Commodore Force Development Headquarters in No. 1 Group on 27 November 2006.
Stevenson was appointed to the newly created NATO post of Commander Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan in July 2007. He then became Commandant Royal Air Force College Cranwell and Director of Recruiting in April 2008.
The public source identifies “Ashley Stevenson” as rAF Officer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Ashley, Stevenson and Officer.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4805599. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 1982, 1992 and 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ashley Stevenson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.