Cecil Roy Richards
Australian flying ace (1893–1973)
Lieutenant Cecil Roy Richards was an Australian flying ace of World War I. He was credited with twelve aerial victories.
Early life
Richards enlisted on 16 March 1915. He served on ground duty in both Gallipoli and France before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps in late 1916.
Aerial service
Details of Richards' training are not recorded. However, he was assigned to No. 20 Squadron RFC as a pilot flying the Royal Aircraft Factory FE.2d. He drove down an Albatros D.V on 14 June 1917 for his first win. He continued to score for the next two months, through 16 August 1917, including four victories on 17 July. His observer/gunner for nine of these victories was John Cowell. Richards' final tally was four enemy airplanes destroyed, eight driven down out of control.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q262288. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1915, 1916 and 1917.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cecil Roy Richards” 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.