Gordon Cochrane (RNZAF officer)
New Zealand bomber pilot (1916–1994)
Alfred William "Gordon" Cochrane, (10 October 1916 – 29 October 1994) was an officer of the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) during the Second World War. He is one of only four New Zealand-born airmen to receive two medal bars to his Distinguished Flying Cross.
Career
Cochrane was born on 10 October 1916 in Rawene, a remote settlement in the Northland Region of New Zealand. After leaving school, he worked in his uncle's general store before enlisting in the Royal New Zealand Air Force in September 1940. By November 1941, he was flying Wellington bombers with No. 156 Squadron RAF and would complete 33 operations including the three thousand-bomber raids of Cologne. In August 1942, Cochrane was awarded an end-of-tour Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC).
After attending an instructors' school, Cochrane spent the next 18 months teaching others how to fly multi-engined aircraft and was then posted to No. 156 Squadron RAF, beginning operations again in June 1944. Over the next 11 months he flew two tours for a total of 55 operations on Lancasters and was frequently the master bomber, directing the markers and main force as he circled the target.
“Gordon Cochrane (RNZAF officer)” enters the record as new Zealand bomber pilot (1916–1994). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Gordon, Cochrane and RNZAF can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gordon Cochrane (RNZAF officer)” 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.