Robert Turkington
RAF flying ace
Robert Wilkinson "Paddy" Turkington, (1920 – 29 July 1945) was a Northern Irish Second World War Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter pilot and flying ace. He had 9 confirmed kills, 3 shared kills, 1 probable kill, and 4 damaged aircraft; some sources credit him with 11 kills.
Early life and education
Turkington was born in 1920 in Mhow, British Raj or in Derrytrasna, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Between 1933 and 1939, he was educated at Lurgan College, a grammar school in Craigavon, County Armagh.
Military service
Turkington enlisted in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve (RAFVR) in 1940, and trained as a pilot in Canada. On 1 October 1942, he was promoted from pilot officer (on probation) to the war substantive rank of flying officer (on probation). He was promoted to war substantive squadron leader on 7 January 1944.
Turkington first served with No. 43 Squadron RAF, and flew a Hawker Hurricane with them on the Dieppe Raid of 19 August 1942. By November 1942, he was fighting over North Africa.
“Robert Turkington” enters the record as rAF flying ace. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Robert, Turkington and flying can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Robert Turkington” 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.