Ralph Barker
English author (1917-2011)
Ralph Hammond Cecil Barker (21 October 1917 – 16 May 2011) was an English non-fiction author with over twenty-five books to his credit. He wrote mainly about the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and Royal Air Force (RAF) operations in the First and Second World Wars, and about cricket.
Life and career
Born in Feltham, he was educated at Hounslow College, and on leaving school joined the Sporting Life in 1934. Subsequently, he went into banking. He had started writing, and several of his sketches were used in West End revues.
Following the outbreak of World War II, in 1940 he joined the RAF as a wireless operator and air gunner. He flew with Nos. 47 and 39 squadrons on torpedo missions against Axis ships bringing supplies to Rommel's forces in the Western Desert in North Africa. These missions, from bases in Malta and North Africa, led to heavy losses amongst the Bristol Beaufort aircraft carrying them out. Barker's time in this theatre of war was ended by a crash in which his pilot and navigator died.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ralph Barker” is english author (1917-2011). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ralph, Barker and English, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “english author (1917-2011)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7287211. VIAF identifies the subject as 71739912. The Library of Congress control number is n79122625. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917, 2011, 1934 and 1940.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Ralph Barker” 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.