David Evans (RAAF officer)
Australian air force official, born 1925
Air Marshal Selwyn David Evans, (3 June 1925 – 2 September 2020) was a senior commander of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), and a writer and consultant on defence matters. He served as Chief of the Air Staff from 1982 to 1985. After leaving the RAAF, he published two military treatises, A Fatal Rivalry: Australia's Defence at Risk and War: A Matter of Principles, as well as an autobiography.
Enlisting in the Air Force in 1943, Evans graduated from flying school as a sergeant pilot, and was converting to Beaufort bombers when World War II ended. He gained his commission as a pilot officer in 1947. From 1948 to 1949, he was a member of the Australian contingent operating C-47 Dakota transports in the Berlin Airlift. He was a flying instructor in the early 1950s, before becoming a VIP captain with the Governor-General's Flight in 1954. His service in the flight earned him the Air Force Cross in 1957. In the 1960s Evans was twice posted to No. 2 Squadron, flying Canberra jet bombers, first as a flight commander when the unit was based in Malaysia from 1960 to 1962, then as its commanding officer during the Vietnam War from 1967 to 1968.
The public source identifies “David Evans (RAAF officer)” as australian air force official, born 1925. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around David, Evans and RAAF.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5233451. VIAF identifies the subject as 116330464. The Library of Congress control number is n90669753. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1925, 2020, 1982 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “David Evans (RAAF 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.