John Everard Gurdon

John Everard Gurdon, (24 May 1898 – 14 April 1973), was a British flying ace in the First World War credited with twenty-eight victories. Early life and background Gurdon was born in Balham, Surrey, the son of John Gurdon and Mary Gray Rattray, and attended Tonbridge School in Kent. From September 1916 he attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, as a "Gentlemen Cadet", and after passing out (graduating), he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Suffolk Regiment on 1 May 1917. First World War service Gurdon was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps in May 1917, and was confirmed in his rank of the General List on 10 August 1917. He completed his pilot training at Central Flying School and was sent to No. 22 Squadron in 1918, flying Bristol F.2 Fighters. Gurdon achieved all twenty-eight of his victories between 2 April and 13 August 1918 while flying the Bristol Fighter aircraft, seventeen of them using the front gun. On 7 May he was involved in an historic engagement known as the "Two versus Twenty". Gurdon, together with his observer 2nd Lt. John Thornton, in partnership with one other Bristol Fighter aircraft, piloted by Alfred Atkey with his observer Charles George Gass engaged twenty enemy aircraft. Gurdon and Thornton shot down three enemy aircraft; Atkey and Gass shot down five.