Thomas Pike

SIR THOMAS PIKE GCB CBE DFC & Bar d1983. Senior officer in the Royal Air Force. He served in WW2 as a night fighter squadron commander and then as a station commander. He was Chief of the Air Staff in the early 1960s and in that role deployed British air power as part of the British response to the Brunei Revolt. Also in the face of escalating costs, he implemented the cancellation of the British Blue Streak ballistic missile system but then found the RAF was without any such capability when the Americans cancelled their own Skybolt ballistic missile system. He went on to be Deputy Supreme Commander Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in the mid-1960s