14 Facts About Ivor McIntyre

Ivor McIntyre gained national recognition in 1924 when he and Wing Commander Stanley Goble became the first men to circumnavigate Australia by air.

Two years later, under the command of Group Captain Richard Williams, McIntyre piloted the first international flight undertaken by an RAAF plane and crew; this feat earned him the first Air Force Cross awarded to an RAAF member.

Ivor McIntyre left the Air Force in 1927 to become an instructor with the South Australian branch of the Australian Aero Club, and died after a plane crash the following year.

Ivor Ewing McIntyre was born on 6 October 1899 in Kent, England, the son of Captain Duncan McIntyre.

Ivor McIntyre transferred to the Royal Air Force on its creation as an independent service in 1918, and was a lieutenant when awarded the Air Force Cross in the 1919 New Year Honours.

Ivor McIntyre was granted a short-service commission in the RAF as a flying officer on 12 December 1919.

Ivor McIntyre joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1923.

In July 1925, Ivor McIntyre was tasked by the Chief of the Air Staff with intercepting a squadron of the United States Pacific Fleet as it approached Melbourne on a flag-waving visit; he succeeded in doing so despite poor weather and not without, according to the official history of the inter-war RAAF, "an enormous element of luck, not to mention risk".

Ivor McIntyre was lead pilot while Goble, who was Chief of the Air Staff at the time, acted as commander and navigator.

Ivor McIntyre was awarded the Oswald Watt Gold Medal for 1924, and promoted to flight lieutenant effective from 31 March that year.

In 1926, Ivor McIntyre was selected as lead pilot on another pioneering Australian flight under the command of the then-Chief of the Air Staff, Group Captain Richard Williams, to study the South Pacific region as a potential theatre of operations.

Ivor McIntyre was awarded a second Oswald Watt Gold Medal, and a Bar to his AFC, for his part in the flight; it marked the first occasion that the AFC was awarded to a member of the RAAF.

Ivor McIntyre left the RAAF in November 1927 to become a flying instructor for the newly formed South Australian section of the Australian Aero Club.

Ivor McIntyre died in an Adelaide hospital on 12 March 1928 of injuries received the previous day, when he crashed the club's Moth trainer while giving an aerobatics display at Parafield.