27 Facts About Victor Goddard

Victor Goddard was born at Wembley the son of Dr Charles Victor Goddard.

Victor Goddard served as a midshipman in the first year of the First World War and in 1915 joined the Royal Naval Air Service.

Victor Goddard's duties included patrolling for submarines in dirigibles; he claims that during this period he was responsible for the creation of the term "blimp".

In 1921, Victor Goddard was selected to read engineering at Jesus College, Cambridge and then studied at Imperial College London before returning to Cambridge in 1925 as an instructor to the university's air squadron.

Victor Goddard returned to England in 1931 as chief instructor of the officers' engineering course.

Victor Goddard was then at the Staff College until 1935 when he was appointed deputy director of intelligence at the Air Ministry.

Victor Goddard held this post until the outbreak of the Second World War.

Victor Goddard later claimed to have had a clairvoyant episode in 1935, at RAF Drem, in Scotland.

Victor Goddard claimed that he had been flying a mission to inspect the airfield at Drem which was decommissioned at the time.

Victor Goddard noted that he observed a number of yellow planes, one being a monoplane he could not identify.

Victor Goddard saw a number of mechanics in blue overalls which did not fit with RAF operations at the time as mechanics wore tan overalls.

Victor Goddard went with the British Expeditionary Force to France in 1939.

Victor Goddard was made senior air staff officer in the following year and played a major part in preserving British air assets in the face of the German attacks.

Victor Goddard made regular air war broadcasts on the BBC.

Victor Goddard was posted to India in 1943, to take charge of administration for the air command of South East Asia Command.

Victor Goddard remained in the role until 1946 when he became the RAF's representative in Washington.

Victor Goddard claimed to have witnessed the clairvoyant experience of another officer, in China during January 1946.

That night Victor Goddard was persuaded to take two men and a woman on the Douglas Dakota transport flying to Tokyo.

Michael Redgrave played Victor Goddard, who was depicted in the film as becoming excited for a few seconds as the plane made its crash-landing.

That reportedly annoyed Victor Goddard, who had been proud of what he had seen as his unemotional behaviour.

Victor Goddard retired in 1951, and became principal of the College of Aeronautics, where he remained until 1954.

Victor Goddard was a governor of St George's School Harpenden and of Bryanston School and was president of the Airship Association from 1975 to 1984.

Victor Goddard encouraged Sir George Trevelyan to set up the Wrekin Trust, a body promoting "spiritual education" in 1971.

Victor Goddard spent many years investigating, and lecturing on, flying saucers.

Victor Goddard argued for extrasensory perception and other paranormal phenomena in his book Flight Towards Reality.

Victor Goddard wrote the foreword to Muriel Dowding's 1980 autobiography and Allan Barham's Strange to Relate.

Victor Goddard married Mildred Catherine Jane Inglis, the daughter of Alfred Inglis and his wife Ernestine Pigou, in 1924.