Air Vice Marshal Adrian Lindley Trevor Cole, CBE, DSO, MC, DFC (19 June 1895 – 14 February 1966) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). Joining the army at the outbreak of World War I, he transferred to the Australian Flying Corps in 1916 and flew with No. 1 Squadron in the Middle East and No. 2 Squadron on the Western Front. He became an ace, credited with victories over ten enemy aircraft, and earned the Military Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross. In 1921, he was a founding member of the RAAF.
"King" Cole rose to the position of Air Member for Supply in 1933 and gained promotion to group captain in 1935. The following year he was appointed the first commanding officer of Headquarters RAAF Station Richmond. During World War II, he led North-Western Area Command in Darwin, Northern Territory, and held a series of overseas posts in North Africa, England, Northern Ireland, and Ceylon. As Forward Air Controller during the Dieppe Raid in 1942, he was wounded in action and awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Cole served on corporate boards of directors following his retirement from the RAAF in 1946. He died in 1966 at the age of seventy.
Early life and World War I Adrian Cole was born in Glen Iris, a suburb of Melbourne, to barrister and doctor Robert Cole and his wife Helen (née Hake). He was educated at Geelong Grammar School and Melbourne Grammar School, where he was a member of the cadet corps.Eaton, Australian Dictionary of Biography, pp. 459–460Knox, Who's Who in Australia 1935, p. 123Malvern, a neighbouring suburb of Glen Iris, has also been given as Cole's birthplace, for example in Cutlack, The Australian Flying Corps, p. 466 When World War I broke out in August 1914, Cole gained a commission in the Australian Military Forces, serving with the 55th (Collingwood) Infantry Regiment.Dennis et al., The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, p. 136 He resigned his commission to join the Australian Imperial Force on 28 January 1916, intending to become a pilot in the Australian Flying Corps.Adrian Trevor Cole at The AIF Project. Retrieved 24 March 2009.
Middle East
Posted to No. 1 Squadron (also known until 1918 as No. 67 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps), Cole departed Melbourne aboard HMAT A67 Orsova on 16 March 1916, bound for Egypt.Stephens, The Royal Australian Air Force, p. 9 He was commissioned a second lieutenant in June and began his pilot training in August. By the beginning of 1917, he was flying reconnaissance and scouting missions in Sinai and Palestine.Cutlack, The Australian Flying Corps, pp. 52–54 He took part in an early example of Allied air-sea cooperation on 25 February, directing French naval fire against the coastal town of Jaffa by radio from his B.E.2 biplane.Australian Naval Aviation – Part 1 at Naval Historical Society of Australia . Retrieved 14 July 2009.Cutlack, The Australian Flying Corps, p. 56 On 20 April, Cole and fellow squadron member Lieutenant Roy Maxwell Drummond attacked six enemy aircraft that were threatening to bomb Allied cavalry, scattering their formation and chasing them back to their own lines.Recommendation for Adrian Trevor Cole to be awarded a Military Cross at Australian War Memorial. Retrieved 6 April 2009. Both airmen were awarded the Military Cross for their actions; Cole's citation was published in a supplement to the London Gazette on 16 August 1917:
The day after the action that earned him the Military Cross, Cole was flying a Martinsyde G.100 "Elephant" over Tel el Sheria when he was hit by ground fire and forced to crash land behind enemy lines; after setting his aircraft alight he was picked up and rescued by Captain Richard Williams. On 26 June, following an eight-plane raid on Turkish Fourth Army headquarters in Jerusalem, Cole and another pilot suffered engine seizures while undertaking a similar rescue of a downed comrade; all three airmen were forced to walk through no man's land before being picked up by an Australian Light Horse patrol.Cutlack, The Australian Flying Corps, pp. 63, 66–67
Western Front
Promoted to captain in August 1917,AWM Collection Record: P01034.050 at Australian War Memorial. Retrieved 24 March 2009. Cole was posted to France as a flight commander with No. 2 Squadron AFC (also known until 1918 as No. 68 Squadron RFC).Cutlack, The Australian Flying Corps, p. 69 Flying S.E.5 fighters on the Western Front, he was credited with destroying or sending out of control ten enemy aircraft between July and October 1918, making him an ace.Shores et al., Above the Trenches, p. 112Shores et al., Above the Trenches Supplement, p. 18 In a single sortie over the Lys Valley on 19 August, Cole shot down two German fighters and narrowly avoided being shot down himself immediately afterwards, when he was attacked by five Fokker Triplanes that were being pursued by Allied Bristol Fighters.Cutlack, The Australian Flying Corps, pp. 349–350 On 24 September, he led into battle a patrol of fifteen S.E.5s that destroyed or damaged eight German fighters over Haubourdin and Pérenchies, claiming one Pfalz D.III for himself.Cutlack, The Australian Flying Corps, pp. 363–364
Cole was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions on 7 October 1918, when he led No. 2 Squadron through "a tornado of anti-aircraft fire" in a major assault on transport infrastructure in Lille.Cutlack, The Australian Flying Corps, pp. 365–367 During the raid he successfully bombed a goods engine and a troop train, and put several anti-aircraft batteries out of action, before leading his formation back to base at low level.Recommendation for Adrian Trevor Cole to be awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross at Australian War Memorial. Retrieved 6 April 2009. The announcement and accompanying citation for his decoration was gazetted on 8 February 1919:
Between the wars
Returning to Australia in February 1919, Cole briefly spent time as a civilian before accepting a commission in the Australian Air Corps, the short-lived successor to the Australian Flying Corps, in January 1920. On 17 June, accompanied by Captain Hippolyte De La Rue, he flew a DH.9 to a height of , setting an Australian altitude record that stood for more than ten years.Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, p. 23 He transferred to the Royal Australian Air Force as a flight lieutenant in March 1921, becoming one of its original twenty-one officers.Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force, p. 16 On 30 November, he married his cousin Katherine Cole in St Peter's Chapel at Melbourne Grammar School; the couple had two sons and two daughters. Squadron Leader Cole was posted to England in 1923–24 to attend RAF Staff College, Andover,Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, p. 90 returning to Australia in 1925 to become Director of Personnel and Training.Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force, p. 712 Promoted to wing commander, he was in charge of No. 1 Flying Training School (No. 1 FTS) at RAAF Station Point Cook, Victoria, from 1926 to 1929.Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, p. 467 The first Citizens Air Force (reserve) pilots' course took place during Cole's tenure at No. 1 FTS; although twenty-four accidents occurred, injuries were minor, leading him to remark at the graduation ceremony that the students were either made of India rubber or had learned how to crash "moderately safely".Stephens, The Royal Australian Air Force, p. 37Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, p. 238
Cole held command of RAAF Station Laverton from 1929 until his appointment as Air Member for Supply (AMS) in January 1933. The AMS occupied a seat on the Air Board, which was chaired by the Chief of the Air Staff and was collectively responsible for control and administration of the RAAF.Stephens, The Royal Australian Air Force, p. 54 In March 1932, Cole accepted an invitation from the Lord Mayor of Melbourne to serve as Deputy Chairman of the 1934 MacRobertson Air Race from England to Australia, to celebrate Melbourne's Centenary.Coulthard-Clark, The Third Brother, p. 401 Provision of the RAAF's radio facilities and technicians was considered a boon for contestants, though Cole later recorded that his role involved "twenty months' hard work, without pay ... with loads of scurrilous and other criticism". Promoted to group captain in January 1935, he became the inaugural commanding officer (CO) of Headquarters RAAF Station Richmond, New South Wales, on 20 April 1936. The new headquarters, which had been formed from elements of two of the base's lodger units, No. 3 Squadron and No. 2 Aircraft Depot, supplanted an earlier arrangement where the CO of No. 3 Squadron had doubled as the station commander.Roylance, Air Base Richmond, pp. 46, 113 Cole was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Coronation Honours of 11 May 1937, and attended the Imperial Defence College in London the following year. He returned to RAAF Station Laverton as CO in February 1939, taking over from Group Captain Henry Wrigley.RAAF Historical Section, Units of the Royal Australian Air Force, pp. 144–145
World War II As part of the RAAF's reorganisation following the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, No. 2 Group was formed in Sydney on 20 November, with Cole in command. The group controlled Air Force units in New South Wales.Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force, pp. 66–67 Cole was raised to temporary air commodore in December, and took charge of Central Area Command, which supplanted No. 2 Group, when it was established in the new year.Ashworth, How Not to Run an Air Force, pp. 302–304 In September 1941, he was sent to North Africa as Officer Commanding No. 235 Wing RAF of the Desert Air Force, where he helped establish a new anti-submarine warfare unit, No. 459 Squadron RAAF.Gillison, Royal Australian Air Force, p. 237 Posted to England with Headquarters No. 11 Group in May 1942, he served as Forward Air Controller of the Dieppe Raid on 19 August, responsible for co-ordinating Allied air cover off the French coast aboard HMS Calpe.Herington, Air War Against Germany and Italy, p. 351 In doing so, he was seriously wounded in the jaw and upper body when German fighters strafed the ship; he required plastic surgery and spent several weeks recuperating. His gallantry during the action earned him the Distinguished Service Order,Recommendation for Adrian Trevor Cole to be awarded a Distinguished Service Order at Australian War Memorial. Retrieved 4 April 2009. the announcement being published in a supplement to the London Gazette on 2 October 1942. The same month, he was made Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAF Northern Ireland, with the acting rank of air vice marshal, though the command was described in the official history of Australia in the war as a "backwater".Herington, Air Power Over Europe, p. 278