Noble Frankland

Anthony Noble Frankland CB CBE DFC (4 July 1922 – 31 October 2019) was an English historian who served as Director General of the Imperial War Museum.

Education Frankland attended Trinity College, Oxford, from March 1941 to May 1942 and from October 1945 to November 1947.

World War II service He served in the Royal Air Force (RAF) from 1941 to 1945 as a navigator in RAF Bomber Command and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) in 1944. He left the RAF in 1945 with the rank of Flight Lieutenant. Subsequently, he was awarded Chevalier of the Legion of Honour for his involvement in the liberation of France in 1944.

Post-war career From 1948 until 1951, he worked at the Air Historical Branch of the Air Ministry and received his DPhil from Oxford in April 1951. He was an Official Military Historian to the Cabinet Office between 1951 and 1958. During this time, he and his co-author, Sir Charles Webster, wrote a four-volume official history of the RAF's strategic air offensive against Germany. This was part of the official History of the Second World War series. In 1963, he was invited to give the Lees Knowles Lecture and lectured on The Strategic Air Offensive.

From 1958 to 1960, he was deputy director of studies at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. He left to become Director of the Imperial War Museum (IWM), a post he held from 1960 to 1982.

Frankland was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1976 Birthday Honours and appointed Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1983 New Year Honours.