Peter Horsley

Air Marshal Sir Beresford Peter Torrington Horsley, (25 March 1921 – 20 December 2001) was a senior Royal Air Force commander.

Early life Horsley was the youngest of seven children of a West Hartlepool merchant who committed suicide in 1923 as a result of business worries. He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and Wellington College.

Military career In 1939, he became a deck boy on the TSS Cyclops, a Blue Funnel Line steamer sailing to Malaya. He transferred to the homeward-bound TSS Menelaus when the Second World War was declared, but then deserted ship. As a member of the Merchant Navy Horsley would not have been able to join the RAF, which was his ambition.

Horsley served briefly in the Home Guard before joining the RAF, initially as an air gunner, as this was the only vacancy then available. However, he managed to get a transfer to pilot training, and was soon himself an instructor at RAF Cranwell.

He was transferred to the Flying Training School at Penfold, Alberta in 1942, and then to the Mosquito Conversion Unit at Greenwood, Nova Scotia, 1943–1944. He then joined 21 Squadron of 140 Wing, RAF Hunsdon, flying Mosquitoes on night fighter intruder missions over Nazi Germany. After D-Day he was shot down over the English Channel near Cherbourg and was picked up by an Air-Sea Rescue launch after three days. An account of the incident, read by Horsley himself, is kept in the Imperial War Museum archives. His navigator 'Bambi' was killed, and Horsley spent some time afterwards in hospital, and then the RAF rehabilitation centre at Loughborough.

Horsley then was attached to the communications squadron of the 2nd Tactical Air Force in France, and was personal pilot to Major-General Miles Graham during the Normandy invasion. He returned to the United Kingdom in 1947 and joined the staff of the Central Flying School, 23 Training Group. He received a permanent commission and was appointed adjutant to the Oxford University Air Squadron in 1948.

Honours Horsley received the French Croix de Guerre in 1944, and the Air Force Cross in 1945. He was made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order in 1956, and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1964. In 1974 he was knighted and made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.