Richard Peirse

Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Edmund Charles Peirse, (30 September 1892 – 5 August 1970) served as a senior Royal Air Force commander.

RAF career The son of Admiral Sir Richard Peirse and his wife Blanche Melville Wemyss-Whittaker, Richard Peirse was educated at the Junior School section of Monkton Combe School, Bath, Somerset, on and at King's College London. He became a midshipman in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and was commissioned in 1912. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his contribution to the aerial attack on Dunkirk on 23 January 1915. He was further promoted in July 1916 to squadron commander.

Later that year, on 18 August 1915, Peirse married Mary Joyce Ledgard (1894–1975), younger daughter of Mr and Mrs Armitage Ledgard, of the Manor House, Thorner, Yorkshire. They had one son and one daughter. The marriage was dissolved in 1945.

Peirse served as a pilot with the Royal Naval Air Service until 1 April 1918 when it became part of the Royal Air Force. in 1923 he became Station Commander at RAF Gosport and in 1929 he was made Station Commander at RAF Heliopolis.

Peirse went on to be deputy director of Operations and Intelligence at the Air Ministry in 1930 and, having been promoted to air commodore in 1933, was appointed Air Officer Commanding Palestine Transjordan Command during the Arab revolt in Palestine.

In the Second World War, as a temporary air marshal, Peirse became Vice-Chief of the Air Staff from April 1940 and, and having had his rank confirmed as permanent in July, he became Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Bomber Command from October.

When reports from Witold Pilecki of the treatment of Jews in Auschwitz reached London via the Polish government in exile, Peirse, then head of Bomber Command, was intrigued by their suggestion that the camp be bombed to allow the inmates to escape, even though the 1,700-mile round trip from Stradishall air base in Suffolk to Auschwitz was longer than any mission the RAF had yet attempted. Charles Portal, chief of the air staff, however, rejected the idea as an "undesirable diversion and unlikely to achieve its purpose". During early 1942, Peirse was appointed commander of Allied air forces in South East Asia and the South West Pacific, a post known as ABDAIR and part of the short-lived American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDA). As the Dutch East Indies fell to Japanese forces, during February and March, ABDA was dissolved.

In March 1943 Peirse was appointed Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief RAF India and in November 1943 he was made Allied Air Commander in Chief, South-East Asia. but never received advancement to the Grand Cross level in the orders of knighthood which would normally have been forthcoming to an officer of his rank at the time. The reason for the abrupt termination of his career lay in his affair with Lady (Jessie) Auchinleck, the wife of his friend, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, the Commander in Chief India.

The affair became known to Mountbatten in early 1944, and he passed the information to the Chief of the RAF, Sir Charles Portal, hoping that Peirse would be recalled. The affair was common knowledge by September 1944 and Peirse was considered to be neglecting his duties. Mountbatten sent Peirse and Lady Auchinleck back to England on 28 November 1944, where they lived together at a Brighton hotel. Peirse had his marriage dissolved in 1945, and the Auchinlecks divorced in December 1945. Peirse and the former Lady Auchinleck married the following year.

Awards and decorations