Robert Blucke

Air Vice Marshal Robert Stewart Blucke, (22 June 1897 – 2 October 1988) was a Royal Air Force officer who became Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief at RAF Transport Command in 1952.

RAF career Blucke was commissioned into the 3rd Battalion the Dorsetshire Regiment in 1915 during the First World War and transferred to No. 63 Squadron on formation of the Royal Air Force in April 1918. He became a Signals Officer at the Experimental Section of the Royal Aircraft Establishment in January 1934 and in February 1935 he flew a Handley Page Heyford over Stowe Nine Churches becoming the first pilot to be detected by radar. He served in the Second World War as Officer Commanding the Blind Approach Training and Development Unit and then as Officer Commanding the Wireless Investigation Development Unit before joining the Directorate of Flying Training at the Air Ministry in November 1940. before becoming Station Commander at RAF Ludford Magna in 1943 and Air Officer Commanding No. 1 (Bomber) Group in 1945. where, on 10 February 1968, 24 year old window cleaner David Gilbert broke into his house, and assaulted police officer Peter Gundry. Gilbert was sentenced to three years in prison in March 1968.

His son David also pursued a career with the Royal Air Force, becoming a Group Captain and station commander of RAF Coningsby. He died in the 1974 Norfolk mid-air collision, when the Phantom jet he was piloting made contact with a crop-spraying aircraft.