Thomas Prickett

Air Chief Marshal Sir Thomas Öther Prickett, (31 July 1913 – 23 January 2010) was a Royal Air Force bomber pilot in the Second World War and a senior commander in the 1950s and 1960s. He was chief of staff to the air commander, Air Marshal Denis Barnett, for Operation Musketeer (the Anglo-French-Israeli plan for the invasion of Egypt to capture the Suez Canal during the Suez Crisis).

RAF career Educated at Haileybury, Prickett initially worked on sugar estates in India before deciding to join the Royal Air Force in 1937. He served in the Second World War initially as a pilot with No. 148 Squadron flying Wellington bombers and latterly as a flight commander with No. 103 Squadron flying Lancaster bombers.

After the war he was made Station Commander at RAF Tangmere before joining the Air Staff at Headquarters Middle East Air Force in 1951 and then becoming Station Commander at RAF Jever in Germany in 1954. His final appointments were as Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Transport Command (subsequently renamed Support Command) in 1967 and as Air Member for Supply and Organisation in 1968 before he retired in 1970.