Geoffrey D. Stephenson

Geoffrey D. Stephenson, was a Royal Air Force Air Commodore, and former commandant of the Royal Air Force Central Fighter Establishment, who was killed in an air crash on 8 November 1954 while on a tour of the United States.

Background

The 44-year-old pilot had flown several thousand hours in fighter aircraft, both conventional and jet, during his 20-year RAF career. He had piloted virtually every type of British jet fighter including Meteors, Venoms, Hunters and Swifts, as well as USAF F-86s. He was considered one of the most experienced and capable fighter pilots in the RAF. Commodore Stephenson was married and father of three children.

The crash

Air Commodore Stephenson headed a six-man team from the central fighter establishment, RAF, whose headquarters are at West Raynham-Near-Fakenham. They were at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, home of the Air Proving Ground Center, on an exchange tour.

On 8 November 1954, Commodore Stephenson was flying a USAF F-100A-10-NA Super Sabre, 53-1534, near Auxiliary Field 2 of Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. He was flying at 13,000 feet as he joins formation with another F-100, flown by Capt. Lonnie R. Moore, jet ace of the Korean campaign, when his fighter dropped into a steep spiral, impacting at ~1414 hrs. in a pine forest on the Eglin Reservation, one mile NE of the runway of Pierce Field, Auxiliary Fld. 2.

Funeral

Memorial services were held at 0900 hrs. at the Eglin Base chapel on 10 November 1954, conducted by the Rev. Johnson H. Pace of St. Simons on the Sound church, Fort Walton Beach, Florida, and attended by Air Vice Marshall R. L. R. Atcherly, chief of the Chief Joint British Services Mission to the United States, who arrived from Washington on the night of 9 November; Major General Patrick W Timberlake, commander of the Air Proving Ground Command; Brig. Gen. Daniel S. Campbell, deputy commander of the APGC; six Royal Air Force officers who were touring the U.S. with the commodore; and key staff officers of the APGC. At 1200 hrs., the party of Air Commodore Stephenson, accompanied by 30 RAF and USAF officers, fly to Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama, for interment at the Royal Air Force plot there. British armed forces traditionally bury their dead where they fall. There has been an RAF squad at Maxwell since World War II.