Air Commodore

Air Commodore

Air commodore is an air-officer rank which originated in and continues to be used by the Royal Air Force...

 Reginald Newham Waite CB

Order of the Bath

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...

 CBE

Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 RAF (30 June 1901 – 7 May 1975) was a senior officer in the Royal Air Force

Royal Air Force

The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

 during the middle of the 20th century.

Waite joined the RAF in 1920, receiving his initial instruction as a flight cadet at the RAF College Cranwell in Lincolnshire.

In 1948, whilst Waite was Head of Disbandment at the headquarters of the Allied Control Commission, he suggested that the Berlin Blockade

Berlin Blockade

The Berlin Blockade was one of the first major international crises of the Cold War and the first resulting in casualties. During the multinational occupation of post-World War II Germany, the Soviet Union blocked the Western Allies' railway and road access to the sectors of Berlin under Allied...

could be broken by an airlift. Subsequently, the British and Americans started a joint operation to circumvent the Russian blockade of all overland routes.