Frank McNamara was born in Rushworth, Victoria, on 4 April 1894, completed his secondary schooling in Shepparton and studied teaching at the Teachers Training College and the University of Melbourne.
In 1912, McNamara was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Brighton Rifles, serving in a succession of Army postings until August 1915. McNamara was then selected to attend the Point Cook Flying School, graduating as a pilot in October that year.
In January 1916, Lieutenant McNamara sailed to Egypt as the Adjutant of No. 1 Squadron, Australian Flying Corps.
On 20 March 1917, McNamara was flying a single-seat Martinsyde aircraft with No. 1 Squadron, near Gaza in Palestine. Although he was badly wounded in the thigh, he landed to rescue a fellow Australian pilot, Captain Douglas Rutherford, whose aircraft had been shot down behind enemy lines.
Rutherford climbed aboard the wing of McNamara’s aircraft, but because of McNamara’s wound and with Rutherford’s weight on the wing, the Martinsyde overbalanced and crashed in a gully on take-off. The two men set fire to it, got Rutherford’s aircraft, a two-seat B.E.2, running, and with McNamara at the controls they took off, having returned fire against Turkish cavalry who had reached the scene. Despite heavy blood loss, McNamara flew Rutherford’s aircraft about 70 miles back to El Arish (now an Egyptian port city).
McNamara was awarded the Victoria Cross for his valour, with this being gazetted on 8 June 1917.
Because his wound prevented further flying, he was invalided to Australia and his appointment with the Australian Flying Corps ended in January 1918, but he was reappointed in September and became an aviation instructor.
In 1921 McNamara transferred to the newly established Royal Australian Air Force as a Flight Lieutenant. He held a number of senior RAAF appointments between the wars and spent two years on exchange with the RAF in the mid-1920s.
At the beginning of the Second World War, McNamara was promoted to Air Commodore and, in 1942, Air Vice-Marshal.
Between 1942 and 1945 he served as Air Officer Commanding British Forces in Aden before returning to London as the RAAF’s representative at Britain’s Ministry of Defence. In July 1946 he became Director of Education at the headquarters of the British Occupation Administration in Germany.
McNamara retired in 1946 and died in England on 2 November 1961, aged 67.
Air Vice-Marshal McNamara’s Victoria Cross is held by the RAF Museum, Hendon, London, United Kingdom.
Story courtesy of Jim Campbell
