Edward Maitland (RAF officer)

Air Commodore Edward Maitland Maitland CMG DSO AFC FRGS (21 February 1880 – 24 August 1921) was an early military aviator who served in the Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers, the Royal Flying Corps, the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Air Force.

Early life
Edward Maitland was the eldest son of Arthur Gee, a barrister from Cambridgeshire. The family name was changed to 'Maitland' in 1903. He was educated at Haileybury and Trinity College, Cambridge, leaving Trinity without taking his degree to enlist in the Army. He later took his degree in 1906, gaining a Third.

Military career
After gaining his commission in the Essex Regiment in 1900, Maitland served in the Orange River Colony during the Boer War.

On 19 August 1911 Maitland was attached to the Royal Engineers' Air Battalion and later that year he was appointed Officer Commanding No. 1 Company, Air Battalion. (No. 1 Company, Air Battalion was subsequently renamed No. 1 Squadron, RFC and then No. 1 Squadron RAF). In 1914 Maitland transferred to the Royal Naval Air Service, taking up the post of Officer Commanding the Captive Balloon Detachment. On 1 April 1918, with the merger of the Royal Naval Air Service and the Royal Flying Corps, Maitland transferred to the Royal Air Force. He was subsequently promoted to Air Commodore.

Accomplishments in ballooning
Maitland took up ballooning in 1908. On 18 November 1908, he flew with Mr C C Turner and Prof A E Gaudron in a balloon named the Mammoth from Crystal Palace in England to Meeki Derevi in Russia. The distance of 1,117 miles was covered in thirty-six and a half hours. From 1909 Maitland was attached to the Balloon School at Farnborough Airfield. In addition to ballooning, he also experimented with powered aircraft, but following a crash in which he broke both legs he restricted his activities to airships and balloons. He was awarded Royal Aero Club Airship Pilot certificte No.8 in September 1911 and in 1913 he carried out a parachute descent from the airship Delta. In 1919 Maitland was on board the Airship R34 when it completed the first transatlantic crossing.

On 24 August 1921 Maitland was killed when the R38 airship he was on board suffered structural failure and broke up in mid air over the Humber.