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Auction: 23003 - Orders, Decorations and Medals
Lot: 305

The 1960 K.B.E. group of six awarded to Air Vice-Marshal Sir C. A. Rumball, Royal Air Force,

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Knight Commander's (K.B.E.) set of Insignia, comprising neck Badge and breast Star, silver-gilt and enamel; General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Palestine, with M.I.D. oak leaf (F/L. C. A. Rumball. R.A.F.); 1939-1945 Star; Africa Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; Coronation 1953, the campaign medals mounted as worn very fine (7)

K.B.E. London Gazette 11 June 1960.

M.I.D. London Gazette 23 July 1937.

Campion Aubrey Rumball was born on the 26 December 1904 and was educated at Dulwich College and Guy's Hospital, where he began to qualify as a dentist. After two years' house appointments at Guy's he joined the Royal Air Force because he was convinced that Hitler's increasing power must lead to war. He spent his first few years in the service mainly in the Middle East, where he developed an interest in tropical medicine.

However during an appointment at the Flying Training School at Abu-Sueir in Egypt he realised that the aerial warfare he had long foreseen would result in great phsychological strains on aircrew, particularly when they were likely to be fighting at a disadvantage in numbers and equipment. He therefore studied for a year at the Maudsley and took the Doctorate of Phsychological Medicine in 1939, ready for the outbreak of war. His work among fighter pilots made a substantial contribution to the preservation of our limited resources; later, during the bomber offensive, which made such heavy and sustained demands on the aircrews, he played a part in achieving a rational and humane approach to the difficult problem of deciding the amount of stress a resolute man might be expected to withstand.

Rumball served with RAF Hospitals 1,2, and 5, serving in France and the Middle East.

After the Second World War he devoted his attention to clinical medicine, seeking to influence his juniors to his ideas that an Air Force physician should be concerned with a "health service" rather than a "sickness service"; that he should be interested in the causes of a disease in order to prevent it as much as in how to treat it; and that, so far as flying is concerned, the policy should be to conserve the experienced rather than to play medically safe by disqualifying any but the demonstrably normal. He made particular contributions to the treatment of spontaneous pheumothorax and to the problems of essential hypertension and coronary artery thrombosis in aviators.

Rumball's influence spread far beyond the Royal Air Force. He advised Commonwealth Air Forces, Commonwealth civil aviation bodies, the Israeli Air Force, and, at home, the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the British Airline Pilots' Association. Mentioned in despatches in 1936, and appointed O.B.E. in 1945 and C.B.E. in 1954. Rumball became Honorary Physician to the King in 1948 and then to Her Majesty the Queen on her accession to the throne. He was elected F.R.C.P. in 1952 and in 1956 was awarded the Lady Cade gold Medal of the Royal College of Surgeons for outstanding contributions to medicine in the Royal Air Force.

Rumball died on the 14 December 1975 at St.Leonard's, aged 70.

Sold together with the following archive:

(i)
Cap badge and Collar Insignia, single epaulette with E.II.R. cypher, E.II.R. cypher for an epaulette, Badge for Honorary Physician to the Queen, silver-gilt and enamel.

(vi)
Corresponding set of miniatures.

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Estimate
£2,000 to £2,500

Starting price
£1600