DFM preferred

DFM preferred

Notes there have been more awards of Distinguished Flying Cross than Distinguished Flying Medals. DFM is rarer award and is cherished. Comments on relative numbers of sergeants verses officers and numbers of DFMs awarded.

One newspaper cutting

This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

NMadgettHR190610-22

D.F.M. Preferred
There are more winners of the Distinguished Flying Cross – an officer’s decoration – during this war than of the Distinguished Flying Medal which is granted to other ranks. The latest available figures show 3145 D.F.C.s, with 269 bars, compared with 2236 D.F.Ms with only 37 bars.
The winners of either distinction may well be proud, but those who hold the D.F.M. -the rarer award - cherish it more than if they had got the D.F.C.
Relative Numbers
Whether the sergeants who make up so large a proportion of air crew nowadays get their due share of decorations could be judged only if we knew relative numbers of commissioned and non-commissioned flying men. In the early days of the war our air crews were mainly officers.
The Air Ministry says that relative numbers are “not available.” Yet those who read the casualty lists and see how often the Names of sergeants figure there may be pardoned for wondering whether it is not more difficult to gain the D.F.M. then the D.F.C.