Air Marshal John Hugh Thompson, (18 September 1947 – 15 March 2023) was a British

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...

officer who became Head of the British Defence Staff in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

from 2000 until his retirement in 2002.

RAF career

Educated at Fielding High School in

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

, Thompson joined the Royal Air Force in 1970.''

Who's Who A Who's Who (or Who Is Who) is a reference work consisting of biographical entries of notable people in a particular field. The oldest and best-known is the annual publication ''Who's Who (UK), Who's Who'', a reference work on contemporary promin ...

2010'',

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, 2010, He became Station Commander at

RAF Wittering Royal Air Force Wittering or more simply RAF Wittering is a Royal Air Force station within the unitary authority area of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire and the unitary authority area of North Northamptonshire. Although Stamford in Lincolnshire ...

in 1988, Senior Air Staff Officer at RAF Rheindahlen in 1993 and an assistant to the

High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina The High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, together with the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was created in 1995 immediately after the signing of the Dayton Agreement which ended the 1992 to 1995 Bos ...

in 1996. He went on to be Commandant of the

Royal Air Force College Cranwell The Royal Air Force College (RAFC) is the Royal Air Force academy which provides initial training to all RAF personnel who are preparing to become commissioned officers. The College also provides initial training to aircrew cadets and is resp ...

in 1997 and Head of the British Defence Staff and Defence

Attaché In diplomacy, an attaché () is a person who is assigned ("to be attached") to the diplomatic or administrative staff of a higher placed person or another service or agency. Although a loanword from French, in English the word is not modified ac ...

in 2000 before retiring in 2002. Thompson died on 15 March 2023, at the age of 75.John Thompson death notice
The Telegraph

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, John 1947 births 2023 deaths 20th-century Royal Air Force personnel 21st-century Royal Air Force personnel British air attachés Commandants of the Royal Air Force College Cranwell Companions of the Order of the Bath Royal Air Force air marshals Military personnel of the Bosnian War