RAF chief survived IRA assassin’s hit
Air Chief Marshal Sir Peter Terry Former RAF Commander and Governor of Gibraltar BORN OCTOBER 18, 1926 - DIED DECEMBER 19, 2017, AGED 91
IN 1988, when Sir Peter Terry was the governor of Gibraltar, he authorised an operation that resulted in the shooting of three members of the IRA – two years later they staged a revenge attack, which Sir Peter survived.
He had become Gibraltar’s governor in 1985 and two years later it emerged that the IRA was planning an attack on the territory. In Operation Flavius, three members were followed into Gibraltar in March 1988 and when their car was wrongly thought to be harbouring a bomb the men were shot and killed.
The operation caused controversy within Margaret Thatcher’s government and Sir Geoffrey Howe, the then foreign secretary, had to issue a statement to the Commons.
On September 18, 1990 a gunman fired 20 shots through the window of Terry’s home in Staffordshire. He was hit nine times and one bullet stopped just short of penetrating his brain. Terry was also shot in the side and the leg and his wife Betty suffered eye injuries.
Peter David George Terry was born in Ramsgate and educated at Chatham House Grammar School. He entered the RAF in 1944 and in 1948 he joined one of the Regiment’s Light Anti-Aircraft Artillery squadrons in Germany.
Five years later he started training as a pilot and joined No 79 Squadron, later enrolling in the pilot attack instructor’s course, in which he came top. He was awarded the Leconfield Trophy and a Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air. Terry was promoted to group captain and was in charge of the RAF base at El Adem, Libya, during Colonel Gaddafi’s coup in 1969.
A decade later he became commander-in-chief of the Royal Air Force in Germany, the 2nd Allied Tactical Air Force in Nato, and deputy commander in chief of Allied Forces Central Europe. He was made air chief marshal in 1981. He also served as deputy supreme allied commander Europe at Nato.
Terry married Betty Thompson in 1946. He is survived by his wife, a daughter and son. His elder son David predeceased him.