AVIATION Biography Military

Sidney Cotton was a superb pilot, a talented inventor, a businessman who was decidedly shady – and a spy.

Born in Queensland, he served as a pilot in World War I, and over the next twenty years did everything from delivering mail in Newfoundland to entering the world of aerial reconnaissance on behalf of MI6, making numerous spy flights over Germany and Italy.

For a time he had the direct support of Churchill, but fell out with the authorities because of his unorthodox style – which included accepting money to fly a businessman out of Paris as it fell . . .

He ran guns in India after partition, and led the high life – but in the end died bankrupt after oil exploration in Saudi Arabia went wrong.

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