Barry Thornton

Air Marshal Sir Barry Michael Thornton, KCB, CEng, FIMechE, FCMI, FRAeS is a British retired officer who was a senior commander in the Royal Air Force.

For the two Australian sportsmen of the same name, see Barry Thornton (cricketer) and Barry Thornton (footballer).

Sir Barry Michael Thornton
Air Marshal Sir Barry Thornton in March 2007
AllegianceUnited Kingdom
Service/branchRoyal Air Force
Years of service1976–2009
RankAir Marshal
Commands heldAir Member for Material (2007–09)
Personnel and Training Command (2006–07)
Air Member for Logistics (2004–06)
Battles/warsGulf War
AwardsKnight Commander of the Order of the Bath

Personal life

Thornton was educated at Baines Grammar School and the University of Nottingham.

He is married to Delia Thornton, a trained midwife and family law barrister.[1] The couple has two sons, Oliver and William.[2]

Military career

Thornton joined the Royal Air Force in 1976.[3] He was given command of the Engineering and Supply Wing at RAF Honington in 1988 and subsequently deployed to Tabuk Air Base during the Gulf War.[3] In 1991 he took command of the RAF's nuclear weapon inspection team.[3] Then in 1997 he joined the Defence Procurement Agency as the Director of Maritime Projects with responsibility for the Merlin and Nimrod programmes.[3] In 2000 he became Controller of Aircraft on the Air Force Board and in 2003 he was made Director General Equipment Support (Air) and then Director General Logistics (Strike) at the Defence Logistics Organisation.[3] He became the last Commander in Chief Personnel and Training Command in January 2006 serving until April 2007 when the command was merged into Air Command: he then took up the post of Chief of Defence Material (Air) at Defence Equipment & Support.[4] He retired in May 2009.[5]

gollark: Let us all configure our IDEs to blur text annoyingly.
gollark: Because they write less code?
gollark: As I like to say, being able to instantly see "ah, a for loop" and know what a for loop does instead of seeing `map` and `filter` and whatnot isn't the same as actually understanding the code, and `filter`/`map` allow you to focus on the actual problem instead of copy-pasting for loops.
gollark: "I like being able to look at code and see for loops but have no idea what's going on at a high level"
gollark: Why would you *like* C for **scripting**?!

References
  1. "Delia Thornton". St Johns Chambers.
  2. "Lady Delia Thornton – Barrister–at-Law". Fly2Help. Archived from the original on 8 September 2014.
  3. Air Marshal Barry Thornton CB RAF Ministry of Defence
  4. Air of Authority – A History of RAF Organisation – Air Council Appointments 2 Archived 10 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  5. Ministry of Defence website Archived 15 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine
Military offices
Preceded by
Post re-activated		 Air Member for Logistics
2004–2006		 Succeeded by
David Rennison
Preceded by
Sir Joe French		 Air Member for Personnel
2006–2007		 Succeeded by
Stephen Dalton
Commander-in-Chief Personnel and Training Command
2006–2007		 Command disestablished
New title
Post established
 Chief of Material (Air)
2007–2009		 Succeeded by
Kevin Leeson


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