Ernest John Elton, DCM, MM (25 December 1893 – 8 March 1958) was the highest scoring British non-commissioned flying ace during the First World War.
[1] He was born in Wimborne Workhouse, the son of Edith Jane Frampton, an unmarried domestic servant from Mannington, and was fostered by local midwife Hannah Elton and her husband Henry, subsequently adopting their surname as his own.
6 Squadron in France in June 1915, he assisted Captain Lanoe Hawker in developing a machine gun mount for the Bristol Scout.
His observer/gunner Sergeant Hagen had been wounded in the leg, so Elton dragged him out of the aircraft and into a shell hole, then crawled and ran 200 yards to the Allied lines to fetch help.
[4] His string culminated in a triple victory on 29 March 1918, when he destroyed three German two-seater reconnaissance planes in ten minutes.