[3] Sowrey was commissioned into the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve General Duties Branch on 24 August 1941 as a pilot officer on probation (emergency).
[3] Following the Second World War, Sowrey was granted a permanent commission in the Royal Air Force on 1 July 1946 as a flight lieutenant with seniority from 1 September 1945.
615 Squadron in 1951,[3] was awarded the Air Force Cross in the 1954 New Year Honours,[11] and attended RAF Staff College, Bracknell.
He served as Commanding Officer of RAF Abingdon, Oxfordshire, for two years from 1962, and spent 1965 at the Imperial Defence College,[8] receiving promotion to air commodore on 1 July 1965.
[16][19] In August 1975 he was appointed Director General of RAF Training,[20] then served as the UK Representative at the Permanent Military Deputies Group CENTO (Central Treaty Organisation) from 1977 to 1979,[8] originally with the acting rank of air marshal,[21] before being promoted to that rank on 1 January 1978.
[22] Sowrey was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the 1978 New Year Honours,[23] and retired from the Royal Air Force on 5 April 1980.
From 1981 to 1993 he was chairman, and afterwards president, of the Sussex Industrial Archaeology Society, and has been a member of the Board of Conservators of Ashdown Forest since 1984, and a trustee of both the Guild of Aviation Artists and Amberley Chalk Pits Museum since 1990.
[8] Sowrey was also a frequent entrant in the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run, driving a 1901 Darracq he bought in 1990 and restored himself.