Group Captain Thomas Gilbert "Hamish" Mahaddie, DSO, DFC, AFC & Bar, FRAeS (19 March 1911 – 16 January 1997) was a Scotsman who served in the Royal Air Force (RAF).

At the end of his second combat tour he was brought onto Air Vice Marshal Don Bennett's Headquarter Staff in the position of "Group Training Inspector".

He left school at the age of 13 and got a job working for an Edinburgh grocer, but soon became interested in the possibility of being an apprentice craftsman for the fledgling Royal Air Force.

77 Squadron's Whitleys included reconnaissance flights, leaflet "raids" over Germany and attacks on easily reached coastal targets.

With only 30 percent of crews reaching the end of their tours alive after 30 sorties, the Pathfinder Force was asking for a marked commitment from those who joined them.

[5] Mahaddie's second tour of operations began on the night of 17/18 August 1942, flying the huge four-engined Stirling in a raid against Flensburg.

[13] The group began true Pathfinder raids, dropping marking flares for the main bomber force, in October 1942.

The various citations included phrases such as, "consistently attacked heavily defended targets with coolness and determination often in adverse weather", "powers of leadership of a very high order", and, "unflagging enthusiasm has had an inspiring effect on his comrades".

After releasing his target marking flares, the cloud cover that had been providing some protection that night broke up, and his aircraft was hit with flak.

The mid-upper gunner, wireless operator and bomb aimer were all wounded, most of the compasses and navigational equipment were destroyed and the aileron controls were severed.

Meanwhile, using star sightings and the plane's astro-compass, navigator "Tommy" Thompson was able to provide Mahaddie with a bearing back to base, if he could control the aircraft.

[8] Angered over being promoted out of the squadron, he stated later he had been resentful toward Bennett for sometime afterwards, all the more so as on their next mission with their new skipper the aircraft was lost and the entire crew killed.

[5] As "Group Training Inspector" he regularly visited operational squadrons, ostensibly to lecture aircrews on the changing tactics and techniques employed by the Pathfinders.

He had to fly straight and level over the target area till the bomb aimer called "bombs gone", then hold his line of flight another several seconds for the automatic photoflash and the aiming point picture taken by the night camera, all completed at the one point in the trip where search lights and antiaircraft fire were the most intense.

[5] In Mahaddie's talks he stressed the importance of navigation to reach the target, the use of special equipment such as Gee, H2S and Oboe, and the methods being used to confuse and confound the air defenses over Germany.

Doolittle returned the friendship, referring to Mahaddie as "Scotty", but never wavered from his commitment to the American concept of high altitude, precision, daylight bombing.

[8] Mahaddie's final assignment during the war came 24 July 1944 when he was made Officer Commanding at RAF Warboys, the airfield that was home for the Pathfinder Force Training Unit.

[5][16] He took over the command from Group Captain J. H. Searby, a pilot whom Mahaddie had earlier recruited to the Pathfinder Force, famous for being the Master Bomber on the Peenemünde raid.

[18] For the film's special weapons sequence he asked Ken Wallis, a former RAF Wing Commander and the designer of an autogyro, to demonstrate his machine for the movie's producer.

Said Wallis "The next thing I knew Group Captain Hamish Mahaddie, the famous RAF Pathfinder chap, who was the aviation consultant for EON Productions, was on the phone asking me to bring one of my Autogyros down to Pinewood Studios.

Speaking with Wallis afterwards, Mahaddie described his successful audition: "You started the engine up and it made a terrible noise that echoed round all the buildings.

In the fall of 1965 Fisz met with Mahaddie to ask if he could find aircraft to form an "RAF" and "Luftwaffe" that would be convincing on the screen.

[21] Mahaddie's big coup was discovering that the Spanish Air Force was still using licence built Messerschmitt 109 fighters as trainers and Heinkel 111 bombers as transports, ironically both now powered using Rolls-Royce engines.

Among his other consulting projects, Mahaddie worked on the television series Pathfinders, the movies The Heroes of Telemark (1965), Patton (1970), A Bridge Too Far (1977) and Soldier of Orange (1977).

[18] Late in life Mahaddie traveled the world giving a talk he called "The Bombing Years" about the air war in Europe.

He presented at such venues as the Royal Aeronautical Society, RAF Association meetings, the Smithsonian, the Air Force Academy, the war colleges and at veteran reunions.

In 1990 he traveled from England to Nanton, Alberta to speak at the ceremonial dedication of the Ian Bazalgette Memorial Lancaster at the Bomber Command Museum of Canada.

Upon his arrival at Nanton, Hamish's well deserved reputation as an out-going character and gentleman soon became apparent as the 79-year-old quickly became friends with all, particularly a number of the ladies, who he insisted must have been, "child brides."

During his speech Hamish recalled how Squadron Leader Bazalgette had, "plagued him" on a weekly basis with letters and telephone calls, "begging" to be put back on operations with the Pathfinder Force, "which I have always regretted doing, because sadly he was killed on the occasion when he won his V.C."

As he reached the end of his speech, Hamish lamented the deaths of so many thousands of the Pathfinders that he had personally recruited, fine young men much like Ian Bazalgette.