Air Vice Marshal Harold Arthur Cooper "Birdie" Bird-Wilson, CBE, DSO, DFC & Bar, AFC & Bar (20 November 1919 – 27 December 2000) was a senior Royal Air Force officer, and a flying ace of the Second World War.

[1] His father was a tea-planter in Bengal, and his parents remained in India, sending Bird-Wilson to boarding school.

[2] Ten weeks later, he was flying a BA Swallow out of RAF Cranwell when he crashed in bad weather.

[2] Bird-Wilson subsequently became a member of the Guinea Pig Club, composed of McIndoe's former patients.

[4] In April 1940 Bird-Wilson was back on active service, in time to fly Hurricanes for the British retreat from France in the following weeks.

[2] As an already accomplished pilot, he was one of the elite selected for one of Cuthbert Orde's iconic charcoal portraits, which was drawn on 11 September 1940.

On the morning of 24 September, flying Hurricane P3878 near Chatham,[5] he became the 40th kill of Luftwaffe ace Adolf Galland of JG 26.

66 Squadron RAF as they led fighter escorts for bombing raids to the northern European coast, moving on to lead Wings in 1943.

[2] For many years after the war Bird-Wilson held a variety of posts in the Central Flying Establishment.