Irving Stanley Smith CBE, DFC & Bar (21 May 1917 – 16 February 2000) was a New Zealand flying ace of the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the Second World War.

Having gained a permanent commission in the RAF, he held a series of flying and administrative posts in the postwar period until his retirement in 1966.

He was working as an apprentice coachwork painter in Auckland when he was accepted for a short service commission in the Royal New Zealand Air Force in January 1939.

151 Squadron was heavily engaged, often over the Thames Estuary, intercepting incoming bombing raids mounted by the Luftwaffe.

A week later during a dogfight, he and his wingman forced the pilot of a Bf 109 into a mistake that saw the German aircraft crash into the ground.

At this stage, the squadron had been operating from Stapleford for a week and from here on 31 August Smith flew four sorties; on the first of these he destroyed a Dornier Do 17 medium bomber and on another damaged a second Do 17.

[5] Many experienced pilots had been lost in the previous weeks and these were replaced with volunteers from Fairey Battle squadrons, with Smith and his fellow veterans helping bring them up to operational status.

On 2 October, Smith, while flying a training sortie with his section, intercepted a He 111 that had just bombed the Rolls-Royce factory at Derby.

[3][5][Note 1] By November, the Luftwaffe had significantly increased its nighttime bombing raids and in response, a number of squadrons, including No.

It converted to the Boulton Paul Defiant fighter but in addition to its two flights of this type retained one, commanded by Smith, of Hurricanes.

[7] The same day, while flying a Defiant, he led the squadron in a patrol, providing cover for a convoy making its way along the Norfolk coast.

[7] In April, the squadron stood down from operations for a time while converting to the de Havilland Mosquito heavy fighter but was back in action again by the end of the following month.

[9] The citation for the bar read: One night in February, 1942, this officer accomplished excellent work during an engagement with hostile aircraft which attempted to attack a convoy.

488 Squadron in September but this was rescinded when Group Captain Basil Embry, who thought highly of Smith, requested his services for a training role at No.

At the time, it was switching from daylight operations to a nighttime intruder role and many of its subsequent missions involved attacking enemy airfields in occupied France and Holland.

Smith led seven Mosquitos of his squadron, which was the first to attack the prison; they successfully breached the east and north walls with bombs.

At night it continued to target the Luftwaffe airfields in France, Belgium and Holland, and in the six weeks prior to D-Day, it mounted 30 such missions, without losing any aircraft.

[16] On the night of 5 June, just prior to D-Day, several raids were mounted on targets in Caen and Saint-Lô and in the days afterwards it sought to destroy German forces moving to the Allied beachhead established at Normandy.

[17] Smith also led a sortie, requested by operatives of the Special Air Service working covertly in occupied France, on 11 June to Châtellerault where he and two other Mosquitos bombed trains transporting petrol.

He remained in this role until the conclusion of the war,[20] ending the conflict credited with the destruction of eight German aircraft, one probably destroyed and four damaged.

By the middle of the year he had taken a wing commander (flying) role at Tangmere and a few months later assumed a similar appointment at Wattisham.

Returning to the United Kingdom in 1958, he was promoted to group captain that August and took command of the RAF station at Jever, in Germany.

He was predeceased by his wife, Joan née Debenham, a former officer in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force who he had married in London in November 1942, and one of his two daughters.

[9][25] His son, Rupert Smith, was a general in the British Army who served as deputy supreme commander of Allied Forces Europe at NATO headquarters.