Captain John Herbert Hedley (19 July 1887 – 1 April 1977) was a World War I British flying ace credited with eleven aerial victories.

[3][4] However, Ralph Hedley (1863–1901) died at age 38, shortly after the 1901 census, his death registered at Tynemouth, Northumberland in the second quarter of the year.

[6] At the time of the 1911 census, John Hedley was employed as an accountant's clerk and resided with his widowed mother and two younger brothers in North Shields.

[13] On 27 July 1915, he was appointed temporary Captain in the Army Cyclist Corps, from the 26th (Service) Battalion (3rd Tyneside Irish) of the Northumberland Fusiliers.

[15] According to author Norman Franks, John Herbert Hedley served with the Lincolnshire Regiment (17th Labour Company) before transfer to the Royal Flying Corps General List and was not promoted to temporary Captain until 13 April 1917.

[22] On 27 March 1918, Captains John Herbert Hedley and Robert Kirby Kirkman in Bristol F.2b (B1156) were shot down by Leutnant Karl Gallwitz of Jasta 2.

[23] Captain Hedley spent most of the rest of the year in a German prisoner of war camp, and was repatriated from Germany on 13 December 1918.

[25][26] John Hedley apparently was very successful on the lecture circuit in 1920s and early 1930s, regaling American crowds with the story of his near-death experiences in (and out) of the cockpit that had earned him his nickname, "The Luckiest Man Alive.

[11][23] Hedley thrilled a variety of audiences as he recounted his military experiences, from his initial service with the British Army in 1914 to his time as a prisoner of war until late 1918.

The highlight of his lecture was almost always his account of being thrown out of the plane three miles above the earth, falling two or three hundred feet, and landing back on the tail of his aircraft.

[16] John Hedley's incredible tale was included among the anecdotes in the 1929 book Luck: Your Silent Partner by Lothrop Stoddard.

In 2009, the story of Hedley's bizarre mishap in 1918 was included in the book Strange But True, America: Weird Tales from All 50 States.

[22] In addition, John Herbert Hedley and his incredible tale were the subject of the 2011 YouTube video The Luckiest Man Alive!