Lieutenant Colonel John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon, 1st Baron Brabazon of Tara, GBE, MC, PC, HonFRPS (8 February 1884 – 17 May 1964) was an English aviation pioneer and Conservative politician.

He spent university holidays working for Charles Rolls as an unpaid mechanic, and became an apprentice at Darracq in Paris after leaving Cambridge.

He became the first resident Englishman to make an officially recognized aeroplane flight in England on 2 May 1909, at Shellbeach on the Isle of Sheppey with flights of 450 ft, 600 ft, and 1500 ft. On 4 May 1909, Moore-Brabazon was photographed outside the Royal Aero Club clubhouse Mussell Manor (now Muswell Manor Holiday Park) alongside the Wright Brothers, the Short Brothers, Charles Rolls, and many other early aviation pioneers.

In 1909 he sold the Bird of Passage to Arthur Edward George, who learned to fly in it at the Royal Aero Club's flying-ground at Shellbeach and bought a Short Brothers-built Wright biplane.

With Charles Rolls, he would later make the first ascent in a spherical gas balloon, which had been made in England by the Short brothers.

[citation needed] On 8 March 1910, Moore-Brabazon became the first person to qualify as a pilot in the United Kingdom and was awarded Royal Aero Club Aviator's Certificate number 1;[3] his car also bore the number-plate FLY 1.

[11] He was promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant-colonel in the RAF on 1 January 1919 in recognition of his wartime services, relinquishing his commission that year.

[16] In 1934 Moore-Brabazon fitted a gyro-rig to a Bembridge Redwing, an Isle of Wight class of yacht that allows and encourages the development of different rigs.

As the Minister of Transport he proposed the use of Airgraphs to reduce the weight and bulk of mails travelling between troops fighting in the Middle East and their families in the UK.

[2] Moore-Brabazon was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Brabazon of Tara, of Sandwich in the County of Kent, in April 1942.