John De Lacy Wooldridge, DSO, DFC & Bar, DFM (18 July 1919 – 27 October 1958) was a Royal Air Force officer and bomber pilot, and a British film composer.
105 Squadron, which specialised in low level precision daylight bombing using de Havilland Mosquito aircraft.
It would be impossible to forget ... the sensation of looking back over enemy territory and seeing your formation behind you, wing-tip to wing-tip, their racing shadows moving only a few feet below them across the earth's surface; or that feeling of sudden exhilaration when the target was definitely located and the whole pack were following you on to it with their bomb doors open, while people below scattered in every direction and the long streams of flak came swinging up; or the sudden jerk of consternation of the German soldiers lounging on the coast, their moment of indecision, and then their mad scramble for the guns; or the memory of racing across The Hague at midday on a bright spring morning, while the Dutchmen below hurled their hats in the air and beat each other on the back.
Brown as navigator, set a new record for the Atlantic crossing from Goose Bay, Labrador to the United Kingdom, of 5 hours, 46 minutes.
[8] His first professionally performed work was the symphonic poem A Solemn Hymn for Victory, premiered by Artur Rodzinski and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on 30 Nov. 1944.
[10][11] Wooldridge also contributed the score and co-wrote the screenplay to the 1953 film based on his own story, Appointment in London featuring Dirk Bogarde as a Wing commander.