Sydney "Timbertoes" Carlin, MC, DFC, DCM (1889 – 9 May 1941) was a British flying ace of the First World War, despite having previously lost a leg during the Battle of the Somme.
Just over a year after the British entry into the First World War, Carlin re-enlisted on 8 August 1915; the army refunded half (£9) of the money he had bought himself out with in 1909.
Serving in Belgium with the 18th Royal Hussars, he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal on 5 August 1915, and was later commissioned as a second lieutenant in September 1915.
[2] Carlin lost a leg in the Battle of Longueval/Delville Wood, on the Somme in 1916, while commanding a Royal Engineers Field Company section holding a trench against repeated German counter-attacks.
On 21 September Carlin was shot down over Hantay by Unteroffizier Siegfried Westphal of Jasta 29 and held as a prisoner of war.
Carlin relinquished his commission on "account of ill-health contracted on active service" on 7 August 1919,[7] and retained the rank of lieutenant.
[10] On re-enlistment to the RAF, Carlin was graded as a probationary pilot officer on 27 July 1940, almost eleven months after the outbreak of the Second World War.