William Earl Johns (5 February 1893 – 21 June 1968) was an English First World War pilot, and writer of adventure stories, usually written under the pen name Capt.

In 1913, while living in Swaffham, and working as a sanitary inspector, Johns enlisted in the Territorial Army as a trooper in the King's Own Royal Regiment (Norfolk Yeomanry).

After recovering, he was commissioned into the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in September 1917 as a temporary second lieutenant[3] and posted back to England for flight training.

He was then posted to No.25 Flying Training School at Thetford in Norfolk, closer to where his wife Maude and son Jack were living.

The aircraft of the time were very unreliable and he wrote off three planes in three days through engine failure – crashing into the sea, then the sand, and then through a fellow officer's back door.

Shooting one's own propeller off with a forward-mounted machine-gun with malfunctioning synchronisation was a fairly common accident, and it happened to Johns twice.

Casualties in the Independent Air Force were high and Johns' career flying strategic bombing missions was characteristically short, lasting only six weeks.

During a lengthy but one-sided battle, Johns' observer and rear-gunner, Second Lieutenant Alfred Edward Amey, was badly wounded and the aircraft shot down.

After the war, Johns remained in the Royal Air Force, apparently with the substantive rank of pilot officer.

While his apparent final RAF rank of flying officer was equivalent to an army (or RFC) lieutenant, captain is commonly used for the commander of a vessel or aircraft.

"[14] He was removed as editor at the beginning of 1939, probably as a direct result of a scathing editorial, strongly opposed to the policy of appeasement and highly critical of several Conservative statesmen of the time.

[15] Cockburn, however, feels that the government was concerned about being so "expertly attacked" on the lack of trained pilots by the editor of the most widely read aviation magazines in the world, including readers "in the RAF or connected with flying.

Even more advanced in his thinking, for that time, was the story Biggles Air Commodore (1937) which alludes to Japanese preparations for conquest of British colonies in the Far East.

Unusually among children's writers of the time, from 1935 Johns employed a working-class character as an equal member of the Biggles team – "Ginger" Habblethwaite, later Hebblethwaite, the son of a Northumberland miner.

By Jove, Biggles!, a biography of Johns, was published in 1981, written by Peter Berresford Ellis and Piers Williams.