Maurice Buckley (RNZAF officer)

Maurice Buckley CBE (3 August 1895 – 3 November 1956) was a New Zealand aviator and military leader who served with the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) during the Second World War.

Born in Seacliff in the South Island, Buckley joined the New Zealand Expeditionary Force on the outbreak of the First World War. He served with the Canterbury Mounted Rifles but then transferred to the Royal Naval Air Service in mid-1916. After training as a pilot, he served in the Eastern Mediterranean before taking ill with malaria. After the war he worked in civil aviation in New Zealand until in 1926 he joined what became the RNZAF. On the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, he was in England in charge of RNZAF personnel tasked with ferrying newly purchased Vickers Wellington medium bombers back to New Zealand. He was appointed commander of No. 75 Squadron leading it until late 1940. He subsequently became the commander at the RAF station at Feltwell. Returning to New Zealand in late 1941, he held a series of local and overseas command and staff posts until his eventual retirement from the RNZAF as an air commodore in 1950. He died in Wellington on 3 November 1956, aged 61.