Air Chief Marshal Percy Ronald Gardner Bernard, 5th Earl of Bandon, (30 August 1904 – 8 February 1979) was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat who served as a senior commander in the Royal Air Force in the mid-20th century. He was a squadron, station and group commander during the Second World War, and the fifth Commandant of the Royal Observer Corps after the war. He was awarded the American Distinguished Flying Cross and Bronze Star Medal in 1946. Early life Born in Gillingham, Kent, Bernard was the elder of twin boys by twenty minutes and the son of Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Percy Hamilton Bernard and Lettice Mina Paget, daughter of Captain Gerald Cecil Stewart Paget, son of Lord Alfred Paget, younger son of Henry Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey. On his father's side he was a great-grandson of the Right Reverend Charles Bernard, Bishop of Tuam, younger son of James Bernard, 2nd Earl of Bandon. His family resided in a house on the Theobald's Park estate in Hertfordshire where the eccentric horse breeder and owner Lady Meux had loaned his parents a house. In the summer of 1914 he and his twin brother were sent to St. Aubyns Preparatory School at Rottingdean, and four years later both boys entered the Orange dormitory at Wellington College where Percy was continually referred to as Bernard Minor incorrectly throughout his time at Wellington College. Having studied for and passing the entrance examination he entered the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell in Lincolnshire in 1922. Earldom In 1924, whilst still a cadet in B Squadron at Cranwell, Bernard succeeded his first cousin twice removed, James Bernard, 4th Earl of Bandon, as 5th Earl of Bandon. This was an Irish peerage and did not entitle him to a seat in the House of Lords. There was also little money attached to his inheritance and the main element, Castle Bernard outside Bandon and eighteen miles south west of Cork, was derelict after being burned down by the IRA four years earlier in 1920. The new Earl eventually received £123,000 (£4.7 million in today's terms) compensation for the damage to the family seat, which remains a ruin. The earl built a modern and modestly sized mansion alongside the castle ruins. Although the British Army and the Royal Navy have always had a significant number of peers within their ranks the new Earl of Bandon was almost unique within