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Air Commodore Duncan le Geyt Pitcher, (31 August 1877 – 1 September 1944) was an infantry and cavalry officer in the British Indian Army. During the First World War he served in the Royal Flying Corps and in his later years became a senior commander in the Royal Air Force.
Pitcher was commissioned into the British Army as a second lieutenant in The South Wales Borderers on 16 February 1898, and promoted to lieutenant on 10 January 1900.
Pitcher attended the Central Flying School as a pilot under training in 1913 and once he had completed his course, he remained on the staff until the summer of 1914 when he was attached to No 4. Squadron RFC. He returned to the Central Flying School, probably in late 1914 and was appointed Officer In-charge of Transport. Immediately following the New Year of 1915, Pitcher took up instructional duties before being appointed a squadron commander at the Central Flying School in late January. In April 1915 he was appointed Assistant Commandant at the Central Flying School in which capacity he served until mid November 1915. Pitcher then spent around a month as a Royal Flying Corps wing commander before returning to the Central Flying School as its Commandant when Godfrey Paine returned to naval duties at RAF Cranwell.
The 1 April 1916 saw Pitcher promoted and appointed Brigadier-General Commanding the I Brigade. In 1915 he recommended Archibald Low in WWI for work on the radio control systems for unmanned ‘Aerial Target' aircraft and then in 1918, for the remote control Distance Control Boats."The Dawn of the Drone" Steve Mills 2019 Casemate Publishers. page 221
In 1921 Duncan was the best man at his old RFC colleague Robert Loraine’s wedding."The Life of Robert Loraine: The Stage, the Sky, and George Bernard Shaw” Lanayre D. Liggera page 172 Loraine had a great deal in common with Reginald Denny, a younger British actor/airman. They had been in a West End production together in 1902 in London,"The Dawn of the Drone"" Steve Mills 2019 Casemate Publishers. page 219 they were both veterans of the RFC (and its successor, the Royal Air Force) and were both flying and making films in Hollywood in the 1930s. Each of them visited their close relatives in the same area of London. Loraine knew both Duncan, his best man, the Air-Commodore who had been in charge of the RFC radio control weapons that led to the first powered military drone aircraft The Queen Bee and Denny, a fellow actor who became interested in radio controlled aircraft and started the first US military drone work at the start of WWII.
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