John Babington (Royal Navy officer)

John Herbert Babington, was a British teacher and Royal Navy officer who was awarded the George Cross for "great gallantry and undaunted devotion to duty" in defusing bombs during World War II.

George Cross

Following a Luftwaffe air raid on the Royal Navy shore establishment at Chatham Dockyard Babington defused a bomb which had fallen that was fitted with an anti-withdrawal device. Babington was attached to in London.

Citation

Notice of Babington's George Cross appeared in the London Gazette on 27 December 1940.

Later war career

He was later appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire for gallantry in 1944.

Postwar career

Babington became the Headmaster at the Royal Hospital School and the Ashlyns School, Berkhamsted, the first co-educational bilateral school in Hertfordshire. He was headmaster of Diss Grammar School in Norfolk, England, from 1947 to 1951.