Joe Ciliberti, President, Malta Aviation Society, writes:

The passing away of Wing Commander Brian Essex, AFC, MBE, RAF (Retired) on August 8, 2017, has left a big void in the Maltese-British community.

Brian was the ‘voice’ of the Malta International Airshow for 20 of the past 24 years and any of the thousands of visitors to the air show will well remember his calm and soothing voice as he ran the commentary.  His meticulous and well-presented commentary was a joy to listen to as David Rose, a fellow serviceman who served at RAF Luqa and visited the event one year had to say:

“The air show commentator who I can vouch is incredibly good. Moved me to tears during the Spitfire display with the combination of the flypast, music and Brian’s commentary with the words of Churchill booming out over the speakers. Very emotional.”

But Brian was involved in many other voluntary organisations, including the Royal Naval Officers Association (Malta) and the Hospitaller Order of St Lazarus.

It is no wonder then that Brian received his MBE ‘For services to British war veterans and to UK-Maltese relations’. But he also had a distinguished career in the Royal Air Force where he was presented with the Air Force Cross for, “an act or acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty whilst flying, though not in active operations against the enemy”. 

This was for work he did in relation to enabling the Nimrod aircraft to refuel in flight, a capability that came to be after Brian’s extensive tests and evaluation on the maritime patrol aircraft, which he also flew out of RAF Luqa in the 1970s.

Brian will be sorely missed—both by his wife Su and two sons Tim and Guy, and by his many friends and relatives, who like me, he helped and inspired.

But as he rests from his life’s long labour, this great husband, father, grandfather and friend should know that he has made his family proud and will be sorely missed, not least by members of the Malta Aviation Society to whom he had many a story to tell of his illustrious military career and beyond.

Blue Skies, Brian.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.