Australian flying corps attack on Baghdad.

He had volunteered to destroy communication lines in the rear of Turkish positions but disaster struck Captain Tom White, Australian Flying Corps, as he landed his sluggish Farman aircraft on the outskirts of Baghdad. He landed in the centre of an enemy outpost and in the process had struck a telegraph pole, severely damaging his aircraft. In an ensuing fire fight and a failed attempt to take off White, and his observer, Captain F Yeats-Brown, Indian Army, became prisoners-of-war of the Turks on 13 November 1915.

White was initially held prisoner in Baghdad and his three weeks in hospital included a week's solitary confinement for not satisfactorily answering questions during his interrogations. He spent several months at Mosul, where treatment of prisoners was very bad, before being moved to Afion kara Hissar for more than two years with an initial six week's solitary confinement on arrival as Turkish punishment for the attempted escape of three Coalition naval officers. The dull routine of prison life was relieved by study, amongst others things, of the Russian language.

With thoughts of escape to Russia, White faked an ankle injury, to obtain a passage to Constantinople for a Turkish medical examination. From there he escaped, with a false Russian passport, on a Ukrainian steamer to Odessa on 6 October 1918. As a possible way to escape from Russia to join British forces in Siberia, he considered an offer to join the Russian Volunteer Army to fight the Bolsheviks. Fate, however, intervened and escaping firstly by ship to Bulgaria, then Macedonia and finally Greece, White's war came to an end. Ten year later, in 1928, he published his wartime memoir as Guests of the Unspeakable.

The adventurous pilot returned to Australia and was discharged on 6 January 1920 having been decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross and twice mentioned in dispatches. Politics now became his first interest.

White was elected to Federal Parliament in 1929. He held the Victorian seat of Balaclava for 22 years from 1929 to 1951 first for the National Party, from 1931 for the United Australia Party and from 1944 for the Liberal Party. He was Minister for Trade and Customs in the Lyons Government from 1933 until his resignation for the ministry in late 1938. In 1940 he transferred to the Citizen Air force. Obtaining leave from Parliament he served full time with the RAAF in Australia and England before being demobilised in 1944 as honorary group captain. He resumed his parliamentary duties and with the election of the Menzies Government in 1949 became Minister for Air and Civil Aviation. White was appointed High Commissioner in London in 1951 and was knighted in 1952. He died in 1957 aged 69.