Brigadier James Illingworth OBE has been serving as the Military Attached and Head of the British Army Staff – United States at the British Embassy in Washington since August 2013.…
Brigadier James Illingworth OBE has been serving as the Military Attached and Head of the British Army Staff – United States at the British Embassy in Washington since August 2013. James was educated at Wellington College and Leicester University before being commissioned into the United Kingdom’s Army Air Corps in 1989.
He spent nine months as an infantry platoon commander with the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Rangers in Osnabruck, Germany, before completing the Army Pilots Course and Lynx conversion course in 1990. A busy, three year tour in Northern Ireland followed, before moving to instruct officer cadets at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst as a platoon commander and then a year as the Old College Adjutant.
In addition, he completed the Joint Services Command and Staff Course in 1999 to become the first Military Assistant to the Commander Joint Helicopter Command (JHC) in the newly formed JHC at Army Headquarters. In August 2001 he took command of 657 Squadron AAC in the newly established Joint Special Forces Aviation Wing (JSFAW) at RAF Odiham where he commanded on operations in the Balkans and Middle East. Selected for promotion to Lieutenant Colonel in 2003, he conducted a two and half year staff tour in the Ministry of Defence in the Directorate of Joint Commitments (now the Operations Directorate) as the SO1 Land.
