John Noel Dowland, GC (6 November 1914 – 13 January 1942) was a Royal Air Force officer of the Second World War and a recipient of the George Cross.^[1]

Dowland was the son of the vicar of Ruscombe, the Rev. F.M. Dowland, and educated at St John's School, Leatherhead before taking him flight training at Cranwell in 1934.^[1] After Cranwell he was a gazette as a pilot officer and joined a squadron of Bomber Command.^[1] At the outbreak of World War II he took command of a unit overseas.^[1]

Dowland was a Royal Air Force officer of the Second World War and a recipient of the George Cross.^[1] Along with civilian armament instructor Leonard Henry Harrison, Dowland was awarded the George Cross for his gallantry in defusing a bomb that had fallen on the grain ship SS Kildare in Immingham docks on 11 February 1940.^[1] The bomb proved extremely difficult to defuse as it had embedded itself at an extreme angle in the main deck. The citation, which appeared in the London Gazette on 7 January 1941, noted that he displayed the same "conspicuous courage and devotion to duty in circumstances of exceptional danger and difficulty" when defusing a bomb on a trawler in June 1940.^[2]

His and Harrison's actions were the earliest to be awarded the George Cross, although Thomas Alderson's award was the first to be announced.^[3][4]

Dowland later achieved the rank of wing commander, but was killed when taking part in a raid on Pantelleria on 13 January 1942. After the aircraft he was piloting was damaged by anti-aircraft fire, Dowland attempted an emergency landing at Luqa, Malta. Both he and his observer were killed in the subsequent crash. Dowland is buried in Capuccini Naval Cemetery, Malta.^[5]