Regimental commander who joined an abortive military putsch against de Gaulle during the Algerian war
Hélie Saint-Marc, as he was known in the French Foreign Legion and eventually throughout France, was the last of the principals surviving from the 1961 putsch in Algeria, organised by four retired senior generals: Challe, Jouhaud, Zeller and Salan. He was in many ways an unlikely revolutionary, regarding honour — particularly as a soldier — as the upholding tenet of his conduct.
Hélie Denoix de Saint-Marc was a man given to penetrating examination of any situation and his place within it. His decision to throw in his lot and that of the regiment under his command with the leaders of the failed military coup appears to have been based on a distrust of President de Gaulle’s motives in Algeria, and a sense that the Army was being betrayed and its blood spilt for nothing. It was a decision that cost him a ten-year prison sentence and a subsequent life of self-scrutiny.
To the watching world, the bloody struggle in Algeria, begun on All Saints’ Day 1954, was a war of national liberation against a colonial power. France had developed the fertile coastal belt since landing at Sidi-Ferruch in 1830 and by 1945 there were 200,000 European settlers: French, Italian and Spanish — known as pieds noirs — most of third or fourth generation and comprising a sixth of the population.
Introduction of Muslims into the administrative structure was still in its infancy, and from the 1950s French interests focused on oil and gas deposits in the Sahara. The arguments for the political integration of Algeria with metropolitan France were strong, but not as strong as French fears of a Muslim influx or the fervent views of the Algerians themselves.
The casualty rate — among French conscripts especially — and the widely reported atrocities committed by French forces turned majority opinion in France against the war. But it was the formation of a “Committee of Public Safety” in the face of mob violence in Algiers that brought Charles de Gaulle out of retirement, first as Premier in 1958 and then as President in 1959. His intentions for Algeria changed with his realisation that Algérie française was no longer feasible, and his statement in favour of self-determination for the Algerians in September 1959 led inexorably to the putsch by retired generals headed by General Maurice Challe, a previous C-in-C in Algeria, in April 1961.
Given the widespread discontent among the 400,000-strong French and French Colonial Army in Algeria, Challe and his fellow generals, Raoul Salan, also a former C-in-C in French Algeria; Edmond Jouhaud, former Inspector General of the Air Force in North Africa; and André Zeller, former Chief of the Army staff, were depending on most units joining the rebellion against de Gaulle. This misjudgment was compounded when de Gaulle broadcast to the troops over the heads of their officers, demanding their loyalty to France.
Commandant Saint-Marc was the acting commanding officer of the 1st Régiment Étranger de Parachutistes (1st REP) of the Foreign Legion. While most of his officers were French, his NCOs and legionnaires were from all over Europe, many from the disbanded German Army. He committed 1 REP for Challe, as did the commanders of the 14th and 18th Régiments Chasseurs Parachutistes, but they were the only units to support the leaders of the putsch and their declared aim to “Hold Algeria for France”.
The attempted coup lasted four days, during which Saint-Marc urged Challe to keep the coup within the Army and have no truck with the pied noir “ultras”, whom he regarded as unprincipled. His regiment was ordered by Challe to drive to Algiers and take over the key control points of the city, a task in which they succeeded by dawn the following day with only one casualty among the defenders.
But elsewhere in Algeria unit commanders did not declare for the putsch and, in France, senior officers known for their support for Algérie française were detained following de Gaulle’s broadcast to the troops ordering them “to serve and obey”.
On the fourth day of the coup Challe concluded that his cause was lost and told Saint-Marc that he intended to give himself up and face probable execution. “Get out and let me pay the bill alone”, he urged, “You are young, happier times will come for you.” But Saint-Marc declined, having led his regiment in revolt he knew he must remain with his soldiers. On April 27, 1st REP dynamited their regimental base at Zéralda, 25 miles west of Algiers, fired their remaining ammunition into the air and marched away to disgrace and disbandment.
Two of the coup leaders, Salan and Jouhaud, who had disappeared with a view to prolonging resistance, were sentenced to death in absentia (commuted to life sentences after their arrests in 1962). Challe and Zeller received sentences of 15 years, Saint-Marc ten years and his two fellow parachutist commanding officers who joined the revolt eight years. All their regiments were disbanded. Before sentence, Saint-Marc told the court: “Thousands of our comrades have died fulfilling this mission [against the Algerian nationalists]. Tens of thousands of Muslims joined us as comrades in battle, sharing our sorrows, our suffering, our hopes.” Algeria obtained its independence from France after eight years of guerrilla warfare in 1962.
Hélie Denoix de Saint-Marc came from a family of landed gentry near Bordeaux. His several books written in later life show him as an idealist but rather an isolated one. He joined the French Resistance as a teenage frontier runner during the Second World War, but was captured by the Germans — possibly because of an informer’s tip-off — in July 1943 and spent the rest of the war in Buchenwald concentration camp. He subsequently became a regular officer of the Foreign Legion, serving in Indo-China from 1950 to 1953, on the staff of the 10th Parachute Division, and with 1st REP in Algeria.
He was released from prison after remission in 1966 and began a career in business as the director of personnel of a metallurgy company in Lyons. His former rank and decorations were restored to him in 1978 and in 2002 he was elevated to the grade of Grand Officer of the Légion d’Honneur in recognition of his charity work for the former colonial soldiers of Algeria and the Vietnamese boat people.
He is survived by his wife and their two daughters.
Commandant Hélie de Saint-Marc, French Foreign Legion and paratroop commander, was born on February 11, 1922. He died on August 26, 2013, aged 91.
Infantryman whose audacity in command won him MCs at Dunkirk in 1940 and in Holland in 1945
Julian Fane came from a family where competence in military matters was proven and expected. A forebear had commanded a cavalry brigade under Wellington in the Peninsular War and his father the 12th Royal Lancers in the First World War. Commissioned from RMC Sandhurst aged 19 in December 1939, he joined 2nd Battalion The Gloucester Regiment in France in April 1940, receiving a swift and brutal introduction to soldiering.
The German onslaught through Belgium into northern France in May had been anticipated, but Belgium’s neutrality precluded any forward deployment by the British Expeditionary Force before Germany violated its frontier. From May 10 onwards, events moved at bewildering speed and by May 28 the bulk of the BEF was struggling to form a defensive perimeter around Dunkirk and La Panne, extending south eastwards to include Cassel, 20 miles from the North Sea coast.
It was at Cassel that British and French commanders met — too late — to decide a co-ordinated plan. The ad hoc group of units including the 2nd Glosters was assigned to defend the town standing on high ground dominating the local countryside, with orders to delay the German advance towards the evacuation beaches. It was a forlorn hope.
Most of 2nd Glosters were killed or taken prisoner but Second Lieutenant Fane led 12 survivors towards La Panne. He was wounded in the arm by mortar fire as they left Cassel but, moving by night and hiding by day, the party reached La Panne on June 2. Standing in the doorway of the house where the party had taken refuge he was blown into the road by a bomb that wrecked the building.
He and three men were safely evacuated and he was awarded his first MC for initiative and courage. The ensuing months were an anxious but frustrating time as a German invasion appeared inevitable yet never came. As tension eased Fane looked around for something challenging — and found it in “Phantom”.
Formed in 1939 as the “GHQ Liaison Unit”, Phantom comprised enterprising junior officers whose task it was to get alongside the most forward units and report their location back to GHQ, so allowing the accurate drawing of the “defensive bomb line”, behind which air attack could not be made without risk of killing Allied troops. The unit had proved its worth even in the chaotic conditions of withdrawal through Belgium and northern France.
Fane’s first operation with Phantom was the “reconnaissance in force” of the French port of Dieppe (otherwise known as the Dieppe Raid) carried out by the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division, supported by Numbers 3 and 4 British Commandos, the Royal Navy, RAF and J Squadron of Phantom in August 1942. Primarily as a result of faulty intelligence on the German garrison and ill-luck that compromised surprise, the operation was a disaster. The Canadians suffered severe casualties and Fane’s Phantom patrol was unable to get ashore because its landing craft was badly damaged by gunfire.
He had better luck during Operation Torch, the Allied landings in French North Africa in November 1942. Once the French authorities and resident armed forces had been persuaded to co-operate, the campaign ended successfully, but the inexperienced American and British troops took time to react aggressively to the very professional and battle-hardened German forces opposing them.
Fane was awarded the French Croix de Guerre in recognition of the skill demonstrated by his Phantom patrol when operating with the French 1st Infantry Division, part of the French 19th Corps, in operations to capture Bizerta, which fell on May 13, 1943. The citation praised his “audacious reconnaissance” in the forward areas.
The invasion of Sicily in July 1943 began with parachute and glider-borne attacks by American and British troops on the southern and southeastern coasts, not all of which were successful — 47 of 134 British troop-carrying gliders fell into the sea. Phantom patrols were in the forefront of the follow-up ground force, Fane commanding three of them working with the 51st Highland Division landing near Pachino on the island’s southeast tip.
Re-entry to mainland Europe brought a subtle change to the work of Phantom. Training with the Special Air Service began with the aim of Phantom patrols accompanying SAS deep penetration operations in Italy and later in France. Fane was returned from Italy to Tunisia to take command of Phantom’s K Squadron to prepare for this role. A parachuting accident in September 1943, in which he fractured three vertebrae and broke several bones in his foot, put him out of action and ended his service with Phantom.
When he recovered sufficiently to walk properly, he attended the six-month wartime course at the Staff College, Camberley, but by autumn 1944 he had rejoined the reconstituted 2nd Glosters with the 49th Infantry Division fighting in Field Marshal Montgomery’s 21st Army Group in northwest Europe as a company commander.
In January 1945, 2nd Glosters were assigned to take the 10th-century Dutch village of Zetten on rising ground between two rivers. Fane’s company’s task was to clear the main street. One of his three platoons was committed elsewhere so he attacked, leading the remaining two. The German defenders were well dug-in, equipped with bazooka rockets and the closeness of the start line to the objective precluded an artillery bombardment.
The attack got off to a bad start. One of the platoon commanders and the company sergeant-major were seriously wounded. Forward momentum faltered. Fane moved between the platoons and by his personal disregard for danger encouraged his men to close with the enemy. Moving forward, the Glosters cleared each house in turn until the street was in their hands. Fane received an immediate Bar to his MC.
Julian Patrick Fane was the son of Colonel Cecil Fane of the 12th Royal Lancers. He was educated at Stowe and, for the 1939 autumn term only, at RMC Sandhurst. At the end of the war in Europe he transferred to his father’s regiment, serving with it in counterinsurgency operations in Palestine in 1946-47, and in Malaya. His fluent French and a spell as Assistant Military Attaché in Cairo prepared him for the task of liaison officer between British and French forces during the 1956 Suez debacle.
When the 9th and 12th Lancers amalgamated in 1960 Fane saw his chances of regimental command diminish. He transferred to the Life Guards and commanded them in Germany, Windsor and Cyprus from 1962 to 1963. After a staff appointment at Headquarters London District he was promoted colonel to be the British Army liaison officer at the US Command and Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and served as a popular master of the local foxhounds.
On leaving the Army in 1968 he became director of personnel with the merchant bank Samuel Montagu, where he made an immediate impact. The doormen and messengers began to look smarter, telephones were answered more promptly, junior managers were taught how to manage and those who complained about their bonuses were told to try harder. When Midland Bank acquired Samuel Montagu he joined Orion Bank as a main board director, finally retiring in 1984.
His first wife, Lady Anne Lowther, daughter of Viscount Lowther, died in a motor accident in 1956. His second wife, Diana, survives him, with a son and daughter of his first marriage and a son and daughter of his second.
Colonel Julian Fane, MC and Bar, soldier, was born on February 17, 1921. He died on August 11, 2013 aged 92
Wartime fighter pilot who took part in Spitfire sweeps and bombing sorties in France and later played a key role in Britain’s air defence
Arthur Strudwick enlisted in the RAF in the summer of 1940 and gained his wings as a fighter pilot in 1941. Over the next 18 months he took part in Spitfire sweeps over France from bases in South-East England and, later, convoy protection operations and bomber escorts for raids on German naval bases in Brittany.
In the summer of 1943 he was shot down and spent the rest of the war in captivity. But he resumed his career in fighters after returning to service in 1945, converting to successive generations of jet fighters flying at everincreasing speeds, culminating in the Mach 2 English Electric Lightning. As commander of RAF Leuchars in Fife in the mid-1960s Strudwick played his part in maintaining the watchfulness of the air defence of Britain during some of the tensest years of the Cold War.
Arthur Sidney Ronald Strudwick was born in Woking, Surrey, in 1921 and educated at Guildford Technical College, from where he joined the RAF in June 1940. Training as a fighter pilot, he was posted in 1941 to 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron, then based at Kenley, Surrey, where it was engaged in fighter sweeps over the Channel with its Spitfire Vbs, as well as escorting bombers during raids on targets in Northern France. Joining the squadron as its most junior NCO pilot, Strudwick was soon commissioned and became a flight commander.
When the squadron was relocated to RAF Perranporth in Cornwall in January 1943 he flew sorties escorting bombers in attacks on Brest and other German naval bases on the French Atlantic coast. In April No 602 was one of the first squadrons to become part of the 2nd Tactical Air Force (TAF), formed in parallel with the USAAF’s 9th Air Force to provide air support to ground troops during the forthcoming invasion of German-occupied Europe. In the period before the invasion 2nd TAF would attack railway depots, bridges, flak positions, roads and railways to degrade German capacity to react to a ground invasion.
Strudwick was involved in air strikes on targets in the Pas-de-Calais — many at low level. On one occasion he returned with a badly overheating engine, his low flying having collected foliage from a treetop in his radiator. On another, a flak shell bursting just under one of his wings damaged ailerons and his landing gear, necessitating a crash landing on return to base.
In June 1943 his luck ran out when the squadron was attacked by a large force of Fw 190s as it escorted a bombing raid on a target at Poix-de-Picardie. His Spitfire was badly damaged and he had to take to his parachute. Captured on landing, he ended up in Stalag Luft III in Silesia, but in the centre compound, well removed from the activities in the north compound that led to the Great Escape of March 1944.
When the camp was evacuated in January 1945 to prevent its inmates being liberated by the Soviets, he endured the rigours of the Long March to western Germany in one of the coldest winters in Europe for decades. Many PoWs perished en route. He was repatriated in May. Back home he learnt that he had been awarded the DFC for his operations with 602 Squadron.
Strudwick remained in the RAF and was soon involved in the many defence issues that began to emanate from the imperatives of the Cold War. From 1948 to 1950 he undertook test flying in Canada of several aircraft types to assess their capabilities in extreme Arctic conditions. From 1951 to 1953 he commanded a squadron of Vampire fighter bombers in Germany, and from 1956 to 1959 he was in charge of the Joint Services Trials Unit at the Woomera rocket range in Australia, which tested Britain’s first air-to-air missile, the de Havilland Firestreak.
From 1965 to 1967 he commanded RAF Leuchars. In that period the base’s quick-reaction alert force of Lightnings was always on standby to take off and demonstrate an air defence presence when, as frequently happened, there were approaches to UK air space by the long-range Tupolev “Bear” reconnaissance aircraft of the Soviet Air Force. (Post-Soviet Russia has continued these probing flights.) His final appointment was as AOC Central Tactics and Trials Organisation, which evaluated and evolved tactics and roles for the RAF’s latest combat aircraft.
Strudwick was appointed CB and retired in 1976. He then worked for 12 years as defence liaison officer at Link-Miles, makers of flight simulators.
His wife, Cissily, died in 1983. He is survived by two sons and a daughter.
Air Commodore Arthur Strudwick, CB, DFC, fighter pilot, was born on April 16, 1921. He died on June 11, 2013, aged 92
Popova, standing, with two other women pilots of the 46th Guards Air Force Regiment relaxing near a dugout before the evening’s bombing mission
Member of the Soviet Union’s wartime ‘Night Witches’ whose silent bombing raids terrified the Wehrmacht
A natural pilot who made her first solo flight at the age of 16, Nadezhda Popova later graduated from the Kherson Flight School to become one of the celebrated “Night Witches”, the female Soviet aviators whose hit-and-run tactical bombing raids undertaken in primitive biplanes caused a constant headache to German ground forces on the Eastern Front from 1942 until the end of the war.
The unlikely instrument of the Night Witches’ survival as a unit against all the apparent odds, and of their remarkable operational success, was the wood-and-canvas Polikarpov Po2 biplane. This had been first introduced as a crop duster, trainer and general purpose light transport in 1928, but it later graduated to the role of tactical night bomber on the Eastern Front in attacks on arms dumps, supply depots and troop accommodation in rear areas. More than 40,000 Po2s were built before production ceased in the mid-1950s.
One of the Po2’s great advantages was its extreme slowness, which was well below the stall speed of the Luftwaffe’s Messerschmitt 109 and Focke-Wulf 190 interceptor fighters. This made it difficult for even Germany’s best aces to nail it in flight. The female aviators of the 588th Night Bomber Regiment, later honoured with the title of 46th “Taman” Guards Night Bomber Aviation Regiment, exploited this low speed and extreme manoeuvrability, gliding silently into the attack with their engines cut, and only starting them again after they had dropped their bombs.
The pilots’ nickname, “Nachthexen”, was a German coinage. Wehrmacht soldiers on the ground likened the whistling of the air through the biplane’s wire stays to the whoosh of a passing witch’s broomstick. Although the overall significance of the targets that the Night Witches were able to attack may not have been great, their continuing ability to operate in the night skies over the Wehrmacht in the field over a period of more than three years had a most unnerving effect on enemy troop morale. Although Popova was shot down three times she never suffered serious injury and in February 1945 she was made a Hero of the Soviet Union.
Nadezhda Vasilyevna Popova was born in 1921, the daughter of a railwayman. She grew up in the Donetsk coal fields area of Ukraine. As a girl she loved singing and dancing, and her dream was to become an actress, until one day in her teens she saw an aircraft land near her home village. She watched awestruck as its pilot climbed out, revealing himself after all to be a mere man and not some unapproachable superhuman figure, as she ran towards him to touch his uniform. Ambitions for a stage career were immediately set aside, and from that moment she was determined to become a pilot herself in spite of her parents’ opposition. At 15 she joined a flying club and in 1937, aged 16, she made her first parachute jump and went solo.
She graduated from the military flying school at Kherson, and became a flying instructor because there were no female flying units in the Red Air Force at that time. The invasion of the Soviet Union by Germany in the summer of 1941 changed that. By Order No 0099 of October 8, 1941, three women’s squadrons were created: 586 Regiment of Yak fighters, 587 Regiment of twin-engine dive bombers and 588 Regiment of night bombers. No 588’s later title, which was granted in 1943, referred to its participation in the Red Army’s expulsion of the Wehrmacht from the Taman peninsula that year.
Popova opted for night bombers and, after training, began her own operational career in 1942, flying bombing sorties against German troops in her home area of the Donetsk basin. Because the Po2 could carry only 500lb of bombs the Night Witches found themselves flying numerous sorties each night — sometimes into double figures. Her final tally of ops by the end of the war was probably about 800. She had several narrow escapes, one on a daytime mission in which the slow-flying Po2 was especially vulnerable to ground fire and enemy aircraft.
While carrying out a day reconnaissance she was attacked by Luftwaffe fighters and had to make a crash landing. As she walked back towards what she fondly hoped was the direction of Soviet lines, trying to locate her unit, she fell in with a motorised column carrying battle casualties to the Russian rear. Among the wounded was her future husband, a fighter pilot, Semyon Kharlamov. They were to keep in touch, and they met several times thereafter during the war. They were married soon after it ended in 1945.
By the standards of the operational careers of pilots among the Western Allies, Popova’s was a long and gruelling stretch of frontline service. As the Red Army went on to the offensive after the battles of Kursk and Orel in 1943 she and her comrades followed in their wake, continually harrying Wehrmacht units as they retreated through Ukraine, Belarus and Poland towards the eastern frontier of the Reich. She was still serving with the 46th Taman Guards Night Bombers when the Red Army entered Berlin, where she was reunited with her husband-to-be.
She ended the war with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and with numerous other decorations and campaign medals, including the Soviet Medal of Honour, the Order of Lenin, the Order of the Red Banner (three times), the Order of the Patriotic War 1st Class (twice) and the Order of the Patriotic War 2nd Class. On her return home she was given a hero’s welcome and made an honorary citizen of Donetsk.
She continued to serve as a flight instructor for 20 years after her marriage. Her husband, who died in 1990, became a major-general in the Soviet Air Force. Their son also achieved senior rank, in the air force of Belarus.
Nadezhda Popova, wartime bomber pilot, was born on December 17, 1921. She died on July 8, 2013, aged 91
Woodward on Nelson’s ship Victory at Portsmouth in 1988. Margaret Thatcher regarded him as “the right man to fight the world’s first computer war
Commander of the naval task force that sailed 8,000 miles to recover the Falklands from invasion by the Argentine junta in 1982
Sandy Woodward carved out his niche in Britain’s naval annals by his energy, intelligence, determination and, inevitably, an element of chance.
In the spring of 1982 when the squabble between Britain and General Galtieri’s Argentina became a full-blown invasion of the Falkland Islands, Rear-Admiral John Woodward, Flag Officer First Flotilla, was supervising some 20 ships in a routine weapon training and tactical exercises based at Gibraltar when he was abruptly ordered to adopt a war footing.
First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Henry Leach’s famously impromptu meeting with the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her ministers and officials in her room in the House of Commons on the evening of March 31 had obtained the authority to send a naval task force to the South Atlantic.
Although Woodward was geographically part way towards the Falklands and already in practised command of a substantial force, some thought he should be replaced by a “more experienced admiral at three-star (vice-admiral) rank”. But the CinC, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, also a professional submariner, had supreme confidence in Woodward’s abilities.
One of the cleverest men in the Navy, knowledgeable and decisive, Woodward was, as Margaret Thatcher wrote, precisely the right man to fight the world’s first computer war.
A reserved man and a complex personality, Woodward was once described by one defence journalist as “not possessing one single human quality of leadership” — a view challenged by his many supporters and qualified by the wife of one of his officers in the submarine Warspite who said: “We may not like him very much but we do expect to get our husbands back.”
If his critics found him arrogant, others praised his self-deprecating humour. Woodward also had something of a reputation for independent thinking. On one occasion a decade earlier, during a Cold War patrol in the Barents Sea the staff officer vetting his report recommended he be courtmartialled for directly contravening specific orders to avoid counter-detection. In the light of the important intelligence “take” obtained by so doing, his admiral recommended instead promotion to captain at the early age of 40.
The task force of which Woodward had suddenly become the senior commander faced the daunting challenge of mounting an opposed amphibious landing, without allies or adequate air cover, 8,000 miles from home.
Failure would be catastrophic. Besides the fall of the Thatcher Government, Nato’s second-most powerful navy would have been defeated in an irrelevant mission against a minor power. The nation would have continued the politics of decline, unable to broker between Europe and a US bruised in its Latin American policies and far less interested in an ally shown to be all talk and no walk.
Woodward’s problems were acute; the task force even lacked charts of the Falklands, while intelligence about the Argentine Navy and formidable air force was very thin. His account of the war, One Hundred Days, with Patrick Robinson, is one of the most self-revealing — including self-doubt — autobiographical campaign accounts ever written by a senior force commander.
It was clear to Woodward from the start that the Argentinians would not yield without a fight. The vast distance and the rapid approach of the South Atlantic winter meant there was no room for manoeuvre. The task force had a two-month window of opportunity to win back the islands. Thereafter, the opportunity would be lost.
It was obvious to Woodward that retaking the islands would require everything that the Royal Navy possessed as well as the limited RAF and Army support that could be brought to bear, and, last but not least, numerous merchant and specialist ships taken up from trade.
On the positive side most of the commanding officers as well as the staff at the Northwood headquarters knew each other well, had done the same tactical courses and could read each other’s minds, a form of “regimental system” writ large.
Another important factor was American support, particularly supplies of the AIM9L air-to-air missile for the Sea Harriers, the use of submarine satellite communications and the rapidly developed use of Ascension Island as a “forward” base, albeit still 2,500 miles away.
The task force under Woodward’s command swiftly grew to a size and complexity unmatched since the Korean War and presented difficult communications, command and control problems. Woodward noted that his Operations Officer was reading and filtering more than 500 signals a day.
Having neutralised the Argentine Navy and severely damaged its air force, the campaign started to centre on the landing and subsequent operations ashore, leaving the admiral fulfilling an air defence and logistic support function, preserving his mission-critical carriers, Hermes and Invincible, at some distance from the action. That sensible precaution prompted some in the Army to nickname him “Windy Woodward” for keeping the carriers out of danger. They even joked about him getting the Burma Star for stationing them so far east of the Falklands.
Nevertheless, the fog of war did intervene, and Woodward later admitted that his knowledge and appreciation of what was going on was at times defective and led to misunderstandings; this was perhaps true of the minutiae of naval aviation and amphibious procedures. The sinking of the destroyer Sheffield was the first loss suffered by the Royal Navy for more than 40 years and was a shocking reminder of the risks of war, but it did complete the process of “transition to war”.
“We are going to have to get seriously sharper if we are to survive,” Woodward concluded.
Ill-informed comment at home perceived Sheffield as “revenge” for the sinking of the Argentine cruiser Belgrano two days earlier — a decision initiated by Woodward facing a pincer movement from the unlocated Argentine aircraft carrier. He had sent an order for the nuclear submarine Conqueror to attack the Belgrano although at that time the self-imposed rules of engagement, which were more restrictive than the warnings issued to Argentina, did not allow this.
Submarine communications were routed through Northwood and Woodward’s order was “vetted off the broadcast” by the Flag Officer Submarines until War Cabinet approval had been obtained.
After the war, a poorly informed parliamentary and media debate attributed unworthy motivation to this decision; Belgrano “was outside the Exclusion Zone”; “was going home”; “the sinking was uncalled for and was aimed at derailing the Peruvian peace plan” and so forth — failing to appreciate that the war had started in earnest with previous naval air attacks and substantial Argentine aircraft casualties.
Subsequent study of Argentine naval communications has substantiated Woodward’s threat analysis — Belgrano had been instructed, after fuelling from her tanker, to go to a waiting position for further action, not to return to port. After this sinking, the Argentine Navy took no further part. The last word remains with the Argentine Admiral Allara, “After the message of 23 April the entire South Atlantic was an operational area for both sides. We, as professionals, said that it was just too bad that we lost the Belgrano.”
At the time of the Argentine surrender, besides the painful losses, Woodward’s memoir records the severely degraded material state of his remaining ships: “only three without a major operational defect ... if the Args could only breathe on us, we’d fall over”. And the next day General Winter arrived in earnest with 100mph freezing gusts. It had been a close-run thing.
John Woodward — known as Sandy for his reddish fair hair — was born in 1932 at Marazion, near Penzance. Head boy of his preparatory school, he joined the Navy only because his father had run out of money and couldn’t afford to send him to a public school. So he went for the easiest and most valuable scholarship available with not the least idea that it might commit him to a life’s career in the Royal Navy.
He joined in 1946 and underwent his early naval training at Eaton Hall and subsequently Dartmouth. His was an undistinguished scholastic progress while retaining his place in the top fifth of his term. His bent was mathematics but he won no prizes. Indeed his record shows that he won no prizes between — in his own words — “an unlikely award for Scripture at 7 and a knighthood at 50”.
He graduated from Dartmouth eighth in his term of 44, but his fitness report from his house officer and tutor read: “inclined to be irresponsible; at present lacks drive, determination and team spirit”.
He admitted he had been about the most “unkeen” cadet they had seen and that this reflected accurately his attitude until he was pressed into the Submarine Service in 1953. The early responsibilities, small crews and strong engineering background all appealed to him and the Navy finally caught his interest.
His first ships were the Second World War cruiser Sheffield and the destroyer Zodiac. His submarine career started in the old diesel-electric boat Sanguine based at Malta followed by Porpoise, the first of a new class. He attributed his success at passing the “Perisher”, the demanding commanding officers’ selection course, to the quality of the training he received from the captains of these two submarines. The CO of Porpoise remembered Woodward as very efficient and a delightful companion, a bridge and a golf player, but not very popular with the sailors —“It’s not the job of the second in command to be popular.”
Woodward’s first command was the Tireless based in Scotland, followed by the nuclear reactor course at Greenwich and, after a period commanding the Grampus, appointment as second-in-command of the Navy’s first all-British nuclear attack submarine, the Valiant. Promotion to commander in 1967 was followed by appointment as “Teacher”, the officer responsible for passing commanding officer candidates.
In 1969 he was given command of the nuclear submarine Warspite and had a “busy life” around the North Atlantic, Barents Sea and Mediterranean. These were still the pioneering days for the RN’s nuclear attack submarines and gave him just the kind of job he enjoyed most — under minimal supervision, with plenty of opportunity for innovation and experience in the front line of the Cold War.
A tour in the premier Plans division of the Admiralty gave him an essential insight into defence policy formulation. This was followed by appointment in charge of all submarine sea training, with a staff of 100, based at Faslane in Scotland.
In 1976 Woodward was appointed captain of the Type 42 guided missile destroyer Sheffield, a particularly frustrating period as the ship was another “first-of-class” and had a mass of teething troubles.
This was followed by Director of Naval Plans, head of the naval staff’s most influential division, where he dealt with the entire range of policies and strategies for an unusually long tour of three years, after which he argued against the deep cuts and sales of major warships proposed by Sir John Nott in the notorious White Paper, Command 8288. He was promoted soon afterwards to rear-admiral.
In 1983, after the Falklands, Woodward was appropriately appointed Flag Officer Submarines and then, as a Vice-Admiral, to the senior central staff post of Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Commitments) which oversaw the operational execution of the UK’s defence policy. His final tour was CinC Naval Home Command, in charge of the Navy’s shore-based activity. He was appointed KCB in 1982 and GBE in 1989 on retirement as a full Admiral.
In private life Woodward was briefly an independent inspector on the Lord Chancellor’s Panel. A keen sailor, he won his class at Cowes week in his Sonata Cry Havoc. He is survived by his wife, Charlotte McMurtrie, whom he married in 1960, and their son and daughter.
Admiral Sir John Woodward, GBE, KCB, Falklands War Task Force Commander, CinC Naval Home Command 1987-89, was born on May 1, 1932. He died on August 4, 2013, aged 81
