Naval officer who eschewed pomp for hands-on roles in the Cold War and later in the preservation of Britain’s maritime heritage
Nicholas Hunt joined the Royal Navy as a teenager and rose through the ranks to become Commander-in-Chief, Fleet in the mid-1980s. The role came with a seat at Nato’s top table: as Allied C-in-C, Channel and Eastern Atlantic, he was responsible for guarding the northern flank and overseeing tense stand-offs between Communist and Western submarines.
Had the testy rhetoric of Cold War dissolved into war, it would have been up to Hunt to ensure US forces could cross the Atlantic to join the fight.
Command of the UK’s nuclear deterrent was a grave responsibility, and Hunt became a forceful advocate of Trident. He was also among the first to see the potential of the Short Take Off Vertical Landing (STOVL) system for launching and retrieving fast jets at sea. This became one of the key capabilities of the Royal Navy’s Sea Harriers.
Nicholas John Streynsham Hunt was born in 1930 in Hawarden, Flintshire. The younger son of a brigadier in the 2nd Punjab Regiment, he broke with family tradition by opting to join the Senior Service rather than the Army. He started at at Britannia Royal Navy College just as the war was ending.
Like many an admiral, including Nelson, he battled seasickness throughout his career. However, unlike most, Hunt’s innate flair and ability to rise to the top became apparent only after several decades of service. He passed out second from bottom of his class at Dartmouth and, while praised for a cheerful, strong character, whose personality “will particularly appeal to his men”, there were concerns. “Not particularly clever,” said a report on Hunt’s time in HMS Vanguard in 1948. Another asserted that he “sometimes shows a lack of confidence in his own ability which is quite unjustified”.
He served as Assistant Private Secretary to the Duchess of Kent from 1959 to 1962. One of his key duties was to drive Prince Michael of Kent and the Duke of Kent to and from school. He also accompanied Princess Alexandra to Nigeria’s independence ceremony to represent the Queen.
His turning point came when his ship visited Malta and he met Meriel Givan, a naval nurse. As captain of HMS Troubridge he was obliged to read his own banns of marriage at sea as the T-class destroyer was too small to warrant her own chaplain.
The confidence that Meriel gave him helped Hunt to flourish, initially as executive officer of Ark Royal and then as commanding officer of amphibious warfare ship Intrepid. Such was his devotion to Meriel that he caused ripples within the Royal Navy by bringing her to official events at a time when wives were simply not invited.
He returned to Dartmouth, this time as commanding officer of the college. His midshipmen recalled an energetic leader. On one occasion, for a meticulously planned April Fool, he took great pleasure in introducing an interloper disguised as a Saudi Arabian prince. To complete the subterfuge Hunt paid for three black staff cars and costumes for the “royal” party out of his own pocket. The effect was so convincing that the congregation failed to notice the fake prince holding his hymn book upside down during a church service.
As Director-General Naval Manpower and Training during the Falklands War Hunt had the crucial and delicate home-front role of overseeing how families were informed of deaths. He also served as Flag Officer Second Flotilla and Flag Officer Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Hunt was made full admiral to serve as Commander-in-Chief, Fleet and Nato Allied C-in-C, Channel and Eastern Atlantic between 1985 and 1987.
His one regret about his decades in the Royal Navy was that they had been spent “deterring war rather than winning it”. Throughout his career Hunt never lost his modesty, his interest in touring the mess desks or his sense of humour. He was once astonished to find Meriel, disguised in naval uniform, solemnly saluting her husband as he arrived at the top of a warship gangway on a high-profile official visit.
On leaving the Navy in 1987 he eschewed the pomp and diplomacy of a proffered governorship of Gibraltar for a multitude of hands-on roles — with Eurotunnel, South West Surrey District Health Authority, Nuffield Hospitals, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and Chatham Historic Dockyard. As chairman of the latter he led the docks through a period of huge restoration and repair, leaving both buildings and ships flourishing.
He oversaw, too, a re-enactment to mark the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar, in which the dispatch relaying the battle’s victory was rushed by ship and post-chaise to London.
He was director-general of the UK Chamber of Shipping when the IRA bombed the Baltic Exchange, London, in 1992.
Arriving at the scene to find the organisation’s offices destroyed in the blast, Hunt and Meriel organised, then manned a soup kitchen in the rubble to feed survivors and emergency workers.
Hunt became Deputy Lieutenant to the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey in 1996, while a close friendship with a member of the Italian secret service resulted in his final job, as chairman of the chocolatier Ferrero UK, which he kept until his death.
Hunt is survived by his wife, Meriel, two sons and a daughter. A second daughter died in infancy. Their elder son is Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health.
Admiral Sir Nicholas Hunt GCB, LVO, Commander-in-Chief, Fleet, was born on November 7, 1930. He died on October 25, 2013, aged 82
Pathfinder navigator who flew 80 sorties over occupied Europe and later became a judge and a High Commissioner
In an extraordinary career which took him from his home in Trinidad to the hostile night skies over German-
occupied Europe, through the judiciaries of several African countries in the postwar years, and finally back to the Caribbean, Ulric Cross was in turns Pathfinder navigator, BBC talks producer, judge, professor of law and diplomat. He was High Commissioner in the UK, at the same time repesenting Trinidad and Tobago as ambassador in Germany, France and Norway.
During his wartime service he flew 80 sorties off the reel, in spite of being frequently begged by the authorities to “rest” as a flying instructor. He was awarded the DSO and DFC, making him one of the most highly decorated West Indian members of RAF aircrew during the Second World War.
When war broke out Cross was working in the Civil Service on Trinidad’s railways. But as he put it to himself: “By 1941 the world was drowning in fascism and America was not yet in the war. I decided to do something about it, and volunteered to fight in the RAF. We took ship for 12 days straight to Greenock. A lorry awaited us and took us straight into the uniform of the RAF — and into training”.
That training was to make him a navigation specialist in the famous No 139 “Jamaica” Squadron, given its name because its Blenheim bombers were paid for by a fundraising effort started by a Jamaican newspaper. By November 1942, when Cross had completed his navigator’s training, the squadron had exchanged its obsolete Blenheims for the superlative De Havilland Mosquito, and in the following year it became a part of No 8 Group Bomber Command, the elite Pathfinder Force (PFF).
In the two-man crew of the wartime Mosquito at night, the navigator was as important as the pilot, because the radar, which he operated, was the aircraft’s “eyes”. So important was it to keep this a secret that for propaganda purposes the success of the famous night fighter pilot “Cat’s-Eyes” Cunningham was publicly ascribed by the Air Ministry to a diet of carrots which granted him an uncanny night vision. The fiction had a dual purpose — to encourage consumption of a huge surplus of carrots, and to disguise the efficacy of the Mossie’s onboard radar.
The increasing accuracy with which targets could be marked with the centimetric radar in all weathers made the Mosquito a potent weapon in Bomber Command’s arsenal, and Cross’s expertise had earned him a Distinguished Flying Cross by June 1944. Nevertheless, the Mosquito’s speed and its service ceiling did not render it invulnerable over heavily defended targets such as Berlin, to which Cross and his pilot made no fewer than 22 visits in what became know as the Battle of Berlin.
“Much flak” was his taciturn verdict on Berlin, and on one occasion his Mosquito was hit by either flak or a night fighter over the Reich capital, spinning down from 35,000ft to 7,000ft before the pilot could regain control. The pair limped back to England where they crash-landed before they could reach their home airfield in East Anglia.
Cross had been rapidly promoted from pilot officer to squadron leader and he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in January 1945. In all 252 Trinidadians served as RAF aircrew during the war, some 50 of whom lost their lives. Towards the end of the war Cross was at length rested after 80 sorties and was appointed a liaison officer for the colossal task of demobilising colonial forces.
One of nine children, Philip Louis Ulric Cross was born in 1917 in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He won one of eight annual scholarships that qualified him for a free education and attended St Mary’s College, Trinidad. However, the death of his mother when he was 13 devastated him and derailed his education. Leaving school he joined the Trinidad Guardian where he became a copy editor. He then worked as a clerk to a firm of solicitors before joining the Civil Service where he was working when war came.
After the war he read for the Bar in London and was called by the Middle Temple in 1949. For the next four years he was legal adviser to the Controller of Imports and Exports for Trinidad and Tobago, and he also lectured in trade union history at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. From 1953 to 1957 he was a talks producer with the BBC in London.
His career then took another turn and for the next dozen years he was involved with the judiciaries in emerging African countries. For two years in Ghana he was Crown Counsel and a lecturer at the Ghana School of Law. In Cameroon he was Attorney-General, a member of the Cabinet and later Advocate-General in the Federal Court of Justice. From 1967 he was a High Court Judge in Tanzania and chairman of the Permanent Labour Tribunal, while also serving as Professor of Law at Dar-es-Salaam University.
In 1971 he returned to Trinidad where he became a High Court, then Appeal Court judge. As chairman of the Law Reform Commission of Trinidad and Tobago, 1982-83, he was regarded as having played a significant role revising and solidifying the legal landscape of his country. The final phase of his working life was as a diplomat, and from 1990 to 1993 he was High Commissioner in London. In retirement he founded the charity Cotton Tree Foundation to work with some of the most deprived communities in Port of Spain.
Cross was the model for the Caribbean Squadron Leader Charles Ford in Ken Follett’s novel Hornet Flight, which was published in 2002.
He is survived by his wife Ann and by two daughters, one of whom is the arts administrator Lady Hollick, and a son.
Squadron Leader Ulric Cross, DSO, DFC, wartime Pathfinder navigator, judge and diplomat, was born on May 1, 1917. He died on October 4, 2013, aged 96
>Lieutenant-General James Vaught
>Êîìàíäèð "Äåëüòà-Ôîðñ", ïðîâàëèâøåé ïîïûòêó îñâîáîæäåíèÿ àìåðèêàíñêèõ çàëîæíèêîâ â Èðàíå â 1980
Battle-hardened US Army officer who led the ill-starred commando raid to rescue US hostages in Iran
Lieutenant-General James Vaught led Operation Eagle Claw, the catastrophic commando mission to rescue 52 US hostages in Iran. They had been snatched in 1979 after the Shah had fled the country and Ayatollah Khomeini had seized power. The abject failure of the rescue effectively ended Jimmy Carter’s presidential career.
Vaught, a veteran of the Korean and Vietnam wars, was chosen to lead the high-risk operation to rescue the hostages, held by Islamic militants who overran the US Embassy in Tehran. His commandos faced the daunting task of crossing hundreds of miles of desert to pluck the hostages from the midst of a large hostile city.
When the hostages were seized Carter considered their safe return his personal responsibility and made it his number one priority. As negotiations failed to produce a deal he came under enormous political and popular pressure for stronger action. Finally he decided on a high-risk military operation although the odds were heavily stacked against its success.
On April 16, 1980, Vaught briefed Carter at the White House on plans for the rescue mission and expressed confidence in his ability to bring it off.
Carter then ordered Vaught to execute the audacious plan involving a joint task force of all four military services using eight helicopters to evacuate the hostages and a dozen aircraft for troop transport and refuelling. Some 90 commandos from the US Army’s Delta Force were flown to a rendezvous in the remote Iranian desert. They were to be joined by eight helicopters from a US aircraft carrier which were to be used to fly the commandos to Tehran.
Mechanical and communication failures and an un-forecast sandstorm put three of the eight helicopters out of action leaving one fewer than the minimum required for the operation.
Carter then ordered the operation to abort but that was not the end of his troubles. One of the helicopters created a huge dust cloud as it drifted into an aircraft tanker and both aircraft burst into flames. Five US Air Force personnel and three marines were killed and dozens injured. The next morning gleeful Iranians broadcast footage of the smoking remains of the rescue attempt.
Carter took responsibility for the mission’s failure. A Pentagon report later listed numerous problems in the planning and execution of the mission and cited lack of sufficient co-ordination among the service branches. It did not assign blame to General Vaught who later became commander of American and Korean troops in South Korea.
Ronald Reagan made the failed rescue mission an issue in his 1980 presidential campaign, and the hostages were not released until the day of his inauguration, 444 days after they were taken captive.
James Vaught was born in Conway, South Carolina, in 1926. One of seven children, he was a direct descendant of Francis Marion, a South Carolina militia commander who waged guerrilla war against the British in the Revolutionary War. Graduating from high school in 1943, he enrolled at the Citadel military academy in Charleston and was drafted into the US Army the following year.
After the war he served in the occupation forces in Germany, and was subsequently an infantry commander in the Korean war and a battalion commander of helicopter-borne troops in the Vietnam war. As such he took part in the gruelling 26-day battle to retake Hue in January-February 1968, and the relief of Marines who were besieged at their Khe Sanh outpost, later that year, after four months of intense fighting.
Vaught was holding a senior administration post at the Pentagon when he was assigned by the Army Chief of Staff to command the Iran operation. Sixteen months after the failed raid he was promoted to lieutenant-general and commanded troops in South Korea. He retired from the Army in 1983.
On the 25th anniversary of the raid he told an interviewer from The Washington Post that he been devastated by the feeling that he had “let the country down and left the hostages there”. But he called the mission a “successful failure” because it had used new technology, including satellite communications and night-vision goggles, which proved valuable in future operations.
The command structure exposed by the failed raid led to the creation of a multi-service Special Operations Command that included an elite Navy unit focusing on counter-terrorism. Thirtyone years later this resulted in the operation which killed Osama bin Laden.
Vaught is survived by his wife, Florence, and by a daughter and two sons.
Lieutenant-General James Vaught, US Army veteran, was born on November 3, 1926. He was found dead on September 20, 2013, aged 86
Ingenious mechanic and veteran of Popski’s Private Army
Jim Spencer was a Canadian veteran of the Long Range Desert Group that successfully raided to the rear of Rommel’s Afrika Korps in 1942-43. Having impressed Vladimir Peniakoff with his skill in emergency motor repairs, he later transferred to the Russian émigré’s own unit: Number 1 Demolition Squadron or “Popski’s Private Army”.
During a combined LRDG/PPA patrol to find a route for Montgomery’s left hook round the Mareth Line in Tunisia, in January 1943, Peniakoff’s jeep hit a rock, ramming the sump up against the crankshaft. Spencer removed the sump, battered out the dent and sealed the cracks by soldering on a flattened-out can of sliced peaches which he had just finished eating. Peniakoff was delighted by his ingenuity.
Three days later the patrol reached the Wadi Zem Zem where the track wound through a maze of 8ft-high thorn bushes. The LRDG patrol commander, Captain Ken Lazarus, and Peniakoff went forward to investigate suspected movement, so the patrol dispersed its vehicles ready for a brew-up. Within minutes they were under fire from a German armoured patrol.
Spencer and a Rhodesian LRDG member manning 0.5-inch Browning machineguns stopped the leading armoured car and set it on fire. When the rest of the enemy column dismounted and began an enveloping movement, legging it for the wadi rim was the only option and, miraculously, almost everyone made it. The survivors began the long trek back to the Zella oasis only to be picked up by Lazarus and Peniakoff returning from their reconnaissance. A few days later a fresh patrol found the required route that was later successfully exploited.
Following the surrender of German and Italian forces in North Africa in May 1943, most of Peniakoff’s men were incorporated into either the LRDG, sent to Lebanon to train for mountain warfare, or into Lieutenant-Colonel William Stirling’s 2nd Special Air Service. Left with only a handful of desert stalwarts, Peniakoff began recruiting afresh and invited Spencer to join him for the Italian campaign.
Spencer was one of two Canadians accepted and he served with Captain Jean Caneri’s patrol throughout the long slog up the Italian peninsula and the bitter winter of 1944-45. They ended the campaign sailing their jeeps by vehicle landing craft into Venice, and Spencer recalled driving round St Mark’s Square.
Richard James Spencer was born in Birkenhead but his family emigrated to Vancouver Island. He returned to England to enlist as a vehicle mechanic soon after the outbreak of war, transferring to the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in 1942. On demobilisation he returned to Vancouver to work in the Alberni Pulp and Paper Mill until his retirement. I n later years he became a member of the Friends of Popski’s Private Army. He is survived by his wife, Melva, and one son. A daughter predeceased him.
Richard James Spencer, Special Forces REME fitter, was born on April 13, 1919. He died on July 29, 2013 aged 94
General Sir Michael Wilkes
Ñûãðàë âàæíóþ ðîëü â ôîðìèðîâàíèè ñîâðåìåííîãî áðèòàíñêîãî ñïåöíàçà
Officer of great ability and charm who played a decisive role in shaping Britain’s modern Special Forces
A tall, strong man with a quick wit and a reputation for knowing what he was about, Mike Wilkes was difficult to ignore. As a young man, he revelled in the irregular lifestyle of the Special Forces officer. Headhunted to command 22 SAS in his mid-thirties, he rose to one of the top jobs in the British Army, as Adjutant General.
He was undaunted by officialdom or political expediency; he had set himself high standards of excellence as a young officer, and he refused to compromise when he thought something important.
When challenged by a (Scottish) Secretary of State for Defence on how many black guardsman there would be in the Queen’s Birthday Parade, he offered the answer he thought least likely to provoke disharmony: “Something like the proportion in the Highland regiments”.
Wilkes first showed that he was out of the ordinary on his Gunners’ young officers course after Sandhurst, when he won a direct posting to the 7th Parachute Regiment RHA. The customary route to the Royal Horse Artillery was through exemplary service with a field or medium regiment, a step he avoided by virtue of his impressive course rating. He joined a battery supporting a Parachute Regiment battle group in Bahrain and developed a fascination for the desert that he never lost.
His father, Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Wilkes, had been a Gunner, and to the young Wilkes that was the regiment that offered the widest choice of employment, but even after his outstanding start he found that his career choices led him elsewhere.
When he was presented with a posting to the Junior Leaders Regiment in Oswestry — his suspicion was that it was intended to ensure he would be conveniently situated to play rugby for the Army — he volunteered instead for the SAS selection course.
Having passed, he joined “A” Squadron of 22 SAS commanded by Peter de la Billière, who was to become a friend for life. A year in North Borneo during the Indonesian “confrontation” with Malaysia, engaging Indonesian regular forces on both sides of the frontier, was followed by a second in South Arabia conducting undercover counter-terrorist operations in the Aden townships — dangerous work without a hint of routine or orthodoxy.
At this stage the SAS had little public profile, and Wilkes revelled in the varied and unconventional lifestyle that took him with small SAS training teams to sub-Sahara Africa, where emerging nations of the region sought advice on security and VIP protection.
The Gunners did not forget him, however, and after three years with 22 SAS he was recalled to be adjutant of a medium artillery regiment about to go to Northern Ireland in an infantry role.
Then, while commanding the prestigious Chestnut Troop of 1st RHA in Germany, he was asked to take over command of 22 SAS; he was only 36. This was an exceptional challenge. His squadron commanders were all more experienced in Special Force operations, and the command involved control over widely dispersed commitments with minimal guidance from above. He accepted, nonetheless, and never regretted his decision.
His advice was sought during the raising of the US Delta counter-terrorist force, which was a chance to establish strong links with Washington. His personality proved ideal for this sort of work. Not only did he look the part, but his unhurried manner and easy humour went down well across the Atlantic; he never allowed his expertise to be seen as anything more than a source to be tapped as and when required.
Ironically, perhaps, after he had put so much effort into 22 SAS, it was not Wilkes but his successor Lieutenant-Colonel (later General Sir) Michael Rose, who was in command during the siege of the Iranian Embassy in 1980. This event, with some of the more dramatic moments broadcast live on television, brought the SAS into the limelight and formed the basis of the public reputation it enjoys today.
Looking back on his period of command, Wilkes realised that he had had a greater degree of autonomy over both action and counter-terrorist philosophy than he ever enjoyed again, even when a member of the Army Board.
His next appointment could scarcely have offered a greater contrast. The then Chief of the General Staff, General (later Field Marshal Lord) Bramall, a frequent visitor to Wilkes’ Hereford SAS base, invited him to be his Military Assistant. Wilkes loathed the job at first and frankly intimated to Bramall he would welcome a change. Bramall told him, equally frankly, that he was doing fine and should get on with it.
At the beginning of 1986, after commanding an armoured brigade in Germany, Wilkes was recalled to Special Forces. He was instructed to bring the SAS and the Royal Navy’s Special Boat Service under a new joint service command answering to the Chief of the Defence Staff. This called for all his charm and strength of resolve, as the two organisations were rivals in both reputation and expertise. He succeeded.
He was perhaps fortunate to survive his term as Director. On a goodwill visit to his opposite number in the German Army, it was suggested that the two directors should make a parachute jump. Wilkes agreed, only to find that his borrowed German parachute failed to open. He deployed his reserve chute just in time, but it was unable to open fully. He hit the ground very hard indeed. Luckily no bones were broken, but he was bruised from head to foot.
A return to Germany in 1988 to command 3rd Armoured Division was less dramatic, but not without its difficulties. Severe restrictions on field manoeuvres had been imposed in response to economic and environmental pressures. Even so, Wilkes ran a divisional exercise that involved pushing two armoured brigades over the Weser using floating bridges at night.
Promoted and knighted KCB to become Commander UK Field Army and Inspector-General of the TA in 1990, he had barely come to grips with the job before the First Gulf War demanded his presence at the Joint Command HQ at High Wycombe.
He made flying visits to the war zone to advise General de la Billière on armoured warfare — drawing on his own command experience in Germany. He was in General Norman Schwarzkopf’s command post when the US Secretary for Defence called to say that King Fahd of Saudi Arabia had complained to President George Bush Sr, after a CNN newscast had shown US serviceman and women dancing together in his desert kingdom.
Wilkes was appointed Middle East Adviser to the CDS, an extra, unpaid job, for the rest of his service. His advice on the reorganisation of Jordan’s armed forces earned him the country’s Order of Merit 1st Class.
In his final appointment as Adjutant General, from 1993 to 1995, he faced a host of problems arising from changing social attitudes, relating to such questions as the role of women in the Army, housing policy, the ethnic balance and changes to military legal practice.
He was Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief Jersey, where his wife had lived as a child, from 1995 to 2000. Subsequently, he took up various directorships in the retail sector and
advised on Middle East matters. He was Colonel Commandant of the Honourable Artillery Company 1992-98,
president Army Cadet Forces Association from 1993 and president of the
Special Forces Club, the Travellers’ Club and the Royal Channel Islands Yacht Club.
He married Anne Huelin, daughter of the Jersey landowner Major J..L..R. Huelin. She survives him with two sons.
General Sir Michael Wilkes, KCB, CBE, Adjutant General 1990-1995 was born on June 11, 1940. He died on October 27, 2013 aged 73