First Sea Lord who used his vast experience of naval strategy to argue that Britain should retain Trident as its nuclear deterrent
During his final six years in the Navy, between 1987 and 1993, two issues of particular importance occupied Julian Oswald while he held the influential posts of Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet and First Sea Lord.
He realised from his previous experience at the MoD that Britain could never afford the RAF’s proposals for a tactical air-to-surface nuclear missile as well as the Trident submarine-borne nuclear ballistic missile system without serious financial harm to the conventional capabilities of the Armed Forces.
In the arcane theology of nuclear deterrence, Trident was designed to be the strategic system of last resort; always on patrol at sea, invulnerable and, during the Cold War, aimed at defeating the anti-missile defences of the “Moscow criterion” and thereby deterring the Soviet leadership from threatening Britain or Europe.
However, such an all-or-nothing posture lacked a certain amount of credibility. Nato’s deterrent philosophy had envisaged a series of flexible escalatory responses to the threat of aggression that would hopefully contain any conflict to a level below the strategic, with its fearful possibility of “nuclear winter”. This continuing principle called for the possession of a number of less powerful weapons that could be more flexibly targeted, but, if land-based, would raise all sorts of problems concerned with “counter-force” retaliation and internal security.
During the last years of the Cold War and thereafter Oswald campaigned for the adaptation of the Trident system in terms of its technology and targeting flexibility so that it would be acceptable in a “sub-strategic” or even a non-nuclear role. In this he was successful. Trident remains Britain’s only nuclear weapon system.
It was also clear that in the post-Cold War political environment the objectives of national navies had changed. Long outdated was a strategy that required the defeat of the enemy fleet in order to establish sea control. In its place came the concepts of “expeditionary warfare” and “littoral operations”, recently illustrated by world events from Sierra Leone to the Gulf.
The role of the Royal Navy would be even more the gun that fires the projectile — the Army — ashore than it had been historically. An emphasis on amphibious operations, or “brown water” as opposed to “blue water”, had been part of naval staff thinking for some time, and Oswald succeeded in establishing the case for the large helicopter-carrying ship, HMS Ocean, which by its presence in the fleet also brought forward in its wake the logic for further specialist amphibious shipping and other capability upgrades.
During his time as First Sea Lord, Oswald was also responsible for the introduction of women in seagoing ships, a controversial issue for which he was criticised by a small clique but which became accepted as thoroughly normal and an initiative that defused any thought that the Navy’s practices had not kept up with the times.
John Julian Robertson Oswald was born in 1933, passed out from Dartmouth Naval College in 1951 and served as a midshipman in Britain’s last battleship, Vanguard, being present for her final and noisy main armament firings. After sub-lieutenant courses, he was appointed in charge of the 50-plus midshipmen in the “gunroom” of the training carrier Theseus. “It contained all the funnies — air cadets, Canadians, Venezuelans, reservist national servicemen,” he said.
As the “action stations” officer of the watch in the cruiser HMS Newfoundland, Oswald witnessed the destruction of the Egyptian frigate Domiat in the Gulf of Suez during the ill-fated 1956 Anglo-French-Israeli campaign against the ambitions of President Nasser. Domiat was sailing south with lights on when she was challenged and illuminated by the darkened Newfoundland’s searchlight and ordered to halt. Domiat responded with three shots from her 4in gun before Newfoundland’s 8in salvos knocked out her gun and wrecked her machinery, stopping her attempt to ram. Newfoundland suffered six casualties. Only about half Domiat’s crew — 68 — were rescued. Oswald recorded that the action “made a pretty horrifying impression on me at close range”.
Still in Newfoundland, Oswald met in Hong Kong his wife Roni Thompson, the daughter of the colony’s Accountant-General.
His next tour was in the Dartmouth Training Squadron, followed by the year-long course specialising in gunnery at Portsmouth. Oswald never considered himself a properly tribal gunnery officer, being averse to “gas and gaiters”, and because his only two gunnery jobs were concerned with air weapons, the first of these in the large carrier Victorious in the Far East where he was responsible for arming the high-performance jets, then carried with their bombs and missiles, as well as custody of atomic weapons.
His first command was the minesweeper Yarnton which, unusually for this class of patrol vessels, actually had to sweep a Second World War minefield off the Iceland coast as well as contribute to the laborious and unrewarding task of checking that European shipping routes were clear of wartime mines. He did the naval staff course in 1964, followed by tours as an instructor in air weapons and second-in-command of the frigate Naiad in the crack Londonderry Squadron.
His first Ministry of Defence job was in the plans division — “in some distinguished company” — from where he was promoted to commander and captaincy of the frigate Bacchante. This was an amusing duty with nine months as the West Indies’ guardship and a period in Malta “practising for our withdrawal” under the regime of Prime Minister Dom Mintoff.
While serving in the Defence Policy Staff, his promotion to captain earned an extra tour at assistant director level in the division dealing with matters outside the Nato area. After the Royal College of Defence Studies in 1976, Oswald commanded the destroyer Newcastle, then being built at Swan Hunter’s yard on the Tyne and subject to delays. A brief commission included a visit to St Helena where his father “had left him a great aunt in his will”. He was able to fly ashore in the helicopter with her birthday cake on his knees.
He subsequently toured the country in charge of the Royal Navy Presentation Team, delivering lectures to a variety of audiences, recorded as “hard work, but great fun”. In Exeter prison an old lag asked him whether he had “the key” (to the atom bomb). “Of course,” he said. Oswald’s car keys satisfied him.
After two years in command of Dartmouth Oswald was promoted to rear-admiral in 1982 and appointed to the MoD in the assistant chief of defence staff in the policy and nuclear role. This was followed by his final seagoing tour in 1985 to 1987 as Flag Officer Third Flotilla that carried with it the role of Commander Anti-Submarine Warfare Striking Force. This function was important to Nato’s campaign plans for the North Atlantic and Norwegian Sea which envisaged a seaborne reinforcement of Nato’s northern flank on the Norwegian coast. Continued allocation of this role to a Royal Navy officer by Nato planners, particularly the Americans, was a tribute to a British reputation for anti-submarine expertise that had to be maintained by hard training and technological effort.
He was appointed KCB in 1987, and advanced to GCB in 1989. On leaving the Navy in 1993 he undertook a wide range of activities. One was his hobby as a glider pilot which he had taken up when a rear-admiral. He became a qualified instructor and was proud that he introduced more than 800 people to gliding. His height record was 22,500ft over the Cairngorms.
Between 1993 and 2005 Oswald was a non-executive member of the Wessex Regional Health Authority and vice-chairman of the South and West Regional Health Authority; director and chairman of the software company Sema; director of MGM Assurance; director of marine specialists James Fisher and Sons and Corda (Operational Analysis) as well as chairman of Aerosystems International, Informatic and Green Issues (Planning PR).
His charitable and institutional activities included presidency of the Officers’ Association, the Sea Cadet Association, the Shipwrecked Mariners and Fishermens’ Royal Benevolent Society. He was vice-president of Seafarers UK, the World Ship Trust and the RUSI. He was a trustee of the National Maritime Museum, and chairman of the National Historic Ships Committee and the quarterly The Naval Review. He was chairman of the gunners’ St Barbara Association and patron of Deal Maritime Museum and of the Waveney Stardust Trust for the disabled and the Solent MS Therapies Group.
He was a governor of the University of Portsmouth until 2000 and served on the councils of the White Ensign Association and the Forces Pensions Society. He was a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights and a Stowaway of the Southampton Master Mariners. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and had an honorary degree from Portsmouth.
Oswald was widely admired for his leadership style; entirely lacking bombast and able to get his way by wellinformed argument, courteously presented and with an irresistible determination. “Watching him chair a meeting was an education,” noted a colleague.
He is survived by his wife, Roni, and their two sons and three daughters.
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Julian Oswald, GCB, First Sea Lord, 1989-93, was born on August 11, 1933. He died on July 19, 2011, aged 77
