Naval marine engineer who organised battle damage repairs to the Falklands task force fleet from a requisitioned oil rig support ship
The Royal Navy’s bitter struggle to liberate the Falkland Islands in 1982 much depended upon the many merchant ships that were “speedily taken up from trade”, giving rise to the acronym STUFT. From the liner Queen Elizabeth II to the 700-ton salvage tug Yorkshireman, 45 tankers, freighters and other types put themselves in harm’s way in support of the Navy’s 27 surface warships and six submarines as well as the 24 tankers and supply ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary.
One of the more important STUFT ships was the oil rig repair ship Stena Seaspread which was requisitioned from the Thistle Field in the North Sea on April 10, arriving in Portsmouth on April 12. In the next four days, Captain Paul Badcock, at that time the Commander-in-Chief’s staff marine engineer officer, supervised the installation of more living quarters, a heavy machine shop, more storage space, satellite communications and navigation systems as well as mustering 160 technicians to form Naval Party 1810 and selecting with skill some 900 tons of stores for a war of uncertain characteristics and unknown duration to be fought 8,000 miles from home.
Badcock and Stena Seaspread, with her ungainly helicopter deck atop and her normal crew of 32 somewhat crowded, sailed for South Georgia where, with the help of the Antarctic patrol ship Endurance, was able to loot further scrap steel plate from the Grytviken whaling station. Thereafter, Stena Seaspread operated mostly in the open ocean, using her propulsive positioning system, to carry out weather and battle damage repairs to some 40 ships including four captured Argentine vessels. Notable cases were the destroyer Glasgow which was pierced through the engine room by a bomb which did not explode but so damaged the hull that she had to return to the UK after patching up.
Charge Chief Shipwright Alan Cross recalled the sombre, silent atmosphere aboard the destroyer Glamorgan after suffering 13 fatalities from an Exocet missile hit: “They were absolutely shocked. We were told not to talk to them unless they wanted to talk to us.
“Besides engineering fixes, holes there were aplenty,” he recalled. “Small from aircraft fire, all shapes and sizes from bombs and rockets. I used all the trades I had ever been taught.”
After the Argentine surrender, repair work and buoy laying at Port Stanley, Stena Seaspread left on July 25 for home and a rapturous welcome. Badcock was appointed CBE in recognition of his pioneering work and outstanding leadership. “There was no repair base within thousands of miles and thus his efforts were irreplaceable,” read his citation.
Brought up at Seaton in east Devon, Paul Badcock faced a toss-up between farming and the Navy, joining Dartmouth naval college in 1948. Large in physique, personality and charm, Badcock was captain of the rugby team at the RN Engineering College near Plymouth, then of the formidable Devonport Services team and subsequently the Navy. He served as a watchkeeper in the carrier Ocean and the destroyer Decoy before in 1960 being appointed to a training job at the apprentices school HMS Fisgard near Plymouth where he led the youngsters from the front, noted for his “outward-bound” expeditions across Dartmoor in all weathers.
He had an unusually large number of seagoing appointments, the next being the ice patrol ship Protector, serving two eight-month voyages to the Antarctic before tours in the frigates Dido and Phoebe as marine engineer officer. Next came the job of senior engineer, or departmental second-in-command, fount of wisdom and holy terror to the junior officers, in the large fleet carrier Eagle. He clearly merited his promotion to commander in June 1968 — there followed a pleasant two years in Gibraltar dockyard where he and his family enjoyed camping expeditions in Spain and Morocco.
They bought a house near Weymouth in Dorset when Badcock was given a demanding post with the Flag Officer Sea Training at Portland. His promotion to captain came in late 1976, his talents and management skills recognised by his appointment as Fleet Marine Engineering Officer, reporting to the CinC. His final appointment was Captain Fleet Maintenance, responsible for the technicalities and policy of marine engineering support.
In retirement at Briantspuddle in Dorset, Badcock, a man of firm Christian faith, devoted himself to his community. He was a Samaritan for 15 years, an active churchwarden, parish councillor, member of the Royal British Legion and a forceful member of the Campaign to Protect Rural England where his campaign RAGE, Residents Against Gravel Extraction, became a template for similar actions elsewhere.
He is survived by his wife Eve “Chips” Chittenden, whom he married in 1957, and their two daughters.
Captain Paul Badcock, CBE, naval marine engineer, was born on February 24, 1930. He died on August 13, 2011, aged 81
>Air Commodore 'Dim’ Strong
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Wartime bomber pilot and prisoner of war who played a pivotal role in several escape attempts including that at Stalag Luft III
As a flight commander in 104 Squadron in September 1941, David (“Dim”) Strong was compelled to ditch his Wellington bomber in the North Sea after it ran out of fuel on its return from a raid on the Fiat factory in Turin. Rescued by a Danish fishing boat, he and his crew were landed in occupied Denmark and passed into captivity. For the remainder of the war Strong played an active role in tunnelling and morale-boosting activities in a number of different PoW camps, eventually ending up in Stalag Luft III in Sagan.
There, as adjutant of one of the camp compounds, he was noted for the good working relationship he established with the camp authorities which was of immense benefit to the wellbeing of Stalag Luft III’s inmates. As such he was not allowed to take part in the risky “Great Escape” from the camp, which took place in March 1944. While such a decision may well have irked such a die-hard organiser of escape attempts, it was perhaps to be his good fortune. Of the 76 prisoners who made it beyond the wire that night 50 were later shot on Hitler’s direct orders.
Repatriated to the UK at the war’s end he continued with an RAF career that had begun in the mid-1930s, rising to senior appointments and commanding the Apprentice School at Halton, Buckinghamshire, from 1964 to 1966.
David Malcolm Strong (known throughout his life as “Dim”, though that was probably an accident of initials and no reflection in his incisive mind) was born in Cardiff in 1913 and educated at Cardiff High School. In 1936 he joined the RAF on a short service commission and after pilot training was posted to 166 Squadron, then operating the antiquated Handley Page Heyford, the last of the RAF’s biplane long-range night bombers.
In 1940 he became an instructor in an operational training unit and was mentioned in dispatches. The following April one of the engines of the twin-engined Whitley bomber he was captaining on a navigation exercise caught fire and he began to lose height. Instead of bailing out as would have been excusable, he determined to try to save the aircraft, and was able to bring it into an emergency landing, for which he was awarded the Air Force Cross.
In the small hours of September 11, 1941, when returning from bombing Turin, a target towards the limit of the Wellington’s normal range, Strong’s aircraft ran into bad weather and was struck by lightning which affected its navigational equipment and radio. Running dangerously low on fuel he eased the Wellington down through cloud gaining some visibility at 300ft. But this time he realised he would have to ditch and through his skill got the aircraft down in one piece on to the surface of the North Sea, where he and his crew took to the dinghy, as the Wellington sank.
After several hours they were picked up by a Danish fishing vessel, whose crew were reluctant to try and make for England, landing them instead at the Jutland port of Esbjerg. There they were royally entertained by the adjutant and pilots of the local Luftwaffe fighter unit, before being sent to Germany, where their lives thereafter took on a more austere character.
In October 1941 he arrived at Oflag VIB (at about the same time that the legless fighter ace Douglas Bader also became an inmate of this camp near Warburg in North West Germany). As a senior officer Strong soon became involved in escape attempts and was put in charge of one of the three digging shifts of a tunnel designed to surface outside the perimeter. This collapsed, undermined by torrential rain when the end was in sight but, nothing daunted, Oflag VIB’s inmates began another, one of which began in Strong’s barrack hut. After 300ft of digging, this, too, was about to break surface when it was discovered. By this time regarded as a “troublemaker” Strong was transferred in May 1942 to Stalag Luft III in Silesia (now Poland). From there, however, he was soon moved to Oflag XXIB in Pomerania where he was once more put in charge of a tunnel. This, too, was discovered just as success was in its sights and Strong was speedily dispatched back to Sagan. There in the perishing cold January and February of 1945, the inmates of the camp were marched out to make their way westwards to prevent them from falling into the hands of the advancing Red Army. Many died in the bitter weather, but Strong survived to be repatriated in May 1945.
After the war he was offered a permanent commission and after commanding two RAF stations, Jurby in the Isle of Man and Driffield, Yorkshire, passed through the Staff College in 1949. He subsequently returned to the college’s directing staff, commanded RAF Coningsby, Lincolnshire, 1957-59, and was Senior Air Staff Officer RAF Germany from 1962 to 1963. In 1964 he was appointed to Halton where he became a most popular commandant in his guidance of the Trenchard “brats” — graduates of the illustrious RAF technical apprenticeship scheme — of his era. He was appointed CB in 1964.
A keen sportsman — he had played rugby for Cardiff and in the RAF team that took on the Army at Twickenham in 1936 — Strong was chairman of the RAF Rugby Union, 1954-56, and of the RAF Golf Society, 1964-66. He married in 1941 Daphne Irene Warren-Brown. She died in 2008 and he is survived by their two sons and a daughter.
Air Commodore David (Dim) Strong, CB, AFC, wartime bomber pilot and PoW, was born on September 30, 1913. He died on August 21, 2011, aged 97
Wartime captain of anti-submarine trawlers who was decorated for his bravery in helping to dismantle an enemy magnetic mine
Geoffrey Holder-Jones’s father was a Liverpool draper and somewhat authoritarian. Amid the economic depression of the early 1930s, the young Geoffrey complained of loneliness, so was told to go and join the “weekend sailors”, thus becoming a signalman, or “bunting-tosser”, in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. His subsequent career in the smallest ships of the wartime navy exemplified the unsung fringes of the fleet so often neglected by the history books.
He first went to sea for training in the battlecruiser Renown. Mobilised in 1939, he joined the cruiser Adventure which was, at the outbreak of war, the navy’s only substantial minelayer. He was present at the remarkable and now largely forgotten event when King George VI reviewed in Weymouth Bay on August 9, 1939 no less than 133 warships of the Reserve Fleet before they dispersed to their war stations — a prescient Admiralty move as war was not declared until Sunday, September 3.
Adventure was badly damaged by a magnetic-influence mine near the Tongue light vessel, suffering many casualties. Holder-Jones was flung out of his bunk, injuring his hand. He was then drafted to join a converted herring drifter called Tritonia in Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. During his tour, a destroyer captured a German minelayer off the Norwegian coast and towed it into Scapa. Two “boffins” from HMS Vernon, the enemy mine research centre at Portsmouth, wished to dismantle one of the magnetic mines, so Holder-Jones volunteered to help, being subsequently awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his contribution to this dangerous task.
Selected for officer training at Lancing College in Sussex, Holder-Jones met his future wife, Gladys, at a dance on Brighton Pier in February 1941. Commissioned in March, he was sent to the 560-ton “Lake”-class armed whaler Grasmere, renamed Wastwater and based in Iceland. Here, under extreme weather conditions, Wastwater patrolled the Hvalfiord anchorage and in December 1941 escorted Russian convoy PQ7B part-way to Murmansk. In August 1941, Wastwater was one of the three trawlers involved in towing U570, the only U-boat to surrender to an aircraft during the war, to an Icelandic beach.
In February 1942 Wastwater was despatched to the eastern seaboard of the United States. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 was followed by a declaration of war by Germany which found the United States totally unprepared to defend against U-boat attack the vulnerable coastwise merchant traffic, often silhouetted at night against waterfront lights and lacking escorts, aircraft and a convoy system. Thus Britain’s often-forgotten loan of 10 corvettes and 22 anti-submarine trawlers — with a good deal of sound advice based on experience — was very welcome.
Holder-Jones was given command of the better-armed “Isles”-class trawler Baffin, completed at Collingwood Shipyard, Ontario, in August 1942. Returning home after three years overseas, he was appointed an auxiliary naval pilot at Portsmouth, mustering landing craft for the D-Day invasion. Subsequently and up to the end of the war, he commanded the 1000-ton “Military”-class trawler Guardsman, the largest type built during the war. Highlights were a visit to Guardsman by the King and Queen at Wallasey and receiving the surrender of U-boat U2334. Holder-Jones was awarded the Volunteer Reserve Decoration.
Needing a job after demobilisation, he was employed painting Brighton Pier, assuring his employer that he was not frightened of heights or water. He recalled that he was paid more than his captain’s pay in Guardsman. He then trained as a teacher and taught in a number of schools around Brighton, finally for many years as the headmaster of St Andrew’s Church School, Hove. Known as a lively and engaging man, he worked for 20 years as a volunteer at Worthing Hospital. His biography, Signalman Jones, written by Tim Parker, appeared in 2010 with a foreword by one of his pupils, Rear- Admiral John Lippiett, chief executive of the Mary Rose project.
He is survived by his wife Gladys, whom he married in 1944, and their two daughters.
Lieutenant-Commander Geoffrey Holder-Jones, DSM, VRD, wartime trawler captain and schoolmaster, was born on September 12, 1915. He died on September 10, 2011, aged 95
Sapper officer awarded the MC in Korea who became Assistant Commandant at Sandhurst and later advised charities on financing
John Page was a far cry from the type of Sapper officer satirised by the rest of the Army as “mad, married or Methodist”. Married certainly, but sane, Roman Catholic and with an abiding concern for those less fortunate or less forceful than himself. After a successful military career, he turned to the better organisation and financing of charity work, helping, for example, “Home Start”, a Leicester-based group providing aid to disadvantaged families with young children, to expand into an operation with 200 branches nationwide.
As a Sapper officer Page took part in the North West European campaign when, in addition to the usual myriad of engineer tasks, his field company supported “R” Force, the mixed bag of units responsible for feeding false intelligence to the enemy about Allied deployments and intentions. He recalled in particular the deception — using inflatable dummy tanks and trucks — to distract German attention from Montgomery’s preparation for the February 1945 Reichswald offensive.
He went to India in the summer of 1945 but Japan’s surrender in August precluded any part in active operations in the Far East until, after serving in England, he left for Korea in 1950 with 55 Field Squadron RE to join 28th British Commonwealth Brigade. The American-led United Nations force had driven the invading communist North Koreans back into their own territory as far as the Yalu river in the extreme north, but the intervention of the Chinese Army — under the guise of “volunteers” — changed the odds. The UN force was pushed southwards and one of Page’s first jobs was to blow two bridges north of Seoul. Despite the enemy advancing on both his flanks, he delayed the firing just long enough to allow the last American unit to cross to safety.
At the onset of the Imjin river battle in April 1951, his engineer troop was again threatened by encirclement, this time by several hundred of the enemy. Adopting infantry tactics, he placed his Sappers in fire positions to hold the high ground he had chosen and inflicted casualties on the advancing Chinese until ordered to withdraw. For this action, and for carrying a seriously wounded man to safety under fire in a separate engagement, he was awarded the Military Cross.
On qualification at the Staff College, Camberley, he went to Cyprus — then in the grip of the EOKA terrorist campaign for union with Greece — as chief logistics staff officer of an infantry brigade based in Nicosia. This was a busy and dangerous job with daily bomb explosions and murder commonplace. He was mentioned in despatches at its conclusion in 1957.
Having made his name in two postwar campaigns, it was not surprising to find him teaching at the Staff College after commanding a field engineer squadron in Germany. He was markedly successful, bringing wit and good humour into discussions that too often lapsed into caustic criticism under less student-friendly instructors. His interest in the development of young officers did not go unnoticed and he was later appointed Assistant Commandant at Sandhurst.
From his command of an armoured engineer regiment in Germany, Page served exclusively in posts demanding innovation and change. His regiment was equipped with a new generation of assault demolition vehicles and bridge-layers based on the Centurion tank. Then he went to the MoD as secretary of a committee on future army structure before joining the Imperial Defence College as a junior member of the Directing Staff. On promotion to brigadier in 1969, he returned to Germany as Commander Royal Engineers 1st (British) Corps, facing expansion and reorganisation of Sapper resources to meet the increased armoured mobility of the infantry.
Sandhurst, often perceived as a conservative institution, was on the brink of upheaval when he arrived as Assistant Commandant and was made responsible for instituting radical change. In response to the market force factor of insufficient suitable applicants for the two-year course designed to produce the full-career officer, the curriculum was to be remodelled on that of the Officer Cadet School at Aldershot turning out subalterns to command platoons or their equivalent on short-service commissions, a function Sandhurst also absorbed. Page did his best with a scheme that he and many contemporaries regarded as potentially damaging in the longer term, but fortunately the huge increase in the number of university graduates applying for the Sandhurst course designed specifically for them mitigated its impact.
Page’s final military appointment as Director of Personal Services was in many ways the apogee of a career spent wrestling with intractable difficulties. There is never a moment in peacetime that financial resources are adequate to match the requirements of service pay and conditions of service. Page put his broad shoulders to this heavy wheel, as had others before him and have since. He was appointed CB for his efforts on leaving the Army in 1978.
John Humphrey Page was the son of Captain W. J. Page of the East Lancashire Regiment, who was severely wounded in the First World War. He was educated at Stonyhurst and attended the wartime short course at Glasgow University. On leaving the Army, he was a Colonel-Commandant Royal Engineers (1980-85), a director of London Law Trust (1979-88) and of RBM (Holdings) from 1980 to 1986, but his principal work was as an adviser or member of council of a wide variety of charities.
His work for Home Start, which he joined in 1980 when the charity had 30 volunteers supporting the same number of families, continued over a decade in which the charity expanded to a workforce of more than 7,000 volunteers. He was a vice-chairman of SSAFA and chairman of the Winged Fellowship Trust (later Vitalise), for Wiltshire, providing holidays for the elderly and disabled, chairman of the board of governors at St Mary’s School, Shaftesbury, and a member of the board of governors of Stonyhurst.
He married Angela Bunting in 1956, who survives him with three sons and a daughter.
Major-General J. H. Page, CB, OBE, MC, soldier and adviser to charities, was born on March 5, 1923. He died on September 21, 2011, aged 88
