British Admirals of the Fleet

by T A Heathcote

  Churchill justified this selection on the grounds of Keyes’s high rank, which would emphasize the importance to be placed upon such operations, and on his proven offensive spirit and experience. Other officers felt that Churchill had acted out of misguided loyalty to an old friend and supporter, who had been constantly badgering him for a command. Some even thought it was to stop him advertising the shortcomings of the British Expeditionary Force in his defence of Leopold. Despite his success in organizing the Commando forces and developing many of the special craft required for amphibious operations, Keyes own aggressive personality, and his access to Churchill made him unpopular with the Chiefs of Staff (all junior in rank to him) and the senior commanders with whom he needed to work. The Admiralty resented his criticism of the Norwegian campaign, the Army disliked his having control over the Commandos and the Royal Air Force (having lost control over the Fleet Air Arm) was subjected to his constant complaints about the weakness of Coastal Command.

  Churchill remained attracted by Keyes’s bold and imaginative schemes (considered by the Chiefs of Staff and theatre commanders to be rash and impractical), but was eventually persuaded to remove him from office early in October 1941. His place was given to the politically more astute Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten [102], who had Churchill’s ear, but whose relatively junior rank was not such as to alarm the Chiefs of Staff. Keyes, resentful of his betrayal, remained on the back-benches criticizing the Cabinet’s conduct of the war. In July 1942, following the fall of Tobruk, he seconded a vote of no confidence in Churchill’s administration. The motion was defeated and the tide of the war turned, but to prevent Keyes causing any more trouble in the Commons he was given a peerage as Baron Keyes, of Zeebrugge and of Dover, in January 1943. He himself was happy to accept, as Trenchard had already gone to the Lords, where he acted as an advocate of the RAF. Early in 1944 Keyes suffered a detached retina. A near miss by a bomb on the hospital where he was being treated affected his recovery from surgery and he lost the vision of his right eye.

  During the summer of 1944, sponsored by the Ministry of Information, Lord Keyes made a lecture tour of Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. He was invited to sea with United States Pacific Fleet and was present at the battle of the Philippine Sea (19–20 October 1944) in the USS Appalachian, flagship of Vice-Admiral Richard L Conolly, United States Navy. Covering the invasion of Leyte, Appalachian was attacked by Japanese aircraft and the ship’s anti-aircraft smoke blanketed Keyes and others on the bridge. The damage to his lungs caused by smoke inhalation was made worse when he later had to fly without oxygen and he never fully recovered. Keyes died at Tingewick on 26 December 1945, from a heart condition aggravated by the injuries he had sustained in the Pacific. He was buried in the Zeebrugge corner of the cemetery of St James’s, Dover. His elder son, Lieutenant Colonel G C T Keyes, VC, had been killed leading a raid on General Erwin Rommel’s headquarters in Libya in November 1941, and the peerage was inherited by Lord Keyes’s younger son, at that time a lieutenant in the Navy.

  LAMBE

  Sir CHARLES EDWARD, GCB, CVO (1900–1960) [103]

  Charles Lambe, the only son of Henry Lambe of Grove House, Stalbridge, was born at Stalbridge, Dorset, on 20 December 1900. Lambe became a cadet in the Royal Naval College, Osborne, in 1914 and after completing his education at Dartmouth during the First World War, joined the Fleet as a midshipman in the battleship Emperor of India on 15 August 1917. He remained there until the end of hostilities in November 1918 and subsequently served in the battleship King George V from June 1919 to January 1921. He qualified as a free balloon pilot and later obtained a private aircraft pilot’s licence. He was promoted to sub-lieutenant on 15 January 1921 and was appointed to the light cruiser Raleigh in March 1921. He was promoted to lieutenant on 15 February 1922 and was one of the young naval officers (immortalized in Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Scholars) sent to Cambridge University to fill the gaps in their education caused by their war service. In August 1923 he was appointed to the battleship Benbow, flagship of the Fourth Battle Squadron in the Mediterranean Fleet. During 1925–26 he attended the torpedo school Vernon at Portsmouth. After qualifying, he served from 1927 to 1929 as torpedo lieutenant in the destroyer Stuart, leader of the Second Destroyer Flotilla in the Mediterranean Fleet. He was promoted to lieutenant-commander on 15 February 1930 and then attended the Royal Naval Staff College, Greenwich. In 1932 he joined the cruiser Hawkins, flagship of the C-in-C, East Indies.

  Lambe was promoted to commander on 30 June 1933 and joined the staff of Rear-Admiral A B Cunningham [91], then commanding the destroyer flotillas of the Mediterranean Fleet. Lambe returned home in 1935 to become commander of Vernon from which he was promoted to captain on 31 December 1937. In January 1939 he was given command of the cruiser Dunedin, a seagoing training ship for boys and target ship in the Reserve fleet at Portsmouth. On the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 she became an operational unit of the Home Fleet and spent ninety-two of the first hundred and twenty days of the war at sea, mostly in the Northern Patrol. In 1940 he married the daughter of a baronet, Sir Walter Corbet, and later had with her a son and a daughter. In October 1940 Lambe was appointed to the Plans Department of the Admiralty, where he spent most of the war successively as Assistant Director, Deputy Director and Director. Early in 1944 Lambe left the Admiralty to become captain of the aircraft carrier Illustrious in the British Pacific Fleet and took part in air operations against Japan. His ship was hit by a kamikaze suicide bomber on 6 April 1945 but cleared her flight deck within twenty minutes and remained on station until ordered home a week later for a long-delayed refit.

  After the end of the Second World War in August 1945 Lambe returned to the Admiralty as Assistant Chief of Staff (Air), with promotion to acting rear-admiral on 29 August 1945. With his promotion confirmed on 8 July 1947, he remained at the Admiralty as Flag Officer, Flying Training, from September 1947 to August 1949. He commanded the Third Aircraft Carrier Squadron in the Home Fleet, with his flag in the aircraft carrier Vengeance from September 1949 to January 1951, and was promoted to vice-admiral on 1 December 1950. Between March 1951 and January 1953 Lambe was Flag Officer (Air) Home, based at the Royal Naval Air Station, Daedalus, Lee-on-Solent. He served as C-in-C, Far East station, from March 1953 to April 1955, where he was awarded the KCB, and promoted to admiral on 30 March 1954. Sir Charles Lambe was Second Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Personnel at the Admiralty from 1954 to 1957. Between November 1957 and February 1959 he was C-in-C, Mediterranean Fleet and NATO C-in-C, Allied Forces, Mediterranean (CINCAFMED).

  Lambe was then appointed First Sea Lord, on the recommendation of Earl Mountbatten, Chief of the Defence Staff [102]. Mountbatten’s view was that Lambe would have the confidence of the Fleet because he was known to be well able to fight the Navy’s battles in Whitehall. He had also played a valuable part in supporting Mountbatten and Sir Rhoderick McGrigor [100] in their earlier struggle with Duncan Sandys, Defence Minister in Harold Macmillan’s first Cabinet, over the question of keeping aircraft carriers. Moreover, he sympathized with Mountbatten’s policy of subordinating the separate Service Departments to a unified Ministry of Defence. Lambe served in the Boards of Admiralty headed successively by the Earl of Selkirk and by Lord Carrington in Macmillan’s administration, but suffered a serious heart attack six months after his appointment. He left office, with promotion to admiral of the fleet on 10 May 1960 and died at his home in Newport, Fife, on 29 August 1960. He was a keen horseman and polo-player, a competent artist and a talented musician, who kept two pianos in his flagships so that he could play duets with his composer friends.

  LAMBTON

  HEDWORTH, see MEUX, the Honourable Sir HEDWORTH

  LAMBTON, [66]

  LEACH

  Sir HENRY CONYERS, GCB (1923-) [111]

  Henry Leach, third son of the future Captain J C Leach, Royal Navy, was born on 18 November 1923. After preparatory schooling at St Peter’s Court, Broadstairs, Kent, he joine
d the Royal Naval College as a cadet in 1937. He remained there on the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 and was promoted to midshipman on 1 January 1941. He was then appointed successively to the cruiser Mauritius and battleship Rodney, prior to joining the cruiser Edinburgh in which he served in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean. On the outbreak of war with Japan in December 1941 he was based at Singapore, where he had his last conversation with his father, captain of the battleship Prince of Wales, who was shortly afterwards lost with his ship off the coast of Malaya. After returning home, Henry Leach served in the destroyer Sardonyx before being promoted to sub-lieutenant on 1 October 1942. He was appointed to the battleship Duke of York, flagship of the Home Fleet, in January 1943 where he was promoted to lieutenant in October 1943, and elected to remain in the flagship, in charge of “A” turret. In Duke of York, he took part in escorting convoys to northern Russia and the sinking of the German battle-cruiser Scharnhorst at the battle of the North Cape (26 December 1943). In the autumn of 1944 he joined the destroyer Javelin, in which he served in the Home Fleet and the Mediterranean.

  After the end of the Second World War in 1945 Leach served in Javelin in the 14th Destroyer Flotilla off Palestine (then a British mandate). When both the commanding officer and the first lieutenant were posted out following a refusal by a number of ratings to do duty, Leach was advanced to first lieutenant to fill the vacancy in this appointment. In 1946 he was appointed to the destroyer flotilla leader Chequers, from which he joined the gunnery school Excellent. He qualified as a gunnery officer in 1947 and was re-appointed to Excellent as an instructor. There, he declined an offer to train and command the Portsmouth team in the naval field gun race at the annual Royal Tournament. Leach was subsequently given (to his widowed mother’s despair) what he perceived as a penal appointment for having declined this offer, the post of gunnery officer to the Second Minesweeping Flotilla in the Aegean, in the flotilla leader Fierce, which was armed only with light anti-aircraft guns. On this station he met his future wife, Mary, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Rear-Admiral (later Admiral Sir Henry) McCall.

  Leach was promoted to lieutenant-commander on 1 February 1952 and then attended the Royal Naval Staff College, Greenwich. This was followed by eight months at the Admiralty as Staff Officer for the Naval Brigade in London for the coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II. In July 1953 he became gunnery officer of the Fifth Cruiser Squadron on the Far East station in the cruiser Newcastle and served off the coast of Korea at the end of the Korean War. During 1955 he took part in the Malayan insurgency campaign, giving naval gunfire support to ground operations. He was promoted to commander on 30 June 1955 and served as Application Commander for Seaslug, the Navy’s first Guided Weapons system. Between August 1957 to November 1959 Leach was again at the Admiralty, dealing with the officer structure of the Navy and the reductions arising from the general reorganization of the Armed Services in the aftermath of the Suez expedition of October 1956. In 1958 Leach married Mary McCall and later had with her a family of two daughters. Despite temporarily suffering from double vision as the result of a serious car accident, he took command of the destroyer Dunkirk at the end of 1959 in the Mediterranean, where he served until July 1961. He then returned to the Admiralty in the Training Directorate, and then attended the Joint Services Staff College at Latimer, Buckinghamshire, with promotion to captain on 31 December 1961. In July 1962 he became Chief Staff Officer (Plans and Operations) in Far East Fleet headquarters at Singapore. At the end of 1962 a revolt against the British-protected Sultan of Brunei marked the beginning of a prolonged period of confrontation with Indonesia, in which Leach had the task of programming a variety of ships in support of the British ground forces until returning home late in 1964.

  Leach served as Captain (Destroyers) of the Twenty-Seventh Escort Squadron in the Home Fleet and the Mediterranean, in the frigate Galatea, from November 1965 to February 1967 and became Director of Naval Plans at the Ministry of Defence in February 1968. From March 1970 to January 1971 he commanded the commando carrier Albion, in which he learnt to fly helicopters. He strongly supported the abolition in 1970 of the tradition of a daily issue of rum, as being no longer appropriate in a modern navy operating with highly technical equipment. He was promoted to rear-admiral on 7 July 1971 and returned to the Ministry of Defence as Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Policy). In May 1974 Leach became Flag Officer commanding the First Flotilla, based at Portsmouth and comprising about a third of the Navy’s surface fleet, with his flag in a number of ships, principally the cruiser Blake. He was promoted to vice-admiral on 6 July 1974 and became Vice-Chief of Defence Staff (which he considered a “non-job”) in January 1976, with the award of the KCB in 1977.

  Sir Henry Leach was promoted to admiral on 30 March 1977 and served as C-in-C, Fleet, and NATO Allied C-in-C, Channel (CINCHAN) and Eastern Atlantic Area (CINCEASTLANT). Normally based ashore at Northwood, Middlesex, he took the opportunity of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee Fleet Review at Spithead to fly his flag in the aircraft carrier Ark Royal. In July 1979 he became First Sea Lord. He was happy with the improvements to servicemen’s pay introduced by the new Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher, but had reservations about the readiness of her Secretary of State for Defence, Francis Pym, to protect the Navy from reductions. These reservations were increased with the arrival of Pym’s successor, John Nott, in January 1981. Leach fought hard to save the assault ships and anti-submarine aircraft carriers, but in many cases his professional opinion was disregarded and Keith Speed, the Minister for the Navy, was dismissed for supporting him.

  The announcement that, as part of the reductions in the fleet, the survey ship Endurance would be withdrawn from the Antarctic was followed by the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands (1–2 April 1982). Leach considered that, despite the risks, it was the Navy’s duty to attempt the recovery of the islands, something he considered essential for national prestige. He is quoted as saying, “We must go” and, in the absence overseas of the Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Terence Lewin [110], immediately prepared a naval task force for this purpose. He had to explain to the Conservative Prime Minister of the day, Margaret Thatcher, that the ships would take three weeks, not the three days that she envisaged, to reach the South Atlantic. When asked about the aircraft carrier Ark Royal, he pointed out that the old one was being scrapped and the new one would take two years to complete. Nevertheless, his advice was that, even with only two small carriers to provide air cover, the Falklands could be recaptured and that the operation should proceed. This was greeted by the Prime Minister with relief and approval. He came to admire her qualities of leadership and determination, and gave her his full support during what proved to be a rapid and successful campaign, though his opinion of Nott was less favourable.

  In the post-Falklands period Leach remained in office for four months longer than the usual period in order to fight for the ships promised as replacements for those lost in the South Atlantic. Discovering the draft of a ministerial statement giving the misleading impression that the strength of the Navy had not been reduced, he leaked a rebuttal to the Press, to the irritation of his political masters. He was promoted to admiral of the fleet when he retired from active duty on 1 December 1982. Shortly afterwards, Nott was succeeded as Secretary of State for Defence by Michael Heseltine. In retirement Sir Henry Leach settled at his home in Wonston, Winchester, Hampshire. He published his memoirs and undertook many public and charitable offices. From 1983 to 1993 he was President of the Sea Cadet Association.

  LEFANU

  Sir MICHAEL, GCB DSC (1913–70) [106]

  Michael Le Fanu, generally known as “Lef”, (but also, on account of his red hair, as “Ginger”), the son of a naval commander (later captain) of Huguenot descent, was born at Lindfield, Sussex, on 2 August 1913. After attending Bedford School, Bedfordshire, he joined the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in 1926. From January 1931 to June 1933 he served in the cruiser Dorsetshire in the Atla
ntic Fleet, with promotion to midshipman on 1 September 1931. He was then appointed to the cruiser York before becoming an acting sub-lieutenant on 1 January 1934 at the beginning of his promotion courses. Le Fanu joined the destroyer Whitshed in the Mediterranean Fleet in March 1935 and was promoted to lieutenant on 1 June 1935. From September 1936 to the end of 1937 he was in the destroyer Bulldog in the Home Fleet, prior to training during 1938 as a gunnery specialist. After qualifying, he was appointed to the staff of the C-in-C, Mediterranean Fleet, where he was serving on the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. In December 1939 he became gunnery officer of the light cruiser Aurora, in the Home Fleet. Aurora took part in North Atlantic patrols, the Norwegian campaign (9 April-9 June 1940) where Le Fanu was mentioned in despatches, and in the operations leading to the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck (24–27 May 1941). With his ship in the Mediterranean as part of Force K, he was awarded the DSC for his conduct during a night action in which a heavily-escorted Italian convoy was destroyed (8 November 1941). On 19 December 1941, escorting a convoy to Malta, Aurora was badly damaged by a mine.

  In June 1942 Le Fanu joined the gunnery staff of the C-in-C, Home Fleet, with the flag in the battleship Duke of York. He was promoted to lieutenant-commander, and became responsible for the gunnery training of newly-commissioned ships. To his chagrin, he missed the sinking of the German battle-cruiser Scharnhorst (25–26 December 1943), the last surface engagement between capital ships in the history of the Navy, as he was on leave, marrying Prudence Morgan, the daughter of an admiral. They later had a family of two sons and a daughter. In March 1944 he became gunnery officer of the battleship Howe and sailed to join the Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean. Le Fanu was promoted to commander on 31 December 1944 and was appointed naval liaison officer between the British Pacific Fleet and the United States Pacific Fleets at the end of January 1945. He established good working relations with Admiral Raymond A Spruance and Vice-Admiral William F Halsey, United States Navy, and played a valuable part in arranging a British presence in the Allied force that sailed into the Inland Sea to receive the Japanese surrender. He was in the American flagship, USS Missouri, at the surrender ceremony on 2 September 1945.