Henry Leach

Sir Henry Conyers Leach GCB (born November 18, 1923 - April 26, 2011 ) was a British Royal Navy Admiral who was First Sea Lord during the Falklands War and who convinced Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher that the Falkland Islands could be regained by military means .

Life

Training and World War II

Leach, son of future sea captain JC Leach, entered the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth in 1937 after attending school at St. Peter's Court in Broadstairs . In the following years he served on the battleship Rodney and the light cruiser Edinburgh in the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans , whereas his use on the battleship Prince of Wales was withdrawn after his father became the ship's commanding officer. Instead, he was used on the light cruiser Mauritius , on which he was a bearing officer after disembarkation for Singapore . In this post, he learned that his father in the torpedoing of the Prince of Wales by the Imperial Japanese Navy on 10 December 1941 in the South China Sea was killed.

Then Leach served on the destroyer Sardonyx , before he was used in October 1942 as second lieutenant on the battleship Duke of York , the flagship of the Home Fleet , and there commanded the combat tower A with four cannons. On this ship he took part in the sea battle off the North Cape off Norway in December 1943, during which the battleship Scharnhorst was sunk on December 26, 1943 . In August 1944, he became a navigational officer on the destroyer Javelin and, as an officer on duty, experienced a mutiny on October 17, 1945 when the ship was anchored off Rhodes . Leach continued to serve while others were court- martialed and the captain and first officer replaced. Leach himself then became first officer under a new captain.

Post-war years

He was then used on the Checkers , the flagship of the destroyer flotilla, before he received a qualification as a gun specialist on the Excellent and then became a training officer for parades. He then became a gun officer in the Second Minesweeping Flotilla in the Aegean Sea and graduated from the Royal Naval Staff College in Greenwich after his promotion to Lieutenant Commander in 1952 . He then stayed with the Naval Brigade in London for eight months to prepare for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Then Leach was a gun officer with the 5th Cruiser Squadron in the Far East , where he also took part in the final combat operations in the Korean War . In 1955 he took part in the so-called Malayan Emergency , a guerrilla war between the Commonwealth of Nations and the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA) and supported the British Army and the Royal Marines on the light cruiser Newcastle . After his promotion to frigate captain (Commander) in 1955, he played a significant role in the commissioning of Sea Slug, the Royal Navy's first anti-aircraft missile system . In 1958 he married Mary McCall, the daughter of Admiral Sir Henry McCall.

This was quickly followed by several uses on ships as well as on land, before he was commander of the destroyer Dunkirk from 1959 to 1961 after a car accident that had caused him to see twice for some time . After his promotion to sea captain, he was in the 27th escort squadron between 1965 and 1967 in command of the Galatea , a frigate of the Leander class that had been built since 1959 . He then held a key position in the Ministry of Defense from 1968 to 1970 as director of naval planning.

Promotion to admiral

Leach learned how to fly helicopters during his tenure as commander of the Albion Light Aircraft Carrier in 1970 and 1971 , then returned to the Department of Defense in 1971, where he became assistant to the chief of naval policy. In 1974 he became the commander of the First Flotilla with the guided missile cruiser Blake as its flagship. During this time, he also increased his number of flying hours on helicopters and jet aircraft .

His work as deputy chief of the defense staff from 1975 to 1977 was seen by him as inaction and not mentioned in his memoirs . In March 1977 he was promoted to Admiral and Commander-in-Chief Fleet. As such, he took part in numerous maneuvers and parades, such as on the aircraft carrier Ark Royal on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in Spithead .

After he became Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1977 and thus had the addition of "Sir" to his name, he was awarded the Grand Cross of this order in 1978 .

First Sea Lord and Falklands War 1982

In July 1979 he was appointed First Sea Lord by the newly elected Conservative government of Prime Minister Thatcher. He found their defense minister Francis Pym to be nice but weak and therefore welcomed the appointment of his successor, John Nott . However, he and Nott were at odds over whether the Royal Navy or the Department of Defense should pay for nuclear deterrence. Eventually, however, Leach received the assistance of Secretary of the Navy Keith Speed , who was subsequently released in May 1981.

In the period that followed, Leach dissuaded Nott from scrapping British amphibious vehicles , but on the other hand was unable to overcome his prejudices against the Invincible- class aircraft carriers .

On March 31, 1982, Leach returned to London from a visit to Portsmouth , where he read the Intelligence and Operations Department reports on the Falkland Islands that were circulating at the Department of Defense . The first report predicted an imminent military invasion of Argentina , while the other concluded that nothing could be done about it. Leach took a different view: if Argentina were to conquer the Falkland Islands, it would be the job of the Royal Navy to recapture them.

With the Chief of Defense on his way back from a visit to New Zealand , Leach - bypassing the incumbent Chief of Defense - went to the House of Commons for Defense Secretary John Nott and found that he and his advisors were in Prime Minister Thatcher's office , whereby they were undecided about how to proceed. The next actions led to Leach being referred to by Andrew Marr in his documentary series History of Modern Britain as Margaret Thatcher's "knight in shining gold braid".

His advice was clear: the Falkland Islands should be retaken, "because if we don't, or if we step quietly in our actions and are not completely successful, in a few months we will be living in another country whose word counts little" ( 'Because if we do not, or if we pussyfoot in our actions and do not achieve complete success, in another few months we shall be living in a different country whose word counts for little').

Leach told the Prime Minister that it would take the ships three weeks to reach the South Atlantic . When he on the aircraft carrier Ark Royal , and his successor was questioned, he explained, is that the older ship following a decision by the previous government in dismantling and the new ship under construction at the shipyard in Barrow-in-Furness befände and earliest in two years ago. Nonetheless, he suggested that the two smaller aircraft carriers, Hermes and Invincible, provide air protection so that the Falkland Islands could be retaken and the operation continued. This proposal was welcomed by the Prime Minister and a task force was formed over the weekend to prepare the ships to sail on April 5, 1982.

In the weeks that followed, Leach became an admirer of Thatcher's leadership and determination. On June 20, 1982, the Falkland Islands were retaken and the war was declared over by Great Britain.

After the Falklands War, he campaigned for the government promised replacement of ships destroyed in the war in the South Atlantic, but was disappointed that the Conservative government continued to plan to reduce the Royal Navy. He was appointed as Commodore (Admiral of the Fleet) in the end of 1982 retired adopted. In his honor, the Royal Navy headquarters in Portsmouth was named in the Sir Henry Leach Building.

Between 1983 and 1993 he was President of the Association of Sea Cadets. In this office he was succeeded in 1994 by Sir Julian Oswald , who was also First Sea Lord. He was also chairman of St. Dunstan's, a charity for the blind military from 1983 to 1998, and chairman of the Royal Navy Club from 1986 to 1988 .

Publications

Endure no Makeshifts. Some Naval Recollections. Leo Cooper, London 1993, ISBN 0-85052-370-2 (autobiography).

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ CHAIRMEN OF THE ROYAL NAVY CLUB

personal data
SURNAME	Leach, Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Leach, Sir Henry Conyers (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	British former First Sea Lord of the Royal Navy
DATE OF BIRTH	November 18, 1923
DATE OF DEATH	April 26, 2011

[1] CHAIRMEN OF THE ROYAL NAVY CLUB