John Tovey, 1st Baron Tovey

Admiral of the Fleet Sir John C. Tovey, 1945

John Cronyn Tovey, 1st Baron Tovey , GCB , KBE , DSO , DCL (born March 7, 1885 in Borley Hill , Rochester , Kent , † January 12, 1971 in Funchal , Madeira , Portugal ) was a British admiral; 1940–42 Commander in Chief of the Home Fleet and 1943 Admiral of the Fleet .

Life

"Jack" Tovey was born to Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton Tovey, RE ; his mother was a Canadian from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Because his parents lived abroad, he attended the Durnford Preparatory School for Boys in Langton Matravers, Dorset for seven years . He seems to have had a happy childhood there, for he kept in touch with the headmaster, Thomas Pellatt, and his wife for years and, half a century later, chose his title of nobility, Baron Tovey , of Langton Matravers, after this place.

In January 1900, shortly before his 15th birthday, Tovey joined the Royal Navy as a midshipman on the training ship HMS Britannia ( Royal Naval College Dartmouth) . After his training he went as a midshipman on the battleship HMS Majestic , the flagship of the Canal Squadron under Adm. Sir Arthur Wilson , VC This was followed by three years on the cruiser HMS Ariadne , the flagship of the North America and West India station, under Vice Admiral Sir Archibald L. Douglas . In 1905 he attended several courses on ship artillery, torpedoes , navigation and pilotage. In 1911 he went on board the destroyer HMS Patrol in the 1st Flotilla.

First World War

When the First World War broke out , he was First Lieutenant of the light cruiser HMS Amphion . The Amphion was by the sinking of the German minelayer Queen Louise , the first British warship that was involved in combat operations on August 5 1914th The next day she ran into a mine laid by Queen Luise and sank. Tovey then served in the same position on the Amphion's successor , the HMS Faulknor .

On January 13, 1915, Tovey received his first command of his own - the first of a long series of destroyer commands - on the destroyer HMS Jackal . On May 7, 1916 he switched to the HMS Onslow (13th destroyer flotilla), with which he took part in the Skagerrak Battle (May 31, 1916) as an escort of the seaplane mother ship HMS Engadine . The Onslow was so badly damaged that she was no longer roadworthy and had to be towed back to Aberdeen. Lieutenant Commander Tovey was promoted to Commander (frigate captain) for his bravery in battle ( "persistent and determined manner in which he attacked enemy ships" ) and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order three years later . In 1917 he commanded the destroyer HMS Ursa and then the HMS Wolfhound .

Interwar period

After the war, Tovey attended the Royal Naval Staff College in Greenwich from May 1919 to June 1920 . After that, various staff assignments and on-board commands alternated on destroyers. Promoted to captain in 1923 , he commanded the reserve destroyer flotilla under Cunningham as Captain (D) from 1925 , then Captain-in-Charge of HMS Columbine in Port Edgar in the Firth of Forth . Port Edgar was under the aegis of the Commanding Officer Scottish Coast in Inverkeithing , but was nominally under the Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Fleet , Admiral Sir Henry Oliver .

During this time, both officers were brought before a committee of inquiry by the Chief of Staff and Commodore (D) of the Atlantic Fleet for exceeding their competence. They had independently worked out a plan for the training of young sailors and submitted it to the Admiralty without having this approved beforehand by the Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet. When Cunningham asked the commodore during the meeting for the copy he had given him as a precaution for forwarding to the admiral, and the commodore actually found it in his files, the committee was closed. Admiral Oliver himself agreed to all points of the training course during the later inspection.

In 1927 Tovey spent a year at Imperial Defense College and was then Naval Assistant to the Second Sea Lord in the Admiralty from 1930 to 1932 . In 1931 he led an investigation into the Invergordon Mutiny with Captain Somerville . From 1932 to 1934 he was the captain of the battleship HMS Rodney . For her new captain, who was more experienced in destroying, the Rodney was the first large ship with her long foredeck, three gun turrets and 35,000 tons of water displacement (destroyers had about 2,000-2,500 tons) and he had to get used to its control and handling - as well as the way Cunningham on the same ship a few years earlier, who was shocked to discover that on the Rodney 19 senior lieutenant commanders and lieutenants shared what he thought a midshipman or petty officer would have done . The Rodney was also one of the ships from which the Invergordon mutiny had started, and it was Tovey's job to erase the memory of it as quickly as possible. He succeeded in doing this within a short time by training the crew to their maximum performance, although he did not always agree with his superior, Admiral John Kelly , commander of the Atlantic Fleet . Tovey later quoted a sentence from Kelly's confidential report to the Admiralty:

"Captain Tovey shares one characteristic with me. In myself I call it tenacity of purpose; in Captain Tovey I can only describe it as sheer bloody obstinacy ".
(Eng .: "Captain Tovey and I have one trait in common. With me I call it purposefulness, with Captain Tovey I can only describe it as damn stubbornness.")

In 1935, Tovey Commodore Royal Naval Barracks was promoted to Rear Admiral at Chatham and seven months later to the same post . In 1937 he was named Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB).

Second World War

Commander of the destroyer flotillas of the Mediterranean Fleet

In March / April 1938 he moved as Rear Admiral (Destroyers) to the Mediterranean Fleet (Adm. Sir Andrew Cunningham), with the light cruiser Galatea as flagship and was promoted to Vice Admiral the following year . When Italy declared war on Britain in 1940, Tovey was Vice Admiral Light Forces (June 1940) and Deputy Commander of the Mediterranean Fleet. In this role he was responsible for protecting the convoys to Malta and the Middle East. In July 1940 he led the light ship formations in the naval battle of Calabria (→ Naval Battle of Punta Stilo ) and ten days later he was involved in the sinking of the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni by the Sydney .

Commander in Chief Home Fleet

On December 2, 1940, at Cunningham's suggestion , Tovey was named Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet in Scapa Flow with the rank of Acting Admiral . In this capacity he had several clashes with the First Sea Lord Dudley Pound and Winston Churchill . Among other things, he wanted to stop the northern sea convoys after heavy losses in 1942 . His best-known action to date was the Home Fleet's hunt for the German battleship Bismarck , which Tovey led from his flagship, the HMS King George V (→ Company Rhine Exercise ). After the successful sinking of the Bismarck, Tovey was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire ; he had already been named Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the New Year Honors in 1941. For both awards he received the knighthood from the king personally during his two visits to Scapa Flow .

Commander in Chief The Nore

In 1943, after the normal standing time of 2½ years, he was relieved of his command at his own request and took over as Commander-in-Chief of the Nore Command in Chatham ( Commander-in-Chief , The Nore ), flagship HMS Pembroke , on the Thames estuary on 7 July . In this position he was responsible for the convoys on the east coast, mine clearance operations and also involved in the preparations of the British Navy for the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 ( Operation Husky ) and northern France in 1944 ( Operation Neptune ). On October 22, 1943 he was appointed Admiral of the Fleet . From 1945 to 1946 he was also First and Principal Naval ADC to the King .

retirement

On February 15, 1946 he was raised to hereditary peer as Baron Tovey , of Langton Matravers in the County of Dorset, and thereby received a seat in the House of Lords . He retired from active service in the same year, but remained a nominally active naval officer as a fleet admiral until his death. Like Somerville and Fraser , he was briefly discussed as the successor to Andrew Cunningham for the office of First Sea Lord , but was not because he favored John Cunningham (no relative).

Lord Tovey held several honorary posts over the next few years, until he had to give them up because of his wife's severe arthritis . He died on January 12, 1971, six months after his wife Aida, in Madeira. His title of nobility expired with his death because he had no sons. He was buried in Godslington Cemetery in Swanage ; a public memorial service was held at Westminster Abbey in 1972 . In 1974 a plaque was unveiled in the old church of Langton Matravers. His flag also hangs there.

Promotions

• June 30, 1916: Commander
• December 31, 1923: Captain
• August 27, 1935: Rear Admiral
• May 3, 1939: Vice Admiral
• 1940: acting admiral
• October 30, 1942: Confirmation of the rank of admiral
• October 22, 1943: Admiral of the Fleet

Orders and decorations

• November 2, 1917: French croix de guerre
• October 1, 1917: Russian Order of Saint Anne 3rd class
• 1919: Distinguished Service Order
• 1937: Companion of the Bath (CB)
• January 1, 1941: Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB)
• October 14, 1941: Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE)
• April 13, 1943: Knight Grand Cross of the Bath (GCB)
• February 29, 1944: Soviet Suvorov Order 1st class to secure the convoys
• May 28, 1946: Commander of the American Legion of Merit
• April 15, 1947: Grand Cross of the Greek Order of Phoenix

Publications

• God and the War: A Steadfast Belief in Prayer - World's Evangelical Alliance, London, 1944
• Why Do I Believe in God? - World's Evangelical Alliance, London, 1949

Individual evidence

1. ^ The London Gazette : No. 37470, p. 974 , February 15, 1946.

literature

• Obituary in The Times , Jan. 13, 1971
• Royal Naval Museum, Information Sheet N °. 21, John Tovey

Web links

• John Tovey: Appreciation and obituary ( English )

predecessor	Office	successor
Captain Roger Mowbray Bellairs	Captain of HMS Rodney April 12, 1932 - August 30, 1934	Captain Wilfred Neville Custance
Vice Admiral James Somerville	Rear Admiral (destroyer) of the Mediterranean Fleet March 5, 1938-1940
Fleet Admiral Sir Charles Forbes	Commander in Chief of the Home Fleet December 2, 1940 - May 8, 1943	Sir Bruce Fraser
Admiral Sir George Lyon	Commander in Chief The Nore July 1943-1946	Admiral Sir Harold M. Burrough
Admiral Sir Percy Noble	First and Principal Naval ADC to the King January 16, 1945 - April 27, 1946	Fleet Admiral Lord Fraser
New title created	Baron Tovey 1946 - 1971	Title expired