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20-10-2009, 18:17
Admiral Of The Fleet Viscount Cunningham Of Hyndhope
Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, G.C.B., O.M., D.S.O., the outstanding naval leader of the Second World War, died in London yesterday 12th June 1963 at the age of 80, as reported on another' page. In the early part of the war he held major command at sea as Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet and subsequently of the Anglo-American expedition to North Africa. Later as First Sea Lord from 1943 to 1946 he shared responsibility for the central direction of the war. Cunningham was an officer whose name, until he reached the highest ranks of the Navy, was hardly known outside it. Though his merits and abilities fully justified his selection for the high posts he held. Actually he owed his tenure of them to a large extent to luck. After his promotion to Vice-Admiral in 1936 he was unemployed for a year, and in view of the state of the flag lists at that time he himself hardly expected to hold more than perhaps one more minor command before concluding his career by retirement. Within three years, however, owing to unexpected retirements or deaths of flag officers senior to him, he found himself, as Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, holding one of the two greatest sea commands, with the acting rank of Admiral and well in the succession for promotion to Admiral of the Fleet He held the Mediterranean Command at the outbreak of war in 1939, and few could have been more suitable for it. Essentially a man of action rather than an administrator. it was the genera1 feeling in the Mediterranean Fleet that their Commander-in-Chief was the man to seize every opportunity that might present itself of conducting the war with vigour; and so indeed it proved when, in 1940, Italy joined our enemies. Faced with a pronounced material superiority, he himself remarked that a vigorous offensive was the only possible policy. It was fortunate that the command of the Mediterranean Fleet in that dark hour should be hold by one who every officer and man under him could feel was the right man in the right place. Under his inspiring leadership, complete ascendancy over the Italian Fleet was quickly established, and maintained even when the loss of both north and south coasts of the Eastern Basin enabled strong German land based air forces to dominate the narrow seas. After an interlude in Washington, Cunningham returned to the Mediterranean command in November 1942, as Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief when the Anglo-American recovery of North Africa redeemed the balance once more. The next year he had the satisfaction of receiving the surrender of the Italian Fleet, and when Sir Dudley Pound died in harness in 1943 there was by common consent but one officer to succeed him as First Sea Lord. A man of florid and smiling countenance, with the blue eyes of the born sailor and the genial manner of one whose naval career had been passed chiefly in small ships, Cunningham was never one to insist on rigid formalities or precedents, and though he would excuse no failure in courage or seamanship, he would ever turn a blind eye to faults arising from dash or excess of zeal.
Andrew Browne Cunningham was the son of Professor D. J. Cunningham of Dublin and Edinburgh, and brother of General Sir Alan Cunningham. He was born on January 7, 1883, and educated first at Edinburgh Academy and later at Mr. Foster's School at Stubbington. He passed into the Britannia as a naval cadet in January, 1897. His first command. Which, he held from May 1908, to January 1910, was torpedo boat No. 14 in the Home Fleet one of the first oil-burning ships in the Navy, known to those serving in them as the " oily wads "' They were small and fast, but handy and seaworthy craft, carrying only one warrant officer besides the lieutenant in command. There could be no better training for a young officer in seamanship, self-reliance and initiative than such a command; it was hard work, but was a much sought after job From T.B. 14, Cunningham graduated to a bigger ship, taking command of the destroyer Vulture in reserve for a year until, in January, 1911, he achieved the aim of every young destroyer officer of the day, a command in the " running flotilla ", the destroyer Scorpion, of the 1st Flotilla, Home Fleet. That command he held for the very unusually long period of seven years. In 1912, on the rearrangement of the flotilla consequent on the delivery of new ships, she was transferred to the 3rd Flotilla, Home Fleet. The next year he was transferred to the 5th Flotilla, then a unit of the Mediterranean Fleet, and Cunningham was still in command of her on the outbreak of war. In the history of the Dardanelles campaign, the name of the Scorpion is constantly occurring she was ever in the forefront. On October 30. 1914, she and the Wolverine opened the campaign against Turkey by running into the Gulf of Smyrna and sinking a Turkish minelayer which was lying alongside the pier at Vourlah. On March 4, 1915, she was part of the force supporting the landing on the south side of the straits, and it is on record that she ran right into the mouth of the river Mendere and silenced a battery which was holding up the advance of the Marines ashore. Time and again the Scorpion was in action, supporting the flank of the Army with her fire, assisting in the landing or evacuation of troops. On June 30. 1915, Cunningham was promoted to commander remaining in command of the Scorpion, and on March 3, 1916 he was awarded the D.S.O. for his services off the peninsula. In February, 1918 he transferred to the command of the Ophelia in the Dover Patrol, coming again under the command of Sir Roger Keyes who had been Chief of Staff at the Dardanelles. and he transferred a month later to the Termagant. In her he took part in numerous engagements, including the Zeebrugge expedition. and after the Armistice he was awarded a Bar to his D.S.O. for his services. In February 1919 he transferred to the Seafire of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla. in which he again saw active service in the operations in the Baltic under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Walter Cowan. commanding the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron for the next year he was awarded a second Bar to his D.S.O. He was promoted to Captain at the end of 1919. and on the conclusion of the Baltic operations returned to Rosyth with his flotilla. In September 1920. he was out in charge of Sub-Commission " C " of the Naval Inter-Allied Commission of Control and it that capacity he supervised the demolition of the fortifications at Heligoland an appointment in which his prolonged contact with German officers and officials gave him a knowledge of the people and language which was of great value to him in later years when he came to occupy a high position at the Admiralty. In 1922. he returned once more to destroyer service becoming Captain (D) of the 6th Flotilla in reserve transferring later to the command of the 1st Flotilla in the Home Fleet, with his pendant in the Wallace, flotilla leader. In 1924 he went ashore. but continued his connection with the destroyer flotillas, as he was Captain-in-Charge of the destroyer base at Port Edgar, Firth of Forth, for a year and a half. Thence he returned to sea service as Flag-Captain to Sir Walter Cowan, Commander-in-Chief of the America and West Indies Station, first in the Calcutta and later in the Despatch, cruisers, for more than two years in all In 1929 he was selected for a course at the Imperial Defence College, on the conclusion of which he took command of the battleship Rodney, one of the most sought after of captains' commands. In accordance with the practice prevailing at that time he held it only for a year, and after a few months unemployed he became Commodore of the Naval Barracks at Chatham, a command which he continued to hold for four months after his promotion to flag rank in September, 1932.
In January, 1934, he was made C.B. and took command of the destroyer flotillas of the Mediterranean Fleet Rear-Admiral (D) with his flag in the Coventry-which he held through the period of the Italo-Abyssinian War until March, 1936. Three months later he was promoted to Vice- Admiral, and the prospects of his further employment, except perhaps in a shore command at home, seemed remote. A year later, however, he was suddenly appointed Second-in-Command of the Mediterranean Fleet and Vice-Admiral Commanding Battle Cruiser Squadron, temporarily in the vacancy caused by the illness of Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Blake, and on that officer being invalided Cunningham's appointment was made permanent. He held it until August, 1938, and three months later was appointed Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff at the Admiralty a post which it was generally, expected would have gone to Sir Geoffrey Blake but for his enforced retirement under Admiral Sir Roger Backhouse who had just become First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff. In that position great responsibility was thrown on him when illness in turn incapacitated Sir Roger Backhouse early in 1939. in the middle of the international tension, which eventually developed into war. For some six months Cunningham acted as substitute for his chief on the Committee of Imperial Defence and at the Admiralty Board: and when it was finally decided that Admiral Sir Dudley Pound should succeed Sir Roger Backhouse, Cunningham, who had been promoted K.C.B. at the beginning of the year, replaced him as Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean in June. 1939. as an acting Admiral, to which rank he was promoted in January. 1941. On the outbreak of war in September, 1939, as Italy remained "non-belligerent", the Mediterranean seemed liable to prove a backwater, and practically all the Mediterranean Fleet was withdrawn for service in other seas. It was brought up to strength the following year. however, when it became clear that Mussolini was bent on war, only to be left in marked inferiority by the defection of its French contingent; on that melancholy occasion, Cunningham showed himself a skilled diplomatist as well as a war leader, and was able to secure the effective neutralization of Admiral Godefroi's squadron-which had been part of the Allied Fleet under his command-without rancour or bloodshed. Within a few weeks of Mussolini's declaration of war, Cunningham, in the Battle of Calabria, had chased a superior Italian Fleet back into the shelter of its bases; a few months later the Fleet Air Arm attack at Taranto put half the Italian Navy out of action; and in March, 1941, in the brief night action known as the Battle of Cape Matapan, three of the largest Italian cruisers were destroyed in a few minutes. The arrival of the Luftwaffe on the shores of the Mediterranean at the end of 1941 and the loss of Cyrenaica, Greece, and Crete made it impossible for the British Fleet, lacking support in the air, to operate freely or to keep the sea route fully open. When Cunningham handed over the Mediterranean Command to Sir Henry Harwood in May, 1942, to go to Washington as the British representative with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there was little left for it to do within the Mediterranean itself until the recovery of North Africa again gave it sea room.
Cunningham was away no more than six months. When the Anglo-American descent on French North Africa in "Operation Torch " of November, 1942, began the expulsion of the Axis from Africa, he returned there as Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief under General Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of the invading forces. Two months later he again took over, in addition, as Commander-in-Chief of the whole Mediterranean Fleet, and was promoted Admiral of the Fleet. He had the satisfaction of completely regaining control of the Mediterranean, and, in September, 1943 of receiving the surrender of the whole Italian Fleet. The death of the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, in October brought him, back to the Admiralty in his place. He was at the head of affairs for the rest of the war. Cunningham, who retired in 1946, was created G.C.B. while holding the Mediterranean command in 1942. and baronet on relinquishing it. On the break-up of the coalition Government in 1945 he, together with his brother Chiefs of Staff, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke and Marshal of the R.A.F. Sir Charles Portal, was created a baron, taking the title of Lord Cunningham of Hyndhope, which he retained on promotion to a viscountcy in the New Year Honours of 1946. In the Birthday Honours that year he was made O.M. In 1950 and again in 1952 he was Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. His memoirs. A Sailor's Odyssey, were published in 1951. His marriage to Nona Christine, daughter of Horace Byatt, of Midhurst, Sussex, took place in 1929
Taken from The Times Archive
Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, G.C.B., O.M., D.S.O., the outstanding naval leader of the Second World War, died in London yesterday 12th June 1963 at the age of 80, as reported on another' page. In the early part of the war he held major command at sea as Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet and subsequently of the Anglo-American expedition to North Africa. Later as First Sea Lord from 1943 to 1946 he shared responsibility for the central direction of the war. Cunningham was an officer whose name, until he reached the highest ranks of the Navy, was hardly known outside it. Though his merits and abilities fully justified his selection for the high posts he held. Actually he owed his tenure of them to a large extent to luck. After his promotion to Vice-Admiral in 1936 he was unemployed for a year, and in view of the state of the flag lists at that time he himself hardly expected to hold more than perhaps one more minor command before concluding his career by retirement. Within three years, however, owing to unexpected retirements or deaths of flag officers senior to him, he found himself, as Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, holding one of the two greatest sea commands, with the acting rank of Admiral and well in the succession for promotion to Admiral of the Fleet He held the Mediterranean Command at the outbreak of war in 1939, and few could have been more suitable for it. Essentially a man of action rather than an administrator. it was the genera1 feeling in the Mediterranean Fleet that their Commander-in-Chief was the man to seize every opportunity that might present itself of conducting the war with vigour; and so indeed it proved when, in 1940, Italy joined our enemies. Faced with a pronounced material superiority, he himself remarked that a vigorous offensive was the only possible policy. It was fortunate that the command of the Mediterranean Fleet in that dark hour should be hold by one who every officer and man under him could feel was the right man in the right place. Under his inspiring leadership, complete ascendancy over the Italian Fleet was quickly established, and maintained even when the loss of both north and south coasts of the Eastern Basin enabled strong German land based air forces to dominate the narrow seas. After an interlude in Washington, Cunningham returned to the Mediterranean command in November 1942, as Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief when the Anglo-American recovery of North Africa redeemed the balance once more. The next year he had the satisfaction of receiving the surrender of the Italian Fleet, and when Sir Dudley Pound died in harness in 1943 there was by common consent but one officer to succeed him as First Sea Lord. A man of florid and smiling countenance, with the blue eyes of the born sailor and the genial manner of one whose naval career had been passed chiefly in small ships, Cunningham was never one to insist on rigid formalities or precedents, and though he would excuse no failure in courage or seamanship, he would ever turn a blind eye to faults arising from dash or excess of zeal.
Andrew Browne Cunningham was the son of Professor D. J. Cunningham of Dublin and Edinburgh, and brother of General Sir Alan Cunningham. He was born on January 7, 1883, and educated first at Edinburgh Academy and later at Mr. Foster's School at Stubbington. He passed into the Britannia as a naval cadet in January, 1897. His first command. Which, he held from May 1908, to January 1910, was torpedo boat No. 14 in the Home Fleet one of the first oil-burning ships in the Navy, known to those serving in them as the " oily wads "' They were small and fast, but handy and seaworthy craft, carrying only one warrant officer besides the lieutenant in command. There could be no better training for a young officer in seamanship, self-reliance and initiative than such a command; it was hard work, but was a much sought after job From T.B. 14, Cunningham graduated to a bigger ship, taking command of the destroyer Vulture in reserve for a year until, in January, 1911, he achieved the aim of every young destroyer officer of the day, a command in the " running flotilla ", the destroyer Scorpion, of the 1st Flotilla, Home Fleet. That command he held for the very unusually long period of seven years. In 1912, on the rearrangement of the flotilla consequent on the delivery of new ships, she was transferred to the 3rd Flotilla, Home Fleet. The next year he was transferred to the 5th Flotilla, then a unit of the Mediterranean Fleet, and Cunningham was still in command of her on the outbreak of war. In the history of the Dardanelles campaign, the name of the Scorpion is constantly occurring she was ever in the forefront. On October 30. 1914, she and the Wolverine opened the campaign against Turkey by running into the Gulf of Smyrna and sinking a Turkish minelayer which was lying alongside the pier at Vourlah. On March 4, 1915, she was part of the force supporting the landing on the south side of the straits, and it is on record that she ran right into the mouth of the river Mendere and silenced a battery which was holding up the advance of the Marines ashore. Time and again the Scorpion was in action, supporting the flank of the Army with her fire, assisting in the landing or evacuation of troops. On June 30. 1915, Cunningham was promoted to commander remaining in command of the Scorpion, and on March 3, 1916 he was awarded the D.S.O. for his services off the peninsula. In February, 1918 he transferred to the command of the Ophelia in the Dover Patrol, coming again under the command of Sir Roger Keyes who had been Chief of Staff at the Dardanelles. and he transferred a month later to the Termagant. In her he took part in numerous engagements, including the Zeebrugge expedition. and after the Armistice he was awarded a Bar to his D.S.O. for his services. In February 1919 he transferred to the Seafire of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla. in which he again saw active service in the operations in the Baltic under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir Walter Cowan. commanding the 1st Light Cruiser Squadron for the next year he was awarded a second Bar to his D.S.O. He was promoted to Captain at the end of 1919. and on the conclusion of the Baltic operations returned to Rosyth with his flotilla. In September 1920. he was out in charge of Sub-Commission " C " of the Naval Inter-Allied Commission of Control and it that capacity he supervised the demolition of the fortifications at Heligoland an appointment in which his prolonged contact with German officers and officials gave him a knowledge of the people and language which was of great value to him in later years when he came to occupy a high position at the Admiralty. In 1922. he returned once more to destroyer service becoming Captain (D) of the 6th Flotilla in reserve transferring later to the command of the 1st Flotilla in the Home Fleet, with his pendant in the Wallace, flotilla leader. In 1924 he went ashore. but continued his connection with the destroyer flotillas, as he was Captain-in-Charge of the destroyer base at Port Edgar, Firth of Forth, for a year and a half. Thence he returned to sea service as Flag-Captain to Sir Walter Cowan, Commander-in-Chief of the America and West Indies Station, first in the Calcutta and later in the Despatch, cruisers, for more than two years in all In 1929 he was selected for a course at the Imperial Defence College, on the conclusion of which he took command of the battleship Rodney, one of the most sought after of captains' commands. In accordance with the practice prevailing at that time he held it only for a year, and after a few months unemployed he became Commodore of the Naval Barracks at Chatham, a command which he continued to hold for four months after his promotion to flag rank in September, 1932.
In January, 1934, he was made C.B. and took command of the destroyer flotillas of the Mediterranean Fleet Rear-Admiral (D) with his flag in the Coventry-which he held through the period of the Italo-Abyssinian War until March, 1936. Three months later he was promoted to Vice- Admiral, and the prospects of his further employment, except perhaps in a shore command at home, seemed remote. A year later, however, he was suddenly appointed Second-in-Command of the Mediterranean Fleet and Vice-Admiral Commanding Battle Cruiser Squadron, temporarily in the vacancy caused by the illness of Vice-Admiral Sir Geoffrey Blake, and on that officer being invalided Cunningham's appointment was made permanent. He held it until August, 1938, and three months later was appointed Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff at the Admiralty a post which it was generally, expected would have gone to Sir Geoffrey Blake but for his enforced retirement under Admiral Sir Roger Backhouse who had just become First Sea Lord and Chief of the Naval Staff. In that position great responsibility was thrown on him when illness in turn incapacitated Sir Roger Backhouse early in 1939. in the middle of the international tension, which eventually developed into war. For some six months Cunningham acted as substitute for his chief on the Committee of Imperial Defence and at the Admiralty Board: and when it was finally decided that Admiral Sir Dudley Pound should succeed Sir Roger Backhouse, Cunningham, who had been promoted K.C.B. at the beginning of the year, replaced him as Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean in June. 1939. as an acting Admiral, to which rank he was promoted in January. 1941. On the outbreak of war in September, 1939, as Italy remained "non-belligerent", the Mediterranean seemed liable to prove a backwater, and practically all the Mediterranean Fleet was withdrawn for service in other seas. It was brought up to strength the following year. however, when it became clear that Mussolini was bent on war, only to be left in marked inferiority by the defection of its French contingent; on that melancholy occasion, Cunningham showed himself a skilled diplomatist as well as a war leader, and was able to secure the effective neutralization of Admiral Godefroi's squadron-which had been part of the Allied Fleet under his command-without rancour or bloodshed. Within a few weeks of Mussolini's declaration of war, Cunningham, in the Battle of Calabria, had chased a superior Italian Fleet back into the shelter of its bases; a few months later the Fleet Air Arm attack at Taranto put half the Italian Navy out of action; and in March, 1941, in the brief night action known as the Battle of Cape Matapan, three of the largest Italian cruisers were destroyed in a few minutes. The arrival of the Luftwaffe on the shores of the Mediterranean at the end of 1941 and the loss of Cyrenaica, Greece, and Crete made it impossible for the British Fleet, lacking support in the air, to operate freely or to keep the sea route fully open. When Cunningham handed over the Mediterranean Command to Sir Henry Harwood in May, 1942, to go to Washington as the British representative with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there was little left for it to do within the Mediterranean itself until the recovery of North Africa again gave it sea room.
Cunningham was away no more than six months. When the Anglo-American descent on French North Africa in "Operation Torch " of November, 1942, began the expulsion of the Axis from Africa, he returned there as Allied Naval Commander-in-Chief under General Eisenhower as Supreme Commander of the invading forces. Two months later he again took over, in addition, as Commander-in-Chief of the whole Mediterranean Fleet, and was promoted Admiral of the Fleet. He had the satisfaction of completely regaining control of the Mediterranean, and, in September, 1943 of receiving the surrender of the whole Italian Fleet. The death of the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, in October brought him, back to the Admiralty in his place. He was at the head of affairs for the rest of the war. Cunningham, who retired in 1946, was created G.C.B. while holding the Mediterranean command in 1942. and baronet on relinquishing it. On the break-up of the coalition Government in 1945 he, together with his brother Chiefs of Staff, Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke and Marshal of the R.A.F. Sir Charles Portal, was created a baron, taking the title of Lord Cunningham of Hyndhope, which he retained on promotion to a viscountcy in the New Year Honours of 1946. In the Birthday Honours that year he was made O.M. In 1950 and again in 1952 he was Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. His memoirs. A Sailor's Odyssey, were published in 1951. His marriage to Nona Christine, daughter of Horace Byatt, of Midhurst, Sussex, took place in 1929
Taken from The Times Archive