Obituary: Sir Lancelot Bell-Davies

Published on Wednesday 4 August 2010 20:00

Successful military man who signed up for naval college at the age of 13

Born: 18 February, 1926.

Died: 3 July, 2010, in Hampshire, aged 84.

On ACCOUNT of his father's position in the Royal Navy, and his upbringing thereafter, there was little chance that Bell Davies was ever likely to pursue a career path that deviated significantly from the military. He all but emulated his father and garnished a reputation as an excellent teacher of men.

Born in 1926, Lancelot Richard Bell Davies was the son of Vice Admiral Richard Bell Davies, who was a fighter pilot in the First World War and a Naval Officer in the Second World War. A man of extraordinary bravery, Bell Davies senior was awarded the Victoria Cross for "a feat of airmanship that can seldom have been equalled for skill and gallantry" as well as receiving the DSO and AFC.

The attitude and aptitude of his illustrious parent obviously had an effect on Bell Davies junior as he enrolled in to Dartmouth's Royal Naval College on 30 August, 1939, two days before the Second World War took its grip of Europe. He was 13 years old.

After his four-year training period expired Bell Davies was chomping at the bit to enter the fray and he saw battle onboard HMS Norfolk, where he observed the sinking of the German Scharnhorst by the HMS Duke of York in the extreme waters north of Norway on Boxing Day 1943.

During the exchange of heavy fire between the Allied warships of the Norfolk, Belfast and Sheffield and the Scharnhorst, the Norfolk sustained a double shell strike which killed seven sailors. When Bell Davies described the scene to his father in a letter he recalled the violence of the encounter but was struck by the almost serene way in which the crew went about their tasks, despite the severity of the situation.

He observed that "fear had its roots in the unknown and that people must be rigorously trained to be familiar with what they had to do".

He then served for a brief spell on the Ben Torc, a modified trawler-cum-minesweeper. He was once ordered to take the vessel south of Sunderland to sweep for German weaponry but was unable to locate the Captain, a Royal Navy Reserve, or the first lieutenant. As next in line, Bell Davies took the Ben Torc out in to the North Sea, and got lost in the thick fog that enveloped them. Some time later they were able to locate Sunderland's docks from the pungent smell of the gas works.

After gaining more experience of the above-water logistics of warfare aboard both Devonshire and Opportune he transferred to the below-water section of the Royal Navy, the Submarine Service.

In May 1945 he found himself aboard the Tally Ho heading for the battle zone of the Pacific Ocean, arriving shortly after Japan had surrendered.

From the Tally Ho he transferred to the Anchorite before joining the crew of the Tireless. When the second-in-command of the Tireless was injured Bell Davies was appointed as his replacement.

He was then appointed training officer before taking the British Submarine Command Course, more commonly known as "The Perisher". The sobriquet has its roots in the historical failure rate of 25 per cent and the huge demands the 24-week course puts on the participants. Bell Davies passed the course and was sent to work in command of Subtle.

Later on in his career Bell Davies would be part of the teaching set up for the Submarine Command course.

Following on from a successful period aboard Subtle, Bell Davies was given command of Explorer, a radical new design of submarine fuelled by a new type of propulsion system which was as volatile as it was revolutionary.

The new power system known as high-test peroxide allowed this new breed of submarine to hit speeds greater than 25 knots. It also earned it the name HMS Exploder for good reason; in 1956 Sidon blew up, killing 12 men and seriously injuring seven others. High-test peroxide powered submarines were scrapped shortly afterwards.

Bell Davies then resurfaced to captain HMS, Leander a new Navy vessel (Leander's career came to an end in 1989 when she was sacrificed for a training exercise) before being posted to Singapore to take command of the submarine tender Forth and the 7th Submarine Squadron.

HMS Forth was renamed Defiance in 1972 and sold for scrap in 1985 but during Bell Davies's time at the helm she was used to aid in the military evacuation of Aden in 1967, as the British withdrew their presence after 132 years.

In 1971 Bell Davies was appointed to the Ministry of Defence, charged with the task of revitalising the way in which the armed forces operated and, more specifically, who operated within it and how. He was forced to make radical reforms, much of which were deeply unpopular with the old guard. It was a complete overhaul which took little time to administer but a decade to see the full effects.

In July, 1973 Bell Davies was promoted to Rear Admiral, and was posted to Washington DC to head the British Naval Staff, working alongside their American counter parts. It was this posting that led to his appointment as European representative of the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic at the bequest of his friend, Admiral Ike Kidd of the US Navy.

A promotion to Vice Admiral was followed by a three-year stint in Rome, heading the Nato Defence College until he retired in 1981.

A passionate naval man, Bell Davies was a strong believer in the power of imagination, as he wrote in 2008: "Anyone whose imagination is inspired by warships probably finds that browsing through an old illustrated naval reference book is a very satisfying pastime. The older the copy the better.

"There is something magical about the photograph of an old warship that stimulates the storyteller in us all. It matters not that the picture is a formal one, nor that the statistics are ungarnished by historical narrative, imagination thrives best without such interference."

Vice Admiral Sir Lancelot Richard Bell Davies, who was knighted in 1977, is survived by his wife Joan, whom he met when his submarine docked at Rotterdam in 1948, and their three children.