Vice-Admiral Sir Roy Halliday RIP

Kyt · Nov 28, 2007

Naval aviator who won the DSC in the Far East and rose to become the MoD head of intelligence

Vice-Admiral Sir Roy Halliday obituary - Times Online

With conscription inescapable with a world war under way, Roy Halliday (universally known as “Gus”) volunteered for the Royal Navy from University College School, London, in 1941 rather than risk being called up into the Army. His previous seagoing experience had been the hardship of a deckhand's life in a Lowestoft fishing trawler.

Entering as an ordinary seaman, RNVR, he was soon offered a commission and asked if he would like to train as a naval pilot. Flattered and excited, he did not make the connection that it was the casualty rate in this category that prompted his elevation.

Although not yet at war, the US was secretly providing training for British airmen. Halliday was shipped to Canada and then to the US naval air station at Grosse Ile, near Detroit, followed by highly intensive flying training at Pensacola, Florida, where he obtained his “wings” after 300 hours solo. The American award featured a smart parade and the issue of a diploma. Later the RN's liaison officer called and issued the Fleet Air Arm's coveted braid wings to each graduate from a large Oxo tin. “Typical British understatement,” he thought.

Pearl Harbor enabled the British at last to wear uniform. Halliday was appointed to a squadron of Grumman Avengers, a sturdy US-designed carrier-borne bomber, and joined the escort carrier Chaser in the Gulf of Mexico. At that time, Henry Kaiser's shipyards on the US Pacific Coast were launching one complete escort carrier a week.

Three months of anti-submarine patrols in the Atlantic were followed by deployment to the Royal Naval Air Station HMS Sparrowhawk at Hatston in Orkney, as a guard against the escape of German heavy warships from Norway into the convoy routes.

Halliday's squadron was then embarked in the large carrier Illustrious, which arrived in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in January 1944. It thereafter carried out bombing raids on Japanese installations in Java and Sumatra, as well as operations in support of General Slim's 14th Army in Burma.

Halliday had transferred to the Victorious by January 24, 1945, the day of the largest raid carried out by the Fleet Air Arm, on oil refineries at Palembang in Sumatra, which were bombed by aircraft from four large carriers. During the raid Halliday's Avenger was shot up by a Japanese Zero fighter, and after a hair-raising flight, on fire, over mountainous jungle he ditched in the Java Sea and was picked up in his dinghy by the destroyer Whelp. The destroyer's efficient second-in-command was Prince Philip, who lent him a dry uniform and accompanied him on a “run ashore” in Western Australia.

Returning to Victorious, Halliday found that his cabin mate had been shot down and was a PoW. He was one of nine British naval aircrew who were paraded in Changi Prison, Singapore, two days after VJ Day and beheaded, to Halliday's great distress.

In the meantime, Halliday had continued in Victorious, taking part in raids on Formosa (Taiwan), the Ryuku islands and finally the Japanese mainland. Soon after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs ended the war, he was shipped home in the troopship Rangitiki, having been awarded two mentions in dispatches and the DSC for his gallantry and skill.

He took up the offer of a permanent RN commission and was appointed as a test pilot to the experimental establishment at Boscombe Down, where an exciting tour alongside such aviation heroes as Neville Duke (obituary, April 16, 2007) and Mike Lithgow meant that he flew the newest types of jet aircraft.

He next commanded 813 Squadron, flying the powerful but rather unsuccessful turboprop Westland Wyvern off the carrier Eagle. In 1958 he was selected for the army staff course at Camberley, “a very broadening experience”. In 1959, after a short tour as second in command of the minesweeper base in Southampton Water, he found himself again in the Far East in command of a squadron of minesweepers that swept a number of Japanese minefields but were principally engaged in anti-piracy patrols in the Celebes Sea. “If caught, they were trussed up and landed for trial at Sandakan in North Borneo. If found guilty, they were usually hanged.”

After two years in the Admiralty as the deputy to the chief of naval information, Halliday joined the commando carrier Albion as second in command and in charge of air operations, before which he had learnt to fly helicopters. Albion had an energetic commission. From 1963 President Sukarno of Indonesia's opposition to the new Federation of Malaysia resulted in a campaign of subversion and infiltration in Sarawak and Sabah, which required an extensive military response for several years, involving a third of the entire British fleet. Albion's helicopters were used to land and support British and Gurkha troops in the jungle. Afterwards, based at Aden, Albion also used her helicopters to fight dissident tribesmen opposing the British-backed rulers and provided mobility for South Arabian Federation forces.

In 1966 Halliday was appointed Director of Naval Air Warfare in the Admiralty, where he was involved in the famous arguments about whether to build another large aircraft carrier, a decision that carried with it the future of naval fixed-wing aviation. He admired Defence Minister Denis Healey's “complete grasp of all the factors involved and his fairness of judgment”, and was not surprised at the unpalatable outcome — the carrier CVA01, as it was known, was just too expensive.

Two further tours at sea followed. He commanded the frigate Euryalus and a frigate squadron in the Far East and in the Home Fleet. His departure from Singapore in May 1971 was the end of a permanently based escort squadron in the Far East. As a commodore, Halliday was, with a Royal Marines brigadier, in command of all British naval amphibious shipping and forces, carrying out exercise landings in the Caribbean, northern Norway and Turkish Thrace. On occasions he would have up to 24 big Nato warships under his command.

From 1973 to 1981 Halliday was part of the defence intelligence network, initially as Director of Naval Intelligence in the Ministry of Defence. His tour in Washington as head of the British naval mission and naval attaché had a high intelligence content — unlike the other two services the naval staff was based in the Pentagon itself.

On return to the UK in 1978 he was promoted to vice-admiral and appointed Deputy Chief of Defence Staff

(Intelligence), in charge of the intelligence function of all three services. He was appointed KBE in 1980 and, as a mark of his undoubted acumen and his sound judgment about Cold War issues, was, unusually, continued in the quasi-civilian post of Director-General (Intelligence) as an under-secretary of state for a further three years, finally retiring in 1984. This period included the Falklands conflict.

Shrewd and noted for his humane leadership style, he was chairman of trustees of the Burma Star Association and chairman of the British Military Power Boat Trust, which restores and preserves boats of historical interest.

He is survived by his wife, Dorothy Meech, always known as Polly, whom he married in 1945.

Vice-Admiral Sir Roy Halliday, KBE, DSC, Director-General of Intelligence, Ministry of Defence, 1981-84, was born on June 27, 1923. He died on November 23, 2007, aged 84
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Antipodean Andy · Nov 28, 2007

An impressive career.

I keep forgetting Prince Philip was on destroyers.

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Vice-Admiral Sir Roy Halliday RIP

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