John Ronald Gower

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John Ronald Gower
Aldeburgh, Suffolk
AllegianceUnited Kingdom
Service/branchRoyal Navy
Years of service1926–1962
RankCaptain
Commands held
Battles/wars
Second World War
:
Mentioned in Dispatches (2)
RelationsDavid Gower (nephew)

John Ronald Gower (7 April 1912 – 18 November 2007) was a

Sword beach. In the post-war period he commanded the destroyer HMS Diana when it carried out experiments in waters contaminated by the nuclear fallout of two nuclear explosions in Operation Mosaic, and when it sank the Egyptian frigate Domiat in the Red Sea
on 1 November 1956.

Biography

Early life and career

John Ronald Gower was born on 7 April 1912 in

Second World War. His youngest brother, Dicky followed his father into the Colonial Service, and became the father of David Gower, who was captain of the English national cricket team. An ancestor, the eighteenth-century explorer and naval officer Erasmus Gower, was in command the sloop HMS Swift when he was shipwrecked on the coast of Patagonia in 1770; Gower would later command the ship's namesake.[1]

Gower joined the

Second World War broke out in Europe in September 1939.[2]

Second World War

In June 1940 Gower took part in the

Arctic Convoys. In April 1942 he assumed command of the destroyer HMS Winchester.[2] He was promoted to lieutenant commander on 1 September 1943,[5] and assumed command of the destroyer HMS Swift, again participating in Arctic convoy duty.[2]

In February 1944 Gower participated in the rescue of the

D-Day, despite orders not to abandon the position or to launch lifeboats, he allowed Swift to drift towards the survivors, and was thus able to rescue 80 members of its crew.[1]

On 23 June, returning from a night patrol hunting some E-boats, Swift bumped into an acoustic mine that exploded and sank the ship in shallow water.[1] For his actions during the Normandy campaign, Gower was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.[6] His next command was the destroyer HMS Orwell, a ship belonging to the 17th Flotilla of Home Fleet. It patrolled the English Channel and escorted convoys in the Arctic.[2] In January 1945 he took part in Operation Spellbinder, the return of the Royal Navy units in the southern waters of Norway. During this operation he was twice mentioned in dispatches.[1]

Post-war activity

After the end of the Second World War Gower served as a course officer at the Royal Naval College, which was then at Eaton Hall, Cheshire. From 1946 to 1947 as the Home Fleet Recreation Officer on the battleships HMS King George V and HMS Duke of York.[2] In 1948 he married Aimée Joan Winder, who bore him four children, two boys and two girls. She died in 2000. He was deputy commander of the training cruiser HMS Devonshire between 1949 and 1951, and commander of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich between 1951 and 1953.[1] He attended the Joint Services Staff College course in 1953 and 1954, and was the Royal Navy's Director of PT and Sports from 1954 to 1956.[2] He was promoted to captain on 30 June 1953.[7]

After duty as director of the

Santiago, Chile from 1958 to 1960, and then commanded the boys' training school HMS Ganges from 1960 until he retired from active service on 28 August 1962.[1][10]

Gower went to live in

caravans in Belmont, Ayr. He later settled in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where he died on 18 November 2007.[1]

In the media

The writer John Winton, a former lieutenant commander of the Royal Navy who worked as a necrologist at The Daily Telegraph for fourteen years, was a student of Gower, and used him as a model for the character of Lieutenant Commander Robert Badger, the protagonist of his series of novels We Joined the Navy. Such novels were written under the pseudonym of "The Artful Bodger". The character of Robert Badger, in the film adaptation, We Joined the Navy (1963), was played by Kenneth More. Between 1929 and 1932 Gower wrote the three volumes of the series Midshipman's Journal.[1]

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Wright, Ian (29 July 2014). "Captain John Gower". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 10 August 2018.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h "Private Papers of Captain J R Gower DSC RN". Imperial War Museums. Retrieved 10 August 2018.
  3. ^ "No. 34008". The London Gazette. 26 December 1933. p. 8390.
  4. ^ "No. 34197". The London Gazette. 10 September 1935. p. 5740.
  5. ^ "No. 36184". The London Gazette. 24 September 1943. p. 4256.
  6. ^ "No. 36858". The London Gazette (1st supplement). 22 December 1944. p. 5915.
  7. ^ "No. 39920". The London Gazette. 21 July 1953. p. 4012.
  8. ^ a b Rayment, Sean (6 January 2008). "HMS Diana: the ship that went nuclear". The Telegraph. Retrieved 10 August 2018.
  9. S2CID 144611309
    .
  10. ^ "No. 42763". The London Gazette. 21 August 1962. p. 6662.
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