With his large, bear-like frame and blind right eye, Ian McGeoch was a famous naval figure, with a courageous war record, a remarkable escape from a prisoner-of-war camp, appointments at high rank and creditable academic achievements.
Trained at Pangbourne, he joined the battleship Royal Oak in 1933 as a midshipman, subsequently serving in the destroyer Boadicea and the cruiser Devonshire. In 1937 he elected to specialise in submarines and was appointed to the submarine Clyde based in Malta, where, according to the social myth of the times, he irretrievably damaged his chances of promotion by marrying young the daughter of the Anglican vicar of Sliema, Eleanor Somers Farrie.
When war broke out, he was “third hand” of the Clyde and subsequently second-in-command of a small and elderly submarine called H43 which clandestinely landed agents in Guernsey. In July 1940 he was appointed sec-ond-in-command of the new submarine Triumph but, before seeing operational service, was selected for the Commanding Officers’ Qualifying Course, the dreaded “perisher”, failure at which meant the end of service in submarines. This he passed and was soon sent to Malta as “Spare Commanding Officer” to the 10th Submarine Flotilla, covering for sickness or injury.
His first patrol in Ursula was not a success; he found that he had no confidence in his own abilities and was in any case suffering from a stomach ulcer. Taking a brave decision, he asked that he should be sent back home as second-in-command of a submarine returning for refit in order, most unusually, to retake the “perisher”. This was allowed and McGeoch, having requalified, was given command of the new submarine P228, building at Chatham.
Returning to Malta, McGeoch and P228, shortly afterwards renamed Splendid, found themselves in the thick of the Mediterranean campaign wherein Malta occupied a vital strategic position as a base for surface, submarine and air forces engaged in interdicting Axis movements, particularly reinforcements and supplies to North Africa.
Between the Operation Torch landings in Tunisia in November 1942 and the end of organised resistance in North Africa in May 1943, Splendid sank more tonnage than any other submarine, including the destruction of one destroyer and damage to another. McGeoch was awarded the DSO in April 1943. The intensity of operations, enemy air cover, often good visibility with clear and calm water led to a heavy casualty rate among British submarines. Splendid met her own nemesis on her sixth war patrol on April 21, 1943, when McGeoch attacked a destroyer of unfamiliar type in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Conditions were calm, and this destroyer, which turned out to be the German and very efficient Hermes, originally built by the British for the Greek Navy, sighted Splendid’s periscope and briskly depth-charged her to the surface. McGeoch ordered his crew to abandon ship, and with the surviving majority was taken prisoner of war.
Suffering from what he believed to be an infection in his right eye which deprived it of sight, he nevertheless became a persistent escaper. On one occasion he and a colleague, equipped with Afrika Korps caps, jumped from a train and pretended to be German soldiers on leave. Discovered naked after swimming, and betrayed by the broad arrow on McGeoch’s boots, they did not fool the Carabinieri.
The Italian surrender in September 1943, and the consequently lax supervision, enabled him to walk out of a prison camp and make it by train and on foot to the Swiss border, where he was aided by the British legation. Here he obtained the first expert attention for his eye, which involved the removal of an unsuspected steel sliver from Splendid’s periscope structure; the eye would be permanently useless.
The good offices of the Swiss authorities and the British diplomatic service equipped him to enter southern France in December, where the Resistance shuffled him along the established repatriation pipeline to the Spanish border and Barcelona. Here again the British legation, operating in a dubiously neutral Francoist environment, eventually extracted him from a prison in Figueras and arranged his passage by train to Gibraltar. It had been a whole year since the sinking of Splendid.
After his return to England, he was appointed Staff Officer (Operations) to the admiral commanding the 4th Cruiser Squadron in the British Pacific Fleet, fighting in the battles leading to the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. For this service he was awarded the DSC. He then assisted with the repatriation of British prisoners of war, returning to command the Hunt class destroyer Fernie, 1946-47, and, between 1949 and 1957, the 3rd and 4th Submarine squadrons.
As a commander he was second-in-command of the cruiser Euryalus and of the naval barracks at Portsmouth. As a captain he was Director of Undersurface Warfare in the Admiralty, subsequently taking the 1961 Imperial Defence College course. After commanding the cruiser Lion, he was promoted rear-admiral in 1964, and appointed Admiral President of the naval college at Greenwich.
This was followed by the very gratifying and appropriate post of Flag Officer Submarines. His period in the post saw the commissioning of the navy’s second, but first all-British, nuclear attack submarine, Valiant, the launch of the first Polaris boat, Resolution and the establishment of the navy’s nuclear submarine training and support systems.
As a vice-admiral, McGeoch returned to his native land as Flag Officer Scotland and Northern Ireland, retiring in 1970. It is related that at a dinner party he recognised the lady opposite and enquired of her. “Excuse me, were you ever in prison in Figueras?” She replied. “You know, Admiral, I’ve been plucking up courage all night to ask you the same question.”
He was for eight years from 1972 editor of the Naval Review, the Royal Navy’s in-house quarterly journal which promotes knowledge relevant to the higher aspects of the naval profession. In 1975 he took an MPhil at Edinburgh University under the redoubtable Professor John Erickson. His authoritative biography of Earl Mountbatten, The Princely Sailor, was published in 1996. He was a member of the Queen’s Bodyguard for Scotland, the Royal Company of Archers, 1969-2003.
He is survived by his wife Eleanor, with whom he had two sons and two daughters.
Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch, KCB, DSO, DSC, wartime submarine commander and Flag Officer Submarines, 1966-67, was born on March 26, 1914. He died on August 12, 2007, aged 93
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