Sir Ian McGeoch
Art Neuendorffer
Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch; Lives Remembered;
The Register 1 September 2007 The Times
(c) 2007 Times Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved
Canon J. A. Fitch writes: Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch (obituary, August
20) was a man of wide interests and trenchant opinions, some of which
found incisive expression in letters to the Editor of The Times.
One of these concerned the true identity of William Shakespeare. The
McGeochs in retirement lived for some years at Castle Hedingham, Essex,
almost in the shadow of the great keep of the famous de Vere stronghold.
While there Sir Ian published a lively, well-documented pamphlet on
Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, entitled Aspects of the Truth. In
it he argued convincingly that the Earl wrote most of the works
attributed to Shakespeare.
Ian and Somers were convinced Christians and strong church people and it
was through taking occasional duty at the Parish Council that I had the
honour of their warm hospitality.
(c) Times Newspapers Ltd, 2007
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Art Neuendorffer
Art Neuendorffer
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 17/08/2007
<<Captured submarine ace whose many escape attempts culminated in a
400-mile trek across Italy to Switzerland
Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch, who has died aged 93, was a wartime
submarine ace and a serial escaper after being captured by the Germans
in the Mediterranean in 1943.
McGeoch's most famous exploits in submarines came in the period between
November 1942 and April 1943. On his first war patrol he was deployed
off Naples to ambush any Italian battleship which might threaten the
Allied landings in North Africa.
He hunted and missed a German U-boat, but when an anti-submarine
schooner was sighted the same afternoon McGeoch surfaced and fired a few
shots to persuade the crew to abandon ship; he then boarded and searched
her before setting her on fire. He allowed an armed merchant cruiser to
pass unmolested, but the next day another U-boat proved too tempting to
resist - it was not an easy attack, however, and McGeoch's torpedoes
missed their target.
A day later - determined not to waste his one remaining torpedo -
McGeoch took Splendid inshore, where he could see two merchant ships
under the escort of two destroyers. Picking the larger and more modern
of the destroyers, he scored a direct hit.
Returning to Malta, McGeoch saw an RAF Wellington attack a convoy and
disable a merchantman; he surfaced and shelled the straggler until she sank.
What the official record described as an "exhilarating" patrol was
further enlivened the following night, when Splendid was forced to turn
and dive to avoid the tracks of two torpedoes.
On his second patrol McGeoch and Splendid made a nuisance of themselves
on the Axis convoy routes to North Africa, sinking another destroyer. On
his third and fourth patrols he sank two anti-submarine vessels and
another 19,000 tons of shipping. He was awarded a DSO.
Later McGeoch spotted a 10,000-ton tanker with a powerful escort off
Sicily. The conditions were as unpromising as they could be (a flat calm
and a bright sun), but he pressed home his attack to within 600 yards
and "made a job of it" with three torpedoes. Two days later he sank a
3,000-ton tanker.
In April 1943 McGeoch was awarded a DSC for his bravery and skill in
successive submarine patrols, but on April 21 his luck turned. He was in
Splendid three miles off the south-east coast of Capri when he was
puzzled to see through his periscope a British destroyer; it was in fact
a British-built warship, formerly the Greek destroyer Vasilefs Georgios,
but now under the German swastika as Hermes.
In good asdic conditions Hermes dropped three accurate patterns of depth
charges and Splendid sank to the seabed, where the depth gauge stopped
at 500ft. McGeoch blew all his air tanks to raise his submarine to the
surface; the crew abandoned the boat through the gun and conning tower
hatches while Hermes made direct hits with her main armament, killing 18
of Splendid's 48-man crew.
McGeoch himself was wounded, in the right eye, but stayed in the boat
until he was sure that there was no one left alive and that it would
sink before the enemy could board it. The entire action was over in 12
minutes.
As McGeoch was hauled from the water into a German motorboat he heard a
guttural voice delivering the classic line "For you the war is over",
and he thought to himself "No, it bloody well isn't". Thus began a
year-long odyssey to reach Britain.
Although now blind in one eye, McGeoch made several escape attempts: he
attempted to dig, during the siesta hours, a tunnel from an Italian
hospital where he was being treated. He jumped from a train when he was
being moved between camps, but was recaptured. After being taken to Rome
for interrogation, he leapt from a moving car and made a vain attempt to
enter the Vatican.
Later, after the Italian armistice, he was promised repatriation, but
the train in which he was travelling was commandeered by the Germans;
McGeoch was taken to a prison hospital, from which he simply walked
away, eventually crossing the border into Switzerland after a 400-mile hike.
He chose Switzerland - more distant than the Allied front line - because
he wanted medical attention, and he was conscious while Professor
Adolphe Franceschetti used an electromagnet to draw a jagged sliver of
rusty steel from his blind eye.
He was also taken with what he called "the silken dalliance" of Geneva,
but was impatient to get home and obtained false papers before walking
into France in January 1944. Making contact with the Resistance, he
travelled westwards by train and car, then skied across the Pyrenees and
into temporary internment in Spain.
From Gibraltar he took passage in the dummy battleship Centurion, and
his arrival in Britain was announced to the Resistance by the BBC with
the cryptic words le tabac du Petit Pierre est dans la boîte. His
reunion with his wife and the child he had not yet seen was delayed
until two days later by a debriefing with MI9. He was mentioned in
dispatches for his successful escape.
Ian Lachlan Mackay McGeoch was born on March 26 1914 at Helensburgh,
where he was inspired to pursue a life at sea by messing about in boats
on the Firth of Clyde. He was educated at Pangbourne, and entered the
Royal Navy as a special entry cadet in 1931.
In 1933 he served as a midshipman in the battleship Royal Oak, the
destroyer Boadicea and the cruiser Devonshire, but six years later began
to specialise in submarines.
On the outbreak of war McGeoch was third hand in the submarine Clyde. He
passed the perisher in 1940 and was sent to Malta as spare commanding
officer. He commanded Splendid during the Allied landings in North
Africa (Operation Torch) before embarking on the period in which he
became a submarine ace.
After his escape McGeoch attended the naval staff course in 1944 and was
staff officer operations in the 4th Cruiser Squadron of the British
Pacific Fleet.
In 1946-47 he commanded the frigate Fernie until being promoted
commander and sent to work in the operations division of the Admiralty.
In 1949 he commanded the 4th Submarine Division in Sydney.
He was naval liaison officer to RAF Coastal Command in 1955-56, Captain
3rd Submarine Squadron in 1957-58, then spent two years as director of
the Underwater Warfare Division in the Admiralty. After a year as a
student at the Imperial Defence College, McGeoch commanded the cruiser
Lion from 1962 to 1964.
Promoted to admiral, he was successively Admiral President of the Royal
Naval College, Greenwich, Flag Officer Submarines, and Flag Officer
Scotland and Northern Ireland. He was appointed CB in 1966 and KCB in 1969.
After retiring in 1970 McGeoch went to Edinburgh University to study
Social Sciences, and in 1975 was awarded an MPhil for his study of the
origins, procurement and effect of the Polaris project.
From 1972 to 1980 he was editor of The Naval Review, and contributed to
many other service journals. He collaborated with General Sir John
Hackett and other senior Nato officers in producing two editions of The
Third World War (1978 and 1982), which predicted how a future war might
be fought.
McGeoch wrote a wartime memoir, An Affair of Chances: a Submariner's
Odyssey, 1939-44 (1991), and The Princely Sailor: Mountbatten of Burma
(1996), an assessment of the service career of a leader with whom
McGeoch had several times served and whom he had always admired.
Interested in all maritime affairs, but especially in safety at sea,
McGeoch took an active interest in all his many nautical associations,
including the Royal Institute of Navigation, the Nautical Institute and
the Honourable Company of Master Mariners.
He was a member of the Queen's Body Guard for Scotland, the Royal
Company of Archers and of the Royal Yacht Squadron.
Ian McGeoch died on August 12. He married, in 1937, Eleanor Somers
Farrie (whom he always called Somers); she survives him with their two
sons and two daughters.>>
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Art Neuendorffer
wrote:
___ *COACHING 'EM*
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TIMESONLINE November 15, 2006
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/incomingFeeds/article637958.ece
..........................................
Best for comedy
.
Sir, - If Marlowe, Dekker, Jonson, Middleton, Fletcher et al
collaborated with Shakespeare, should not Edward de Vere, 17th Earl
of Oxford, be included in the roll (see Peter Wentworth's review of
Shakespeare and Co. by Stanley Wells, November 3)? After all, Francis
Meres, in his Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598) named (however
deferentially) Oxford as "The best for comedy amongst us"; and for
many years Lyly was employed by Oxford as secretary and manager of
his troupes of young actors. As to the Sonnets, will Stanley
Wells allow that Shakespeare spoke entirely for himself?
.
IAN MCGEOCH
Hill House, High Street, Ixworth, Bury St Edmunds.
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Art Neuendorffer
Art Neuendorffer
http://www.ybw.com/img/newsdesk/ym/blog/21Picture2.png
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The De Vere Society
.
Sunday 14 May 2006 Banqueting Hall, Hedingham Castle, Essex
http://www.deveresociety.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/news_subpage.html
.
The meeting agenda is:
.
10:00 - 10:30 Arrive - Tea/Coffee/Biscuits - Registration
10:30 - 11:45 AGM (hopefully, short)
.
11:45 - 12:45 Sir Ian McGeogh will give a short talk
. followed by discussion on the proposal that Edward de Vere was
. the natural father of Henry Wiothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton.
.
12:45 - 1:45 Lunch at the Mansion House
.1:45 - 2:45 Elizabeth Imlay:
. Edward de Vere and the Music of the Renaissance
.2:45 - 3:45 Charles Bird: Hedingham - Joining the Dots:
. Placing Edward de Vere in his landscape at his
. ancient manor of Hengham-ad-Castrum
.
.3:45 - 4 AOB and Close
.
The castle will be open to the public during the meeting,
so people may be wandering in and out of the banqueting Hall>>
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. Sir Ian has left the castle
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Lives Remembered Sir Ian McGeoch August 29, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article2343577.ece
.
<<Rodney Pattisson writes: Vice-Admiral McGeoch (obituary, August 20)
was a very keen sailor and it was perhaps his passion for this sport
that resulted in a probably unique arrangement between a serving
admiral and a humble, and very junior, sublieutenant, training for
the submarine service I was finding that training, and at the same
time serving in an active submarine, was clashing hopelessly with
my sporting ambition to gain Olympic selection. Indeed, so much so
that I requested to leave the submarine service, coming before
Sir Ian McGeogh as the Flag Officer Submarines.
.
Listening to my reasons and my Olympic ambitions, and presumably
impressed by my regatta results, he made his decision by saying
"Well, SubLieutenant Pattisson, what if we bargain over this?
You pass your submarine examination, and I will give you
all the leave you need to try to win Olympic selection."
.
Several weeks later I passed - much to the surprise of
my commanding officer - and Sir Ian kept his word.
I won my first Olympic gold medal just a year later.
......................................................
<<Born in Campbeltown, Argyll on 4th August 1943, Rodney Stuart
Pattisson can justifiably claim to be Scotland's most successful
sailor ever, winning two Olympic gold and one silver medal.
.
He teamed up with a London solicitor, Ian MacDonald Smith, and the
two were selected to represent Great Britain in the 1968 Mexico
City Olympics in the "Flying Dutchman" class - a 20 foot,
2 man yacht after winning the Olympic trials.
.
After winning the European Championships, their preparation was
meticulous as they travelled out to Mexico two months ahead
of the event in order to acclimatise to the local conditions
on their boat "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious",
not surprisingly shortened to "Superdocious".
.
[Roots of the word have been defined, as Richard Lederer writes in
his book Crazy English as follows: super- "above," cali- "beauty,"
fragillistic- "delicate," expeali- "to atone," & docious-
"educable," with the sum of these parts signifying roughly
"Atoning for educatability through delicate beauty."]
.
Apart from one disqualification, which naturally they chose as their
non-scouting score, they won five out of six races & claimed the gold
medal with a score of only three penalty points, something which had
never been achieved before in an Olympic regatta. In winning the
gold,
Rod became the first Scot to win an Olympic gold in any sport for
12 years and was the first to win any type of sailing medal.>>
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http://www.ybw.com/ym/blog/dick_durham.html
.
<<Vice-admiral Ian McGeoch had grown up on the Clyde listening to the
sounds of ships' engines throbbing through the side of the small
wooden
sailing dinghies he went camping in. Many years later, while
commander
of the naval submarine, Splendid, the same noise came back to haunt
him. 'SwishswishswishswishSWISHSWISHSWISHSWISHswishswish...' was how
he remembered the German destroyer, Hermes, passing 90 feet overhead
in the mirrored surface of the Mediterranean before a third tranch
of depth charges 'whipped the boat as if it were made
of flesh and blood rather then the toughest steel'.
Walkways between the giant diesel engines buckled and collapsed into
the bilge and, on fire and leaking, Splendid started heading stern
first for the sea-bed, 3,000 feet away. Ian had no choice but to use
his reserve compressed air to fill the sub and bring her to the
surface.
As she came up and the outside pressure decreased the 1,000 ton
submarine 'leapt out of the water like a salmon'.
Hermes was already using her guns now to smash the upper works of
the sub and as Ian and his 47 crew jumped over the side 18 men
were killed by shrapnel: Ian himself losing his right eye
to a splinter from Splendid's conning tower.
But he had done well: Splendid sank more tanker and supply ship
tonnage than any other sub in the vital November 1942 to April 1943
period. 40 submarines were lost carrying out the vital job of
cutting off supplies to Field Marshal Rommel in the Western Desert
in that time: 10 sunk by enemy action; 19 sunk by depth charge,
14 struck mines, the others were lost 'cause unknown'.>>
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Art Neuendorffer