The Daily Telegraph

Rear-admiral Sir Peter Anson, Bt

Naval officer who survived two sinkings, was taken prisoner and later helped to launch satellites

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REAR-ADMIRAL SIR PETER ANSON, 7th Bt, who has died aged 93, was a prisoner of war of the Japanese who later became a leading figure in the British space-communicat­ions industry.

As a midshipman Anson joined the battleship Prince of Wales in July 1941, after the Battle of the Denmark Straits. “The Prince”, as she was called, took part in Operation Halberd, a convoy bound for Malta, when, on return to Scapa Flow, Anson learnt from the issue of white uniform that she was bound for the Far East. When she was sunk by Japanese aircraft on December 10, Anson’s action station had been at the port battery of 5.25in guns. He recalled seeing the pilots’ faces as they flew low overhead.

Ordered to abandon ship, he stepped dry-shod into a destroyer, where he was given charge of a motorboat which he used to haul other survivors from the oily water. Later he was sent to Colombo for a weekend’s survivors’ leave, before joining the cruiser Exeter on New Year’s Day 1942.

Exeter escorted three convoys to Singapore before she joined allied ships of the short-lived Americanbr­itish-dutch-australian (ABDA) command. After being bombed daily, and two encounters with the Japanese fleet, Exeter too was sunk at the Second Battle of the Java Sea on March 1 1942. Anson spent the night in the water before being picked up by a Japanese destroyer.

For many months he was officially “missing” and feared dead by his mother. He spent three and a half years as a prisoner of war in various camps in the Dutch East Indies, often ill with tropical diseases and affected by boils. He recalled that the dressings on the boils on his backside were attractive to rats, but the rats were such delicate eaters that he often did not notice that his wounds had been licked bare.

He took his mind off his everpresen­t hunger by learning to play bridge. Tobacco was plentiful and the thin pages of the Bible made the best cigarette paper, though the padre made the men promise to read each page before it was smoked. There was also a lecture a week from his training officer, who was a fellow prisoner.

“I think an important point to remember is that the Japanese picked us up – all of us – and treated us very reasonably in their destroyers,” Anson later recalled.

After the war, on a visit to Japan in the frigate Alert, he met the Japanese chief of navy, who had been the officer who gave the order to rescue survivors from the water. Subsequent­ly, when invited to join a protest against the visit to London of the Emperor of Japan in 2012, Anson refused.

Peter Anson, a distant relative of the 18th-century circumnavi­gator Admiral Lord George Anson, was born in England on July 31 1924 to Sir Edward Reynell Anson, 6th Bt, and his wife Frances (née Pollock). The baronetcy had been created in 1831 for William Anson, KCB, an Army general noted for his service in the Peninsular War. After an early childhood spent in Canada, Peter attended Copthorne prep school and entered the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in 1938.

Postwar, Anson resumed his naval career, serving as lieutenant in the battleship Vanguard 1946-47 when she served as Royal yacht on a visit to South Africa. Choosing to specialise as a signals officer, 1949-50, Anson came top of his course and became flaglieute­nant to the Commander-inchief, Mediterran­ean. He succeeded in the Anson baronetcy upon his father’s death in 1951.

After a number of specialist appointmen­ts he was promoted early to commander, when he commanded the dispatch vessel Alert (1957–58) in the Far East, served on the directing staff of the Tactical School, Woolwich, and commanded the destroyer Broadsword (1961–62).

Promoted to captain, Anson studied at the Joint Services Staff College, Latimer (1963-64), before commanding the Leander-class frigate Naiad (1964-66), and in 1970-72 holding the temporary rank of commodore as the last Commodore Arabian Seas and Persian Gulf (CASPG). When he hauled down his flag as CASPG in November 1971 it was the end of a truce that the Royal Navy had begun to police in 1853 between rival, piratical sheikhs and which gave the name to the Trucial States to the region.

In 1966 Anson began to specialise in communicat­ions, first as Director Weapons Radio in Bath, then as captain of the signal school, HMS Mercury, near Petersfiel­d 1968-70, and, in 1972, as a rear-admiral as Assistant Chief of Defence Staff (Signals). Anson was a strong proponent of the Navy-led Skynet programme, a programme for a family of communicat­ions satellites.

He retired from the Navy aged 50 to start the space division of GEC Marconi and to revitalise the Skynet system, which had stalled. Under his direction it eventually extended to cover Nato and the company steadily advanced to become the world-class Matra Marconi Space, of which Anson was UK chairman. From 1980 to 1982 he was chairman of the UK Industrial Space Committee and later chairman of IGG Component Technology, which produces specialise­d parts for the space industry.

In 1974 Anson became High Sheriff of Surrey and later Deputy Lieutenant. He was president of the West Surrey Institute of Directors and of the Camberley Sea Cadets.

Anson was a prominent leader of South West Surrey Conservati­ves. When his wife was not selected for the party’s shortlist at the 1984 by-election he switched his support to Virginia Bottomley as she began her rise to political office.

As CASPG, Anson had closed the Royal Navy shore base HMS Jufair in Bahrain, but he was too ill to travel back for its recent reopening. Illness also obliged him to forego attendance at an Admiralty Board dinner to mark the launch this year of the carrier Prince of Wales.

Anson married, in 1955, Elizabeth Clarke (now Dame Elizabeth Anson) daughter of the Flag Officer Malta, who survives him with two sons and two daughters. He is succeeded in the baronetcy by his son, Philip.

Rear-admiral Sir Peter Anson, Bt, born July 31 1924, died April 17 2018

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 ??  ?? Anson and (right) the sinking of Exeter. During his time as a POW the thin pages of the Bible made the best cigarette paper, though the padre made the men promise to read each page before it was smoked
Anson and (right) the sinking of Exeter. During his time as a POW the thin pages of the Bible made the best cigarette paper, though the padre made the men promise to read each page before it was smoked

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