Captain Tony Casdagli
Naval helicopter pilot and ship’s captain who served in Aden and held firm during the Cod Wars
CAPTAIN TONY CASDAGLI, who has died aged 90, was a charismatic naval aviator and ship’s captain whose career took an unexpected turn. Anthony Casdagli was born in Manchester on June 12 1932 into an Anglogreek family of cotton traders. His early childhood was spent in Cairo, where the family firm had sent his father, but they returned to UK at the outbreak of the war.
His father, Major Alexis Casdagli, was captured in Crete in 1941 and spent the rest of the war a prisoner. Casdagli told his father’s remarkable story in a book, linking the grim realities of four years’ captivity in Germany with the solace his father found in stitching, which he had started after being handed a piece of canvas, and then pinching red and blue wool from the disintegrating pullover of an elderly Cretan general. One of Alexis Casdagli’s first samplers contained a message in Morse hidden in the border, which became the book’s subtitle: A Stitch in Time: God Save the King – F--- Hitler! (2011).
Tony was educated at Ludgrove prep, where he excelled at all games, especially cricket, before joining Dartmouth. He had earned his wings after flying training at Pensacola, Florida, and was awaiting appointment to a front-line squadron when he crashed his car. After many months of surgery, as part of his rehabilitation he was sent to the commando carrier Bulwark.
Midshipman Ben Bathurst (a future First Sea Lord) recalled: “For someone whose legs and hips had suffered so badly the logic of requiring him to stand for four hours at a time on watchkeeping duties escapes me, but I shall always remember what sparkling, cheerful company he was even in the coldest middle of the darkest middle watch [midnight to 0400].” The legend of “the limping Greek” was born: he was proud of his ethnicity and acquiesced to the epithet.
Casdagli converted to helicopter pilot, quickly becoming an instructor in 705 Naval Air Squadron, where he proved himself a calm and relaxed aviator; others regarded themselves fortunate to be one of his students.
At an air day at Culdrose, Cornwall, it was announced that a draw for a flight in a two-seat Hiller helicopter had been won by
an elderly lady. A figure in a dress and immense hat came forward and was strapped into the right-hand seat by the pilot, but as he was walking round the front of the aircraft to get into the left-hand seat, the aircraft leapt into the sky, the pilot flung himself on to the ground and, with “granny” at the helm, the helicopter gave a dazzling aerobatic display.
Once landed, “granny” disappeared in an ambulance – the crowd none the wiser that it had been Casdagli at the controls.
He next commanded the ship’s flight in the destroyer Kent, before commanding first 705 Squadron, then 820 Squadron, flying Wessex anti-submarine helicopters in the fleet carrier Eagle. Eagle covered the withdrawal from Aden in 1967 before deploying to the Far East and visiting Hong Kong and Australia.
Most of the pilots were on their first tour but, Bathurst recalled, “It was our wonderful luck to have Tony as the boss. He led from the front in a calm unhurried way, always fair, balanced, and never lost his temper, though on many occasions it would have been entirely justified, but with his understanding of the young and his obvious professionalism, they all adored him and found a sympathetic ear. It was a privilege to serve under Tony and I look back on my time in 820 as one of the happiest and most rewarding of my career – entirely due to his example and leadership.”
Casdagli ditched twice at sea. First, on the night of February 27 1964 at 400ft over Falmouth Bay, his Wessex suffered heavy tail-rotor vibration: he ordered the cabin crew to jump into the sea while he strained to hold his helicopter in a low hover, before crashing and sinking. He and his co-pilot climbed free and swam to a boat launched by the minesweeper Brinton.
Then on August 18 1967 in the Indian Ocean, Casdagli’s Wessex lost power, but he gently landed on the surface of the sea, and the aircraft’s flotation equipment kept it buoyant long enough to be recovered by Eagle’s crane.
Promoted early to commander in 1971, he was sent to the Gulf to command the minehunter Wiston and the 9th Mine Countermeasures Squadron. Showing intelligent leadership of the highest quality, he soon won the respect of his lieutenants in command, most of whom were talented and precocious; he showed a quick eye for detail and asked for exacting standards as he guided them in their first commands.
In early 1976 Casdagli commanded the frigate Naiad on several patrols during the Cod Wars, when government policy changed, intending to avoid damage to ships. In April Casdagli reported that the Icelandic Tyr, in foul weather and low visibility, had repeatedly manoeuvred to within feet of him, and that by the new rules of engagement he was powerless to prevent warp-cutting (the cutting of nets).
The policy was equally frustrating to the Navy – which had previously had the power, if authorised, to stop Icelandic gunboats from cutting trawlers’ nets – and to the fishermen, who began to suspect, rightly, that the frigates had new orders. Then on April 23, Casdagli placed Naiad close on the port quarter of the trawler Irvana, when Tyr took an ill-judged risk and attempted to cut between the two ships.
In the inevitable collision, Tyr’s superstructure was bent, and Naiad’s bow was split below the waterline, but after some hours of damage control she remained on patrol – and, indeed, after more dockyard repairs, she completed a further patrol at the end of May.
In 1978-79 as deputy director Naval Air Warfare, Casdagli oversaw the Fleet Air Arm’s future aircraft programmes, including the Sea Harrier, which was on the verge of introduction to service and which would prove a war-winner in the Falklands.
In 1980-81 he commanded the destroyer Bristol, and his last uniformed appointment was as chief of staff to Flag Officer Naval Air Command, where he helped to generate the forces needed for the war in the South Atlantic. He retired in 1983 with a particularly well-earned CBE.
Casdagli had the versatility and utility of many naval officers of his age, and his career went in a new direction. He spent the next 15 years as the director of the Federation of Bakers, the trade association, which he led through a period of great change. He found himself negotiating with unions and lobbying on technical and regulatory issues at national and European levels, including below-cost selling and the growing power of the supermarkets.
He supplied a calm, wise head and was someone the bakers could talk to with the utmost confidence and confidentiality; each departing chairman of the Federation was given a personalised, hand-stitched sampler by Casdagli, who had acquired the skill from his father.
In retirement, he spent his days as president of the Aero Golfing Society, and continued stitching. His garden in Highgate was a picture, and he was a keen cook.
Tony Casdagli married Dell Gibbons in 1957; they divorced in 1982, and the same year he married Sally Murray, who survives him with two daughters and three sons of the first marriage.
Tony Casdagli, born June 12 1932, died June 16 2022