John H. D. Cunningham
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Admiral Sir John Henry Dacres Cunningham, GCB, MVO (13 April 1885 – 13 December 1962) was the Royal Navy British First Sea Lord from 1946 to 1948. A qualified senior navigator, he was for a time an instructor at the Royal Navy navigation school. He was also Director of plans at Admiralty House and later served as the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet during the Second World War.
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[edit] Early Life
He was born on 13 April 1885 at Demerara, British Guiana. His father was Henry Hutt Cunningham QC and his mother was Elizabeth Harriet. He was educated until sixteen at Stubbington House School. He then enlisted in the Royal Navy and became a sea cadet. After a short time he became a full midshipman on the HMS Britannia (1900–01). After leaving the Britannia in 1901 he was posted as a midshipman to the cruiser HMS Gibraltar. At this time he was awarded the queen's medal.
Cunningham returned home in 1904 as a sub-lieutenant to take the qualifying examinations for promotion to Lieutenant. He achieved a first-class top certificate in all five subjects and was therefore promoted in October 1905. He entered and soon qualified at the navigation school. He was immediately appointed as assistant navigator for the cruiser HMS Illustrious. During the next three years he graduated to the role of senior navigator of the gunboat HMS Hebe, the cruiser HMS Indefatigable in the West Indies, and the minelayer HMS Iphigenia in the home fleet. In 1910 he undertook an instructors course and was rewarded with an instructor's position at the Royal Navy navigation school.
In the same year, on 8 March, he married his first cousin, Dorothy May. Cunningham had spent some of his early years in Ulverston with Dorothy, after his parents had both died at sea. They were married for forty-nine years and had two sons, John and Richard; John became a fire brigade chief and Richard a Royal Navy Lieutenant in the Submarine Service. Richard was killed during World War Two, in action on board the P33 in August 1941.
[edit] 1914 to the Second World War
Cunningham returned to sea during the First World War in 1914 as navigator on the cruiser HMS Berwick in the West Indies station. The following year he was transferred to the Battleship HMS Russell in the Mediterranean. Notably he survived her her sinking by a mine, in Maltese waters in April 1916. After a brief rest, Cunningham was appointed as senior navigator in the battlecruiser HMS Renown. While serving in the Mediterranean he was promoted to the rank of Commander in 1917. In the final year of the war he became navigator of HMS Lion in the Grand Fleet. After the war he served again as an instructor but was at one time, appointed as navigator in the newly commissioned battlecruiser HMS Hood in 1920. During his time on the Hood, he became the squadron navigator for the entire battle-cruiser squadron, commanded at the time by Sir Roger Keyes.
[edit] Second World War
He returned ashore in 1922 to serve as commander of the navigation school and followed this a year later by appointment as master of the fleet in HMS Queen Elizabeth, the flagship of Admiral Sir John de Robeck. He was promoted Captain in 1924 and served for a time on the staff of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich. He then became deputy director of plans at Admiralty House. He again returned to sea, from 1928 to 1929 as commander of the minelayer HMS Adventure.
From 1930 to 1932 he was posted in Whitehall and was appointed director of plans. Emerging from a difficult period for the Royal Navy, Cunningham took command of the battleship HMS Resolution, while becoming flag captain to Admiral Sir William Fisher, the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet (a position Cunningham would later hold). After being appointed aide-de-camp to the King in 1935, Cunningham reached flag rank in 1936 at the age of fifty-one and was promoted to Rear Admiral. Later in the year he took up the post of assistant chief of naval staff. This brought him into close contact with the influential figure of Admiral Sir Ernle Chatfield, the First Sea Lord. Cunningham's workload increased substantially in 1937 when he assumed responsibility for administering the Fleet Air Arm upon its transfer from the Air Ministry to the Admiralty. His new role initially brought with it a slight change of designation, but the importance of his duties was reflected in the elevation of the office in 1938 to that of fifth sea lord, and chief of naval air services, with a seat on the Board of Admiralty.
As Europe began gearing up for war in the summer of 1939, he was promoted Vice Admiral and was ordered to take command of the 1st cruiser squadron in the Mediterranean, flying his flag on HMS Devonshire. Shortly after war broke out in September, Cunningham's cruiser squadron returned to reinforce the Home Fleet under Admiral Sir Charles Forbes. He was assigned to the Norwegian campaign from the outset. In the wake of the allied defeat, he was asked to lead a mixed force of three cruisers, nine destroyers, and three French transports to the port of Namsos, to the north of Trondheim, in order to evacuate the roughly 5700 allied troops of ‘Mauriceforce’ that had congregated there. Arriving off Namsos during the night of 1 May, Cunningham postponed the evacuation by twenty-four hours in the hope that clear weather would deteriorate and help to conceal the mass evacuation. On the evening of 2 May a bank of fog came, shrouding the evacuation operation from the Luftwaffe and allowing the entire ‘Mauriceforce’ to be spirited away from Namsos in a single night's work. Although badly mauled by bombing and strafing the next day, Cunningham's diminished task force returned with its evacuees safely to Scapa Flow, a few days later.
Cunningham's next major assignment took him back across the North Sea and well into the Arctic circle to the port of Tromsø on 7 June in order to rescue King Haakon VII, Crown Prince Olav, and other members of the Norwegian royal family, along with government ministers and the country's gold reserve. Under strict instructions not to break radio silence, Cunningham in the Devonshire, had picked up his evacuees and was on the return journey to the United Kingdom when they received a distress call from the British carrier HMS Glorious, only some 70 miles away, which was being engaged by vastly superior enemy forces. Because of his orders to return safely the Norwegian Royal Family, his inaction effectively left the crew of the Glorious and her two screening destroyers HMS Acasta and HMS Ardent to fend for themselves against overwhelming odds. Despite taking the fight courageously to the German pocket battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the unequal contest was soon over and all three British warships were sunk with the loss of 1519 officers and men. Only forty-six survived their freezing ordeal in the North Sea. In recent years criticism of Cunningham's role in this tragedy has surfaced.
In September 1940, he was appointed joint commander with Major-General N. M. S. Irwin, of operation Menacean, an effort to land a mixed force of 6670 British and Free French soldiers at Dakar in Senegal in a bid to provide a base for General de Gaulle's Free French movement in west Africa. This expedition turned out to be a failure, undermined by a lack of secrecy and co-ordination on the one hand and compromised by resolute Vichy French hostility and defensive firepower on the other.
Knighted in the new year's honours, Cunningham was recalled to Admiralty House in the early months of 1941 and appointed fourth sea lord and chief of supplies and transport. He remained at the position for more than two years before being sent in June 1943 to the eastern Mediterranean as commander-in-chief, Levant, with the acting rank of Admiral. Promotion to admiral followed in August and when the two Mediterranean commands were merged later in the year he was confirmed as the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, and assumed the responsibility for all allied warships in the same theatre. Admittedly, by this time the naval situation in the Mediterranean had improved significantly, but there were still important amphibious operations to launch at Anzio and in the south of France, both of which he oversaw.
[edit] First Sea Lord and last years
Cunningham remained in the Mediterranean, until he returned home to relieve Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham of Hyndhope as First Sea Lord in May 1946. Substantial budget cuts and disarmament had already taken place and more of the same were due to continue. His time as First Sea Lord was spent overseeing the downsizing of the Royal Navy and preparing the Navy for a role in the Cold War.
He retired in September 1948. In 1946 he was made a freeman of the City of London in the following year, and had been promoted to Admiral of the Fleet (Royal Navy) in January 1948. He had also received a set of distinguished orders and decorations from France, Greece, Norway, and the United States. After leaving the navy Cunningham spent the next ten years as chairman of the Iraq Petroleum Company, before retiring finally in 1958 at the age of seventy-three. He died in the Middlesex Hospital on 13 December 1962.
| Military Offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by The Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope |
First Sea Lord 1946–1948 |
Succeeded by The Lord Fraser of North Cape |
Richard Howe, 1st Earl Howe • Sir Peter Parker • Prince William, Duke of Clarence • Sir George Cockburn • Sir Thomas Hardy • The Hon. George Heneage Dundas • Charles Adam • Sir Charles Adam • Sir William Parker • Sir Charles Adam • James Whitley Deans Dundas • Hyde Parker • The Hon. Maurice Fitzhardinge Berkeley • William Fanshawe Martin • The Hon. Sir Richard Saunders Dundas • The Hon. Sir Frederick Grey • Sir Sydney Dacres • Sir Alexander Milne • Sir Hastings Yelverton • George Wellesley • Sir Astley Cooper Key • Sir Arthur Acland Hood • Lord John Hay • Sir R. Vesey Hamilton • Sir Anthony Hoskins • Sir Frederick Richards • Lord Walter Kerr • Sir Jackie Fisher • Sir Arthur Knyvet Wilson • Sir Francis Bridgeman • Prince Louis of Battenberg • Sir Henry Jackson • Sir John Jellicoe • Sir Rosslyn Wemyss • The Earl Beatty • Sir Charles Madden, Bt • Sir Frederick Field • The Lord Chatfield • Sir Roger Backhouse • Sir Dudley Pound • The Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope • Sir John Cunningham • The Lord Fraser of North Cape • Sir Rhoderick McGrigor • The Earl Mountbatten of Burma • Sir Charles Lambe • Sir Caspar John • Sir David Luce • Sir Varyl Begg • Sir Michael Le Fanu • Sir Peter Hill-Norton • Sir Michael Pollock • Sir Edward Ashmore • Sir Terence Lewin • Sir Henry Leach • Sir John Fieldhouse • Sir William Staveley • Sir Julian Oswald • Sir Benjamin Bathurst • Sir Jock Slater • Sir Michael Boyce • Sir Nigel Essenhigh • Sir Alan West • Sir Jonathon Band •
