| Peter Townsend | |
|---|---|
| Born | Peter Wooldridge Townsend November 22, 1914 Rangoon, Burma |
| Died | June 19, 1995 (aged 80) Rambouillet, France |
| Spouse | Rosemary Pawle Marie-Luce Jamagne |
| Children | Giles Townsend Hugo Townsend Isabelle Townsend (b. 1961) |
Group Captain Peter Wooldridge Townsend, CVO, DSO, DFC and Bar, RAF (22 November 1914 – 19 June 1995) was Equerry to King George VI 1944–1952 and held the same position for Queen Elizabeth II 1952–1953. Group Captain Townsend is best known for his ill-fated romance with Princess Margaret.
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Townsend was born 1914 in Rangoon, Burma, and was educated at Haileybury School. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1933, and trained at Cranwell. He served in Training Command, and as a flying instructor at RAF Montrose. He was stationed at RAF Tangmere in 1937 and was a member of No. 43 Squadron RAF. The first enemy aircraft to crash on English soil during World War Two fell victim to fighters from Acklington on 3 February 1940 when three Hurricanes of ‘B’ flight, 43 Squadron, shot down a Heinkel 111 of 4./KG26 near Whitby. The pilots were F/L Townsend, F/O ‘Tiger’ Folkes and Sgt. James Hallowes. He was awarded the DFC in April 1940. Two more He 111s were claimed by Townsend, on 22 February and 8 April, and a sixth share on 22 April.
By May 1940, now a Squadron Leader, Townsend was one of the most capable Squadron leaders of the Battle of Britain, serving throughout the battle as CO of No. 85 Squadron RAF, flying Hawker Hurricanes. On 11 July 1940 Townsend, flying Hurricane VY-K (P2716) intercepted a Dornier Do 17 of KG 2 and severely damaged the bomber, forcing it to crash land at Arras. Return fire from the Dornier hit the Hurricane coolant system and Townsend was forced to ditch twenty miles from the English coast, being rescued by a trawler. On 31 August, during combat with Bf 110s over Tunbridge, Townsend was shot down and wounded in the left foot by a cannon shell which went through glycol tank and exploded in the cockpit. He continued to lead the unit on the ground even after this wound resulted in his big toe being amputated, and he returned to operational flying on 21 September. A bar to his DFC was awarded in early September 1940.
He oversaw the conversion of 85 Squadron to night operations at RAF Hunsdon during early 1941. Awarded a DSO in April 1941, he later became Commanding Officer RAF Drew in April 1942 and commanded No. 611 Squadron RAF, a Spitfire unit.
On 17 July 1941 he married (Cecil) Rosemary Pawle (1921–2004) with whom he had two sons, Giles (b. 1942) and Hugo (b. 1945). They divorced in 1952 and Rosemary later married John de László (son of the painter Philip de László) and became the third wife of the 5th Marquess Camden in 1978.
Townsend was later leader of No. 605 Squadron RAF, a night fighter unit, and attended the staff college from October 1942. In January 1943 he was appointed Commanding Officer of RAF West Malling.
In 1944 he was appointed temporary equerry to King George VI. In the same year the appointment was made permanent, and he served until 1953, when he became Extra Equerry, an honorary office he held until his death. He was promoted Group Captain in 1948. In August 1950 he was made deputy Master of the Household and was moved to comptroller to the Queen Mother in 1952. He retired from the Royal Household in the next year, and was air attaché in Brussels 1953 to 1956.
His wartime record was 9 aircraft claimed destroyed (and 2 shared), 2 'probables' and 4 damaged.
Group Captain Townsend is best known for his ill-fated romance with Princess Margaret. Despite his distinguished career, as a divorced man there was no chance of marriage with the princess and their relationship caused enormous controversy in the mid 1950s. He later married a Belgian woman, Marie-Luce Jamagne, in 1959. Their daughter, Isabelle Townsend, became a Ralph Lauren advertising model in the late 1980 and early 1990s. Isabelle and her family live in a house in France named "The Mill," where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor once resided.[1] Unlike Princess Margaret who decided not to give up her royal position for marriage to Isabelle's father, Margaret's uncle, the Duke of Windsor, who was King only from January 20, 1936, to December 11, 1936, infamously gave up the throne to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson. Although Margaret did not marry Townsend and instead married photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones in 1960, she herself divorced in 1978 after scandalous behavior and affairs.
Peter Townsend was one of several military advisors to the 1969 film Battle of Britain.
He spent much of his later years writing non-fiction books. His books include "Earth My Friend" (about driving/boating around the world alone in the mid 1950s), "Duel of Eagles," (about the Battle of Britain), "The Odds Against Us" (also known as "Duel in the Dark") (about fighting Luftwaffe night bombers in 1940-1941), "The Last Emperor" (A biography of King George VI), The Girl in the White Ship (about a young refugee from Vietnam in the late 1970s who was the sole survivor of her ship of refugees), The Postman of Nagasaki (about the atomic bombing of Nagasaki), and Time and Chance, (an autobiography). He also wrote many short articles and contributed to other books.
He was a CVO (1947), DSO (1941) and DFC (1940 and bar). Townsend died of stomach cancer in 1995, at the age of 80, in Rambouillet, France. A sculpture of Captain Townsend stands in Townsend Square, part of the Kings Hill development on the site formerly occupied by RAF West Malling.[2]
His son Giles Townsend is President of the Cambridge Bomber and Fighter Society currently restoring a MK I Hawker Hurricane of No. 85 Squadron RAF and a Hawker Fury biplane of No. 43 Squadron RAF. His son Hugo Townsend is married to Yolande, Princess of Ligne.