Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An important post-war C.B., Second World War D.S.C. group of nine attributed to Rear-Admiral D. R. F. Cambell, Royal Navy, a gallant and distinguished Fleet Air Arm pilot who, in a career encompassing ‘many self-inflicted near-misses and other close contacts with the Grim Reaper’, revolutionised aircraft carriers with his invention of the angled flight deck

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath, C.B. (Military) Companion’s neck badge, silver-gilt and enamels, in its Garrard & Co. case of issue; Distinguished Service Cross, G.VI.R., the reverse officially dated ‘1940’, hallmarks for London 1942; 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Africa Star; Defence and War Medals; Coronation 1953; United States of America, Legion of Merit, Officer’s breast badge, gilt and enamels, unnamed, the wrap-round wearing pin numbered ‘181’, in its case of issue, the first and the last extremely fine, the remainder with contact marks and polished, and lacquered, otherwise generally very fine (9) £1500-2000

Provenance: believed to have been sold privately by the recipient to John Chidzey - see accompanying original letters to Chidzey from Rear-Admiral Cambell, dated 26 January 1977, and his brother, Commander Neville Cambell, M.B.E., D.S.C., dated 25 February 1977, in which the latter refers to the fact Chidzey is in possession of the Admiral’s Honours & awards.

C.B. London Gazette 1 January 1960.

D.S.C. London Gazette 11 July 1940:

‘For good services in the Royal Navy since the outbreak of War.’

Dennis Royle Farquharson Cambell was born in Southsea, Hampshire in November 1907, the son of Dr. Archibald Cambell, and one of three brothers who would serve with distinction in the Fleet Air Arm - Neville became a P.O.W. after his Swordfish was downed off North Africa, while Brian, a Fulmar pilot, was lost during the Bismarck action in May 1941.

Educated at Westminster School, Dennis entered the Royal Navy as a cadet in the training ship Thunderer and was appointed a Midshipman in H.M.S. Repulse in September 1926. A year or two later, after borrowing £35 from his father, he passed his pilot’s licence at Hampshire Aero Club and, in late 1930, was posted to R.A.F. Leuchars for formal training.

Appointments in the carriers Glorious and Courageous having followed, the outbreak of hostilities found him serving as a Lieutenant-Commander and C.O. of No. 803 (F.A.A.) Squadron, a Blackburn Skua unit operating from the decks of Ark Royal. And it was in this capacity that he was awarded his D.S.C. in the following year, after a series of gallant exploits, not least a low-level attack on the U-30 which was shelling the merchantman Fanad Head in the North Sea on 14 September 1939 - the bombs dropped by his wingmen were wrongly fused and blew off the tails of their Skuas: both pilots were picked up by the U-Boat, while Cambell, having experienced one of several career close-calls with the Grim Reaper, safely returned to the Ark Royal.

He departed Ark Royal in the following year after suffering from a disabling form of arthritis but, having been cured by an emergency appendectomy, was posted as a Test Pilot to Boscombe Down, where he served until March 1942. Next appointed Commander (Air) in the old carrier Argus on the Malta run in the Mediterranean, he was disappointed to be recalled home to work on the Blackburn Company’s Firebrand aircraft later in the year but, notwithstanding the recent demise of two similarly employed pilots, lent valuable service in attempting to deal with the ill-fated aircraft’s many shortcomings and carried out its first ever deck landings. His final wartime appointment was as Senior Naval Representative for the British Air Commission in Washington D.C.

Post-war, after a year or two at the Admiralty, Cambell returned to sea as Commander (Air) in the carrier Glory in the Far East, and, after advancement to Captain, received his first seagoing command, the corvette Tintagel Castle, in 1948-49. He then returned to an appointment as Deputy Chief Naval Representative (Air) at the Ministry of Supply, in which capacity he transformed aircraft carrier operations with his angled flight deck invention. His obituary in the Daily Telegraph takes up the story:

‘The high landing speeds and greatly increased weights of post-war aircraft made obsolescent - and dangerous - the traditional Second World War method of working a flight deck, with arrester wires and crash barriers and the forward half in use as a deck park.

The solution, devised by Cambell and refined by Lewis Boddington of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, was so staggeringly simple that everybody else kicked themselves for not thinking of it. It was to slew the direction of approach and landing a little out to port, so that if an aircraft missed the wires it could simply take off and go round again. The idea came to Cambell in August 1951, when he was Deputy Chief Naval Representative (Air) at the Ministry of Supply. He broached the subject at a meeting he was chairing on future aircraft design. But the suggestion was received by the Admiralty, as Cambell said, ‘with an indifference amounting almost to derision.’

However, at the Farnborough Air Show that year Cambell met some U.S. Navy officers who showed immediate interest. Thus, although the first experiments, in the carrier Triumph in 1952, were made by painting new lines on the flight deck, the first true angled deck was fitted for trials on an American carrier, the U.S.S. Antietam.

Between December 1952 and July 1953, Antietam carried out over 4,000 launches and landings, with no accidents attributable to the angled deck. In May 1953 Antietam came for trials in the Channel, and British pilots were able to try out a British invention - on board an American ship. As eventually fitted in British carriers, first with the intermediate five degrees and then the full ten, the angled deck was a success in every way, needing fewer arrester wires and crash barriers, making deck handling much easier and faster, and greatly reducing deaths and injuries to aircrew and deck handlers.’

But for the inventor of the most radical change in post-war carrier design, Their Lordships appear to have had no reward - unlike the Americans who appointed Cambell an Officer of the Legion of Merit. He was, however, given command of the newly commissioned Ark Royal - the fourth ship of that name - in 1955-56, in his view the high point of his long and distinguished career.

Advanced to Rear-Admiral in January 1958, he served latterly as Director of Naval Air Warfare and as Flag Officer Flying Training and, on his retirement in 1960, was appointed C.B. The Admiral, who closed his farewell address to Yeovilton with the words “This is Yeovil, turning finals, three greens, out”, died in Petersfield, Hampshire, in April 2000, aged 92 years, having established a travel agency specialising in Turkish holidays.