Commander Frederick Jack (‘Jack’) SHIRLEY DSM Royal Navy

Cdr Frederick Jack Shirley DSM RN passed away in a retirement home near Midhurst on 13 September 2007. He was 94.

Jack Shirley was born on 14 January 1913 and joined the RNVR in 1931 as a Boy, First Class. For the next eight years he served intermittently in battleships, battle-cruisers and cruisers. In 1939 he was called up as a Ldg Telegraphist and sent to the paddle-steamer QUEEN OF THANET, sweeping mines in the Thames Estuary from her base at Shoeburyness. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal in 1940 and subsequently drafted to HMS GOLDEN EAGLE, a paddle streamer used as an AA ship in the Thames and one of the first RN ships to be fitted with radar.

Commissioned as a Sub Lieutenant RNVR in August 1942, he was appointed to the cruiser HMS COLOMBO as a Radar Officer working in the Mediterranean. He took part in the invasion of Sicily with US Navy forces at Gela. Convoy duties followed, sailing between Gibraltar, Bizerta and Alexandria. He was on board a ship that formed part of the Naval Support Group for the allied landings in the South of France in 1944 and was also a member of the naval force based at Zardar, Yugoslavia.

At the end of the war he was promoted Lieutenant Commander and became a founder member of the Electrical branch. Appointed to HMS VALKYRIE on the Isle of Man as the Electrical Officer, he was responsible for training and maintenance of radar equipment. He was then transferred to HMS DRYAD as the Electrical Officer where he taught navigators operational radar. He joined his first destroyer, HMS SAINTES, in the Mediterranean and was based at Malta for 18 months as the Squadron Electrical Officer. He then returned to the UK to become the Deputy Staff Electrical Officer at HMS DOLPHIN and had his first experience at sea in a submarine carrying out electrical maintenance inspections and trials. He was due to be at sea in the ill-fated submarine AFFRAY, which sank with all hands on the edge of the Hurd Deep on 16 April 1953, but was unable to go owing to pressure of work.

Promoted Commander in 1951, he was appointed to ASRE (later ASWE) where he was involved with new ships, conversions and modernisations. He returned to submarines with an appointment to HMS ADAMANT, the submarine depot ship at Rothesay. He then returned to HMS DOLPHIN as the Staff Electrical Officer. In 1959, he was appointed Fleet Electrical Officer on the staff of CinC Far East Fleet at Singapore, a post he held for three years. He retired from the Royal Navy in January 1963 and joined the staff of the Chief Inspector of Naval Ordnance (CINO), later the Directorate of Naval Ordnance. He joined RAE Farnborough in 1971 as the Service Advisor to the Weapons Department and served for several years before his final retirement in 1973.

Jack is survived by his daughters Jackie and Pamela.