Instructor Lieutenant Commander Robert Moss MID (twice) Royal Navy

Excerpt from Daily Telegraph obituary:

Scientist who spent four months alone on an Arctic icecap and in the war gave valuable service to the Navy

…..Robert Moss was born on November 14 1912. From Manchester Grammar School he went to New College, Oxford, where he took a First in Physics. He was….teaching at Wellington after the outbreak of war when he received a letter from a former pupil mentioning that the Navy needed instructor lieutenants. On being appointed to the cruiser Kenya Moss took part in the Vaagso raid, off Norway, the first significant commando operation; he was able to use his smattering of Norwegian to interrogate captives.

His most valuable work, however, lay in developing the co-ordination of radar, visual sightings, radio intercepts and aircraft reconnaissance while his ship was hunting the Bismarck; his skills proved equally valuable when Kenya was escorting Arctic and African convoys and taking part in Operation Pedestal, which relieved Malta.

Moss then spent two years at HMS King Alfred before being transferred to Southwick House, outside Portsmouth, to prepare for the Normandy landings. He set up an action information centre, with the future Captain Sir David Tibbits, which was banished to the stables to make way for General Eisenhower’s staff.

Coming out in the rank of lieutenant-commander with two mentions in dispatches, Moss returned to Wellington, where he became head of the science department. He was the first schoolmaster to enjoy a sabbatical term at Churchill College, Cambridge, and he used it as an opportunity to renew his interest in the Arctic at the Scott Polar Research Institute.