Lieutenant Commander David Foster DSO DSC and Bar RNVR

LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER DAVID FOSTER

One of the most highly decorated Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve aviators of the second world war, David Foster bore dual nationality, his American father Bob Foster being managing director of Colgate-Palmolive in the UK. Having been educated at Stowe School and Caius College, Cambridge, at the outbreak of war he said :”It never occurred to me to opt for my American nationality and not serve in the British armed forces. I just felt British”.
His father was one of the few American businessmen who elected to stay in Britain, relocating his Pimlico works after a direct hit by the Luftwaffe and raising a glass to the RAF when the Colgate factory in Hamburg was flattened.
David Foster volunteered for the Fleet Air Arm, the training pipeline initiating him to naval custom in the rate of Naval Airman Second Class, to his amusement wearing bell-bottom trousers. By May 1941 he was on his way by sea to the Middle East as a front-line pilot, arriving at the RN Air Station at Dhekelia near Alexandria during the nadir of the Mediterranean campaign. The efficient German air force had so damaged the large carriers Formidable and Illustrious that they were withdrawn for repairs in America, thus their naval aircraft were now operating in support of the 8th Army from landing fields in the Western Desert.
While carrying out such humdrum activities as target-towing for the fleet, ferrying and flight testing, Foster came down with malaria and paratyphoid. Fit again in April 1942, he complained that he had been two years in the Service and had still not fired a shot in anger. He was then posted to the newly formed 821 Squadron flying Albacores, a single-engined biplane designed as a successor to the similar and famous ‘Stringbag’ Swordfish. He was mentioned in despatches for his operational flying to July 1942, including two forced landings and a brush with a formidable Junkers 88 night fighter amongst several night sorties bombing German supply lines and illuminating with flares the targets to be attacked by RAF bombers. A particularly successful mission, finding the head of Rommel’s line of advance towards Egypt at night and leading RAF bombers to the target, earned Foster his first DSC.
After the victory of El Alamein and his 49 operations, Foster expected to go home for leave but was sent to devastated Malta with 821 Squadron, flying anti-shipping and anti-submarine sorties.
After a particularly dangerous mission leading a flight to drop mines in the harbour at Sousse in weather so atrocious that no-one else would undertake it, Foster realised that with his total of front line flying hours without a rest, he was at the end of his tether. He negotiated a return to Cairo and home to England in January 1943 via a flying boat flight to Shannon in neutral Ireland.
After three months with the naval publicity and film unit, bringing the realities of naval aviation to the nation, Foster was appointed senior pilot of 841 Squadron based at Manston in Kent, again flying the Albacore and attacking enemy merchant shipping and E-Boats in the Channel and North Sea by night.
In February 1944 he sailed to America in the liner Queen Elizabeth, posted as senior pilot of a squadron of sturdy Grumman Avenger aircraft. “It was sheer joy to be in a modern naval aircraft” he wrote in his autobiography Wings Over The Sea. As a detached observer, Foster was scathing about the deleterious influence of RAF procurement on the quality of naval aircraft between the wars, the return of the Fleet Air Arm to naval control in 1938 being too late to rectify a naval air arm that was well behind other nations. Foster recorded the loss of many friends flying Skuas against German Me109’s and Fulmars against Japanese Zeros.
He recalled that with four years in the Fleet Air Arm and 65 missions, as senior pilot he did his first deck landings on a carrier with the new boys. All went well and 856 Squadron transferred to England in the escort carrier Smiter, Foster, now an acting temporary Lt-Commander(A), was appointed CO of 849 Squadron and shipped out to the Far East in the escort carrier Rajah.
Trusted with an enlarged squadron of 21 Avengers, Foster, after a rigorous training schedule, embarked in the large fleet carrier Victorious. He noted: “Interestingly, every one of my 50 officers were RNVR or ‘Wavy Navy’ – demonstrating how wartime expansion depended upon volunteers”.
The first attack by the British Pacific Fleet carrier force against the oil refinery at Pangkalan Brandan in Sumatra wreaked much destruction and was the precursor of several more. Now leading a wing of Avengers from two carriers, Foster took part in Operation Meridian, the devastating attack on the Japanese-held oil refineries at Palembang in January 1945 which involved 140 aircraft from four carriers, the largest operation ever mounted by the Fleet Air Arm. Ten of the twelve squadrons involved were equipped with American aircraft.
A re-attack known as Meridian 2 against alerted Japanese opposition proved expensive – 849 losing four aircraft, two crews being rescued. For his part in this operation, Foster was awarded the DSO.
After the British Pacific Fleet joined the Americans in March 1945, Foster continued to lead a wing of Avengers for 20 missions in repeated attacks against airfields on the Sakishima Islands in support of the American invasion of Okinawa. He received a personal mention for his outstanding performance in Admiral Philip Vian’s report which enumerated the 59 aircraft lost from all causes, principally accurate Japanese flak. In July his second DSC was gazetted.
Foster was demobilised in December 1945 and joined Colgate-Palmolive’s British subsidiary as a trainee. His strong leadership qualities were evidenced by his successful career with this company. By 1947 he was Export Sales Manager and in 1950 was transferred to the head office in USA, again as sales manager. By 1957 he was managing director of Colgate-Palmolive Ltd in Britain, taking over the European Division in 1961. Called back to the New York headquarters in 1965 he advanced to Executive Vice-President in 1968, President and Chief Executive Officer from 1971 to 1979 and Chairman from 1975, retiring in 1979 after 33 years in the company.
His marriage in 1952 to the well-known actress Glynis Johns was dissolved. In 1957 he married Anne Firth who predeceased him. He is survived by their two daughters. He married Alexandra Chang in 1996; she also pre-deceased him.

Lieutenant-Commander David Foster DSO, DSC and Bar RNVR,
naval aviator and businessman, was born on May 24 1920.
He died in New York on June 3 aged 90.