Lieutenant Commander Stuart Jewers DSC MiD Royal Navy

Obituary by Peter Hore:

Lieutenant Commander Stuart Jewers, who has died aged 95, was a Seafire pilot and Wimbledon hopeful.
In July 1944 Jewers commanded 801 Naval Air Squadron, providing fighter cover from the carrier Trumpeter during operations Mascot and Goodwood against the German battleship Tirpitz in Kaa fjord, Norway. In August, flying from Furious, he took part in anti-shipping strikes off Norway, Operation Begonia, when, he confided of his pilots, “the boys were magnificent” and he was mentioned in despatches.
Later that year Jewers’ squadron doubled in size to 25 Seafires and their pilots, and joined 30th Naval Fighter Wing in the fleet carrier Implacable destined for the British Pacific Fleet. This increase gave a new urgency to all aspects of training and, as many of Jewers’ pilots lacked experience, he concentrated first on safety, teaching them to bale out rather than ditch, but, if they had to ditch, to leave the aircraft as quickly as possible.
On the voyage east, and under the leadership of Commander Charles Lamb, who Jewers found “first-class, co-operative and approachable, he treated the RNVR and RN as equals and was always on the side of the pilots,” Jewers helped to train up Implacable’s deck landing party to cope with a deck park of 25 Seafires. They also practised landing on at 25 second intervals between each aircraft, and Jewers’ squadron was supplied with long range tanks from the USN so that they could be used for offensive operations over Japan in addition to combat air patrol over the carrier.
30 Naval Air Wing attacked Truk, before joining Allied naval forces which Jewers remembered as “3 US Navy fleets, 19 carriers in all and 60 miles of ships.” Meanwhile the intensity of operations achieved by Implacable exceeded anything which London had thought possible: operating 250-500 miles from Japan, they worked shifts of two days of operations, followed by two days of refuelling and getting fresh aircraft from the fleet train, often flying 6 hours a day
Jewers was awarded the DSC for outstanding skill and courage, an award which he said should have gone to the squadron.
Stuart Jewers was born on June 9, 1915 at Windsor and educated at Windsor Boys’ School. In 1934 he started a course in optics, but 1936-38 he played tennis to see if he could make the grade as a full time player, and played in the qualifying doubles at Wimbledon before war broke out.
Jewers joined the RNVR as a supply rating in the summer of 1939 but sent to Ramsgate to stack blankets, he felt he could do more for the war effort and applied to join the RAF. The Admiralty was not amused, but did allow him to transfer to the Fleet Air Arm
He became one of the last pilots to be trained in Britain, before wartime pilot training was moved to Canada. In May 1940 he joined HMS St Vincent, known as “Wilmot’s place” after the petty officer who taught the young Naval Airmen 2nd Class on Jewers’ course; he learned to fly solo after 9 hours in a Tiger Moth at Elmdon (now Birmingham international airport); from Crail in Fife he practised in Swordfish and Albacores at dropping torpedoes over the sea at low level; and at Arbroath, Angus he practised deck landings. He also attended the “knife, fork and spoon” course at the Royal Naval College Greenwich.
Sent to the Middle East in a troopship via the Cape he arrived when there was a shortage of fighter pilots and retrained on Fulmars and Gladiators. Patrolling the Red Sea he recalled escorting the French liners Normandie and Isle de France with troops for Egypt, and he was shot at during a radar exercise with the cruiser Carlisle. He enjoyed “a good night onboard afterwards,” when the ship’s gunnery officer apologised and he returned to his base with the ship’s White Ensign.
He found a period flying in the Western desert frustrating as his Fulmar was too slow to catch either Italian or German bombers, and night flying from Fuka airfield (when in the ebb and flow of war it was in British possession) “with the Free French squadron for night fighting was fairly unsatisfactory as they didn’t feel it necessary to take off into wind.”
Jewers was relieved when in March 1942 he joined Lieutenant Commander Jimmy Gardner’s 889 Naval Air Squadron which was re-equipping with Sea Hurricane IIs. As an experienced pilot he went in January 1943 to Yeovilton as a flying instructor, though he did not make his first deck landing in a Sea Hurricane until six months later. After conversion to the Spitfire IX, in the winter of 1943, he and several colleagues were based at RAF Church Stanton and flew fighter sweeps over occupied France. On one of these sweeps his great friend Haggie Beane was shot down: his body was not found until 50 years later, when it was recognised by the tailor’s bill still in the pocket of Beane’s naval uniform.
By early 1944 Jewers was an instructor at the school of air combat, when he practised combat flying against a captured German Fw190 fighter.
Postwar Jewers resumed his career as an optician, practising in Bognor. In his 70s, in order to reduce his workload he specialised in low visual aids, and he supported guide dogs for the blind.
He maintained his lifelong interest in tennis and squash was awarded country colours in 1935, represented Berkshire for more than twenty years and was elected life vice president in 1999.In everything he did Jewers was unflappable and a perfectionist, habits which extend to gardening where he grew the largest chrysanthemums and baskets of hanging tomatoes.
Jewers who died February 12, 2011, married Natalie Bittlesin1941. She predeceased him in 2005 and he is survived by their two daughters.