Rear-Admiral Peter Branson CBE

REAR-ADMIRAL PETER BRANSON
To be torpedoed and sunk twice while still a midshipman might be thought a challenging start to a naval career. Peter Branson graduated from Dartmouth naval college in 1941 and was on his way to the Far East war zone in the motor vessel Alfred Jones when she was torpedoed off Freetown by the efficient Lt-Cdr Gunter Hessler of U107, a sinking which contributed to the most successful U-boat patrol of the entire war. Hessler, who survived the war, is also notable for having married in 1937 the daughter of the U-boat CinC, Fleet Admiral Karl Donitz.
Survivors took to two lifeboats, one of which was quickly found. Branson’s was not recovered for six days, the survivors attempting to row towards the coast and being rationed to one-sixth of a pint of water a day in tropical heat. Some were seriously wounded and one engineer died. Midshipman Branson’s log exhibited extraordinary maturity. “Another point that struck me”, he wrote after observing that everyone was giving orders and no-one was listening, ”is that the best morale in the world is useless without discipline to back it up in such a case as this. Our morale was high but rendered useless through lack of discipline”.
The CinC of the South Atlantic station wrote to his father, Commander Cecil Branson, praising his son’s ability and courageous conduct both during the sinking and whilst in the boat.
At Simonstown, Branson joined the elderly light cruiser Dragon, built in 1917, and took part in convoy escort duties in the South Atlantic and East Indies. After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbour, Dragon took part in sweeps to find Japanese invasion forces and was perhaps lucky not to meet them. She survived the campaign which saw the sinking of the major warships Prince of Wales and Repulse, the fall of Singapore on February 15 and the catastrophe of the Battle of the Java Sea in which a force of American, British, Australian and Dutch cruisers and destroyers was virtually wiped out. Dragon escaped through the Sunda Strait to Ceylon with the Australian cruiser Hobart on February 28, four hours before the cruiser Exeter was caught and sunk in the last of the Battle of the Java Sea. Even Ceylon became too hot to hold, and Dragon joined the Indian Ocean forces led by Admiral Sir James Somerville based in East Africa.
He was returning home for courses in the P&O troopship Orcades when she was torpedoed by U172 with the loss of 48 lives, 1117 being saved. Carrying some Celanese sapphires for a friend’s wife and just having time to grab one thing from his cabin, previous experience told him to take the chocolate.
Having qualified as a submariner, Branson arrived at Fremantle, West Australia in September 1944 in the submarine Sea Rover and took part in three patrols off Sumatra and the Malacca Straits, interdicting Japanese supply lines by sinking a number of coasters by gunfire, setting off for home in January 1945.
After the war, he served in submarines until 1949. In 1953 he was second in command of the overcrowded and un-air-conditioned large destroyer Defender in the Far East. A contemporary recalls his salty wit, leading a ship’s company on an eighteen-month foreign commission with cheerful ruthlessness. His first command was the destroyer Roebuck in the Dartmouth Training Squadron in 1958, followed by a tour in Malta on the staff of the Flag Officer Flotillas.
Promoted to commander, he was appointed second in command of the large carrier Victorious, once more in the Far East. Victorious was frequently the fleet flagship; this and the perennial need in big carriers to meld air group people with the ship’s company presented him with leadership challenges successfully overcome.
In the rank of captain, he subsequently commanded the Gibraltar shore establishment, HMS Rooke and the crack anti-submarine Londonderry Squadron from the frigate Phoebe. Other tours included a course at the Nato Defence College in Rome and from 1970 to 1973 naval attaché in Paris, a particularly enjoyable posting, his French mother having given him a facility with the language.
In 1973 he was appointed captain of the commando carrier Hermes. In July 1974, with four frigates, Hermes played the major role in the evacuation of some 1500 civilians of various nationalities from Kyrenia following the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus. In a well-organised operation, Hermes’ sixteen Wessex helicopters landed 41 Commando Royal Marines to help safeguard the British sovereign base areas, but Britain was unable to do much more to prop up the independence of Cyprus, despite her status as a guarantor. Branson was appointed CBE in 1975.
Promoted to Rear-Admiral, Branson’s final tour was in the MoD as Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (Operations), retiring in 1977.
One of his Ministry tours in the Plans division of the naval staff had involved him in the politics of the disputatious First Cod War between UK and Iceland. It was this which renewed an interest in Hull where he retired to become the managing director of the UK Trawlers Mutual Insurance Association for eight years – often believed to be a ‘payback’ for the Hull trawler St Wistan that had rescued him in 1941.
In 1945 he married Alison Moss who died last year. He is survived by their daughter.

Rear-Admiral Peter Branson CBE, Assistant Chief
of Naval Staff (Operations) 1975-77, was born on
March 30, 1924. He died on January 1st aged 86