Thread: Lieutenant-Commander 'Ben' Breese. RIP.

Lieutenant-Commander 'Ben' Breese - Telegraph


Lieutenant-Commander "Ben" Breese, who has died aged 94, was the only pilot known to have landed a floatplane on the carrier Ark Royal without wheels or arrester hook.


On July 3 1940 he was flying one of the battleship Valiant's two Fairey Swordfish during the daylong negotiations between the British and French fleets off Mers-el-Kebir. As Admiral James Somerville, commanding Force H, offered Admiral Marcel-Bruno Gensoul terms to prevent four French battleships from falling into German hands, Breese remained airborne in readiness to spot for Valiant's guns.

But when Somerville reluctantly opened fire to destroy most of the French fleet, the fast battleship Strasbourg escaped. Somerville gave chase, leaving Breese in the lurch.

His aircraft, Mitzi, had been built to be launched by catapult from a battleship and to land on the sea with floats; it would then be retrieved by a crane.

Ark Royal, however, was not in a position to stop to recover the aircraft and ordered Breese to land on her deck.

As he made the descent his crew, Sub-Lieutenant Peter Starmer and Naval Airman Roy Tolley, loosened their straps in preparation for leaping overboard when the Swordfish skidded over the side. But Breese made a near-perfect landing, going straight down the middle of the flight deck to stop dead after a few yards.

A Fairey mechanic on board the carrier then bashed a dent out of one float with a mallet and declared the aircraft fit to fly. When Ark Royal arrived at Gibraltar a few days later Breese and Mitzi were lowered to the water to taxi to Valiant, which recovered them by crane.

John Edward Breese, the son a gardener, was born on July 23 1914 at Chislehurst, Kent. He went to school at Bromley, and, after two years in the training ship Mercury on the Hamble, joined the Navy in 1930 as a boy, second class.

When the Admiralty regained control over the Fleet Air Arm from the RAF, Breese, a leading seaman, was selected for the first batch of ratings who were sent, with Army and Royal Marines officers, to No 1 Flying Training School at Leuchars, Fife, in 1938. He had no flying experience, but within a fortnight made his first solo.

He saw action in Valiant during the Norwegian campaign and in the Mediterranean before spending much of the later war years training squadrons, earning promotion from chief petty officer to sub-lieutenant (air) in 1944.

After the war Breese was an instructor and examiner in instrument flying for four years, but in 1951 he converted to helicopters. When troop-lift helicopters were urgently needed in Malaya the following year, he joined Lieutenant-Commander "Sunny Jim" Suthers's 848 naval air squadron, which had 10 new Sikorksy S55 helicopters purchased for anti-submarine service. Breese helped Suthers to test-fly the aircraft at Lee-on-Solent and then work-up their crews on passage to the Far East. Senior RAF officers judged that the squadron would need six months to become operational, but two months after the aircraft arrived in crates it lifted the first troops from a clearing in the Malayan jungle.

Breese, who used to blanco his jungle boots, soon recorded 500 flying hours over deep forest. At Seremban, south of Kuala Lumpur, on September 24 1953, he successfully pioneered the technique of parachuting SAS troops into the jungle. When the first men were injured by dropping into bamboo, he learned to drop them into treetops, where they could snag their chutes.

Breese was awarded a DFC in recognition of his fine example and exceptional flying ability.

During the Suez invasion he flew Whirlwind helicopters from the carrier Ocean, then spent his last days in uniform writing pilots' notes for various aircraft at the Ministry of Aviation, where he remained as a civilian until 1978.

Settling at Sedlescombe, East Sussex, he took up village cricket, winemaking, gardening and sailing. He also presented scale models of a Walrus and Swordfish he had made to the Royal Navy Historic Flight at Yeovilton.

Ben Breese, who died on June 26, married his childhood sweetheart Doris Freeland in 1939. She and a son predeceased him, and he is survived by three daughters.

A very long career for a fine flyer. RIP.