Rear-Admiral Anthony Follett Pugsley (7 December 1901 – 17 July 1990) was a British naval officer. During the Second World War he served as a successful destroyer captain, landed the 3rd Canadian Division on D-Day, and planned and executed the amphibious landings on Walcheren during a critically important phase in the Battle of the Scheldt in late 1944.
Early life and family Tony Pugsley was born on 7 December 1901, the son of a solicitor, John Follett Pugsley, and Lucy Melton Chorley Loveband. Both his parents came from Devonshire families; his grandfather, who had qualified but never practised as a doctor, lived at Wiveliscombe, and his mother’s family were gentry originally from Yarnscombe in north-west Devon. Pugsley was descended both from Josiah Follett, the non-conformist preacher of the 18th Century, and William Pugsley who as a midshipman survived the sinking of the when she capsized at Spithead in 1782.The Royal George by Brigadier R.F Johnson
Pugsley was educated for two terms at Blundell's School in Tiverton, the fifth successive generation of Pugsleys to go there, before joining the Navy as a cadet, aged 13, and going to the Royal Naval College, Osborne, and thence to the Royal Naval College Dartmouth. He joined as a midshipman in time to witness the surrender of the German High-Seas Fleet to the British Grand Fleet in November 1918.
In 1931 Pugsley married Barbara Byam Shaw, the daughter of the pre-Raphaelite artist John Byam Liston Shaw (Byam Shaw) and Caroline Evelyn Eunice Pyke-Nott.
Early career His early experiences as second-in-command of the gunboat on the river Yangtze from 1925 to 1927 are recorded in Pugsley’s memoirs, Destroyer Man. At a particularly dangerous and lawless time in Chinese history, the upper Yangtze was ruled by warlords. An uneasy peace was kept by a British naval presence, and when one of the warlords held a number of British merchant seamen hostage, Pugsley received his first opportunity to distinguish himself in aiding in their rescue. On another occasion he prevented a Chinese mob from overrunning a British cantonment by leading a guard of four sailors with unloaded rifles, he himself armed only with a service cane, towards the mob which parted and melted awayDestroyer Man by Rear-Admiral AF Pugsley in collaboration with Captain Donald Macintyre. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1957Gunboats on the Great River: A History of the Royal Navy on the Yangtze, by Gregory Haines, TBS The Book Service Ltd (May 1976)
HMS Javelin At the outbreak of the Second World War, Pugsley, by now a commander, was captain of the destroyer , and was mentioned in despatches for his ship’s defence against enemy aircraft in the Norwegian Campaign.
Javelin was also at the Evacuation of Dunkirk, where she evacuated some 1,400 troops before being withdrawn to form part of a special anti-invasion force.Daily Telegraph, Monday 23 July 1990, Obituary of Rear-Adml Tony Pugsley
After Dunkirk, Javelin was ordered to join Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten’s Fifth Destroyer Flotilla at Immingham. The flotilla was a force of J- and K-class destroyers, commanded by Mountbatten from, variously, his ship , and (when Kelly was under repair as she often was) the County Hotel at Immingham.
As Javelin was the sole possessor in the flotilla of a radar set, Mountbatten often selected Javelin to be his temporary flotilla leader. On the night of 24 November 1940, the flotilla was at sea sweeping off the South Devon and Cornish coast. Mountbatten was Captain D (as the officer commanding the flotilla), and was embarked on board Javelin. As the Daily Telegraph put it, "whatever Mountbatten’s attributes in other fields, at sea he was regarded by Pugsley and others as an accident-prone Jonah". This view was backed by much circumstantial evidence. The Kelly, Mountbatten’s famous ship, had an astonishing number of misfortunes under his command, not all of them through enemy action. Pugsley in his memoirs remarks that Mountbatten was otherwise an administrator of brilliant efficiency, and above all a man of great and sincere charm.
In a disastrous night-encounter with three German destroyers, Mountbatten over-ruled Pugsley’s advice which was typically forthright. When the destroyers were sighted, Pugsley said to Mountbatten "Straight on at ‘em, I presume, sir?". Mountbatten replied "No, no. We must turn [to port] to a parallel course at once or they will get away from us".Mountbatten – Richard Hough 1981 Random House . Mountbatten wanted to ensure that the German destroyers, which had several knots extra at their disposal, did not escape. He accordingly wished to turn the British flotilla to a course that would not allow them to get away. Pugsley was keen to get into action and bring his forward guns to bear as quickly as possible, in order to smother the enemy. With ranges almost point-blank, the first few salvoes could have been decisive. The turn to port ordered by Mountbatten was disastrous, offering the Germans a ready target. Javelin was hit by two German torpedoes as she came onto a course parallel to that of the Germans’. Of the original 353 feet of Javelin, only 155 feet remained.Hold the Narrow Sea (Naval Warfare in the English Channel 1939 – 1945) by Peter C Smith, Moorland Publishing, Pages 132 and 133 Three officers (Surgeon-Lieutenant Sloan RNVR, Sub-Lieutenant Mitchell, and Midshipman Fitzgerald) and forty-three sailors (including Pugsley’s steward, Leading Steward Little whose loss Pugsley felt deeply) were killed.
The German flotilla made good its escape. Javelin meanwhile was towed by tug over the course of the next 36 hours to Plymouth. Pugsley was again mentioned in dispatches.
HMS Fearless and HMS Paladin Javelin being under heavy reconstruction, Pugsley shortly afterwards took command of , at Troon, within a flotilla commanded by Captain Guy Grantham, and proceeded to Gibraltar on convoy duty. At Gibraltar, Fearless was ordered to join Force H, under Vice-Admiral Sir James Somerville, responsible for the Western half of the Mediterranean. Over the next few months HMS Fearless was in the Mediterranean, involved in convoy duties to re-supply Malta and the bombardment of Genoa, trying to avoid the Italian air-force’s (and on occasion the Luftwaffe’s) attentions. In June 1941 Fearless shared the credit for the sinking of the . Fearless was sunk by aircraft attack on 23 July 1941 during Operation Substance. Pugsley, again mentioned in dispatches, returned home, and, in October 1941, was appointed to command , a brand-new destroyer being built by John Brown & Company at their shipyard on the River Clyde. Paladin sailed on 7 December 1941, and Pugsley took her on her first deployment, escort duty to Ceylon. In April 1942, while in the Indian Ocean, Paladin rescued the captain, officers and ship's company of the heavy cruiser , and was involved in Operation Ironclad, the capture of Diego Suarez, Madagascar, from Vichy French forces (earning Paladin her first battle honours). Paladin then returned to the Mediterranean, via India and Mauritius, and joined Rear-Admiral Philip Vian’s force of some eight cruisers and twenty-six destroyers (plus the old battleship , now a radio-controlled target-ship), in order to force passage through the infamous "bomb alley", the term given to the westward route from Alexandria to Malta. The attempt (known as Operation Vigorous) failed, in the face of determined and sustained attack by the Luftwaffe and Italian air-force, and Vian’s force retired to Alexandria with a number of ships sunk or put out of action. The relief of Malta by the British was as a result thwarted until after El Alamein. Pugsley was awarded the DSO for his exploits while in command of Paladin.
HMS Jervis and 14th Destroyer Flotilla On New Year’s Eve 1942, Pugsley was promoted to captain, and to command of the 14th Destroyer Flotilla in . He subsequently was appointed to command all the fleet destroyers in the Eastern Mediterranean. Throughout the early part of 1943, his flotilla harried Axis shipping and engaged Italian naval surface ships. Following the highly successful destruction of an Axis convoy off Sicily, he was awarded a Bar to his DSO and the Greek War Cross.
D-Day and Captain Patrols Channel In mid-July 1943, after four years almost continuously at sea, Pugsley was recalled to join the Combined Operations planning for D-Day at Cowes under Commodore John Hughes-Hallett. Pugsley was appointed to command one of the assault groups. Each landing force (there were originally three, two British and one American, although this was later increased to three British and two American) had a commodore or rear-admiral as naval commander and was subdivided into three assault groups each with a captain in command. Pugsley was given the frigate as his headquarters ship for assault group J1, responsible for the landing operations of the 3rd Canadian Division at Juno Beach.Operation Neptune 1944 Lawford was sunk by enemy aircraft in the early stages of the landings.Hold the Narrow Sea (Naval Warfare in the English Channel 1939 – 1945) by Peter C Smith, Moorland Publishing, Page 228 The landings completed, Pugsley was awarded a second Bar to his DSO.SUPPLEMENT TO THE LONDON GAZETTE 14 NOVEMBER 1944 and was appointed deputy to Admiral Vian in the British landing areas in the Channel as Captain (Patrols).Operation Neptune: The Normandy Landings 1944 by Kenneth Edwards ()
After Vian's departure, Pugsley was promoted to the command of all British naval patrols in the Channel, responsible for preventing the enemy disrupting the Allied build-up.
Walcheren and Operation Infatuate
In mid-September 1944, Pugsley was given a new appointment, involving finding a solution to dislodge the Germans from the island of Walcheren. The role quickly became one of planning and commanding an amphibious operation to clear the island.
Background to Infatuate Walcheren was the key to opening up the Scheldt estuary which would open up the strategic port of Antwerp, critical to supply the Allied armies pursuing the Germans to the Rhine. The whole impetus of the Allied advance across North-Western Europe, and into Germany, was dependent on rapid and ample supply, particularly fuel and ammunition. If Antwerp were not soon made available, the advance would be in imminent and fatal danger of being halted in its tracks.
Antwerp had been captured on 4 September but, despite strenuous efforts by Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay (Allied Naval Commander Expeditionary Force) to concentrate Field Marshal Montgomery's (commander 21st Army Group) mind on the opening of Antwerp as a top priority, Montgomery had failed to realize its strategic importance until after the Germans had, on 17 September, succeeded in heavily mining the West Scheldt. Following the failure of Operation Market Garden, the full strategic significance of Antwerp dawned upon the Allies, with the realization that a huge mine clearance operation was needed in the Scheldt estuary in order to open it up.A Bridge Too Far (Hodder) by Cornelius Ryan () This could only be undertaken when the enemy had been driven from both banks of the Scheldt estuary. The northern bank, consisting of the large island of Walcheren and its causeway to the mainland, remained heavily fortified and strongly garrisoned by the Germans, with batteries sweeping the Scheldt and preventing the essential mine clearance from proceeding.The Times Saturday 21 July 1990, Obituary of Rear-Adml 'Tony' Pugsley
Planning Infatuate