Obituary by Peter Hore
Jeff Gledhill died on 24November, 2011 aged 90. He was born in Wellington, New Zealand on 11 November, 1921, joined the RNZVR in 1941, and was selected for the Fleet Air Arm. He was en route to England in the troopship Tamaroa in the Atlantic in May 1941 during the hunt for the Bismarck.
Shortly after 0430 on 3 April 1944, in the dawn light and snow showers, Sub Lieutenant Jeff Gledhill RNZVR took off from the deck of the carrier Victorious in his Fairey Barracuda dive-bomber, with his aircrew Sub Lieutenant J. McCormick and Leading Airman N.A.F. Poole: they were part of Operation Tungsten and in the leading attack by several squadrons part of the Fleet Air Arm on the German battleship Tirptiz hiding deep in the Norwegian fjords.
Some two hours later Gledhill climbed over the mountains to 2,500 feet and glimpsed his quarry below. Tirpitz had just four minutes warning before British naval fighter planes strafed the decks to suppress any anti-aircraft fire, and Gledhill and the dive-bombers of 830 and 827 NASs started their 45 degree dives. Gledhill was carrying a 1,600 lb amour piercing bomb which he aimed at Tirpitz’s bows, and in a few minutes the raid (the first of two that day) was over.
Operation Tungsten was brilliantly planned and executed; the giant enemy battleship was hit by fifteen bombs, badly crippled and rendered incapable of interfering with the Allied landings further south two months later. Postwar analysis showed that Gledhill’s bomb had hit Tirpitz’s A turret of two 15-inch guns.
On April 26 and 28 Gledhill, again from Victorious, took part in Operations Ridge and Veritas when he was awarded the DSC for bravery, leadership, skill and devotion to duty during successful strikes at enemy shipping off the coast of Norway.
Postwar he returned to New Zealand but after study at university he joined the Royal Australian Navy in 1948, and was promptly sent to Britain to form 817 squadron of the Australian Fleet Air Arm: Gledhill recalled that the captain of Lee on the Solent saying that “I won’t have foreigners flying my planes,” unaware that Gledhill’s previous appearance there had been flying Albacore torpedo bombers and Barracuda dive-bombers.
He became the senior pilot of 817 squadron flying from the Australian carrier Sydney in 1951-1952 during the Korean War, he commanded 723 training squadron in 1952, and 817 squadron in 1955, saw loan service in the Royal Navy and attended the staff course at Greenwich 1958-1960, and by 1961 he was a commander when he was appointed Director of Air Warfare Organization and Training (DAWOT0 in the RAN.
Gledhill was convinced, by all his experience of operational flying and by his study, of the value of naval aviation, not least because Australia had no other means of defending her interests in the north against Indonesians threats. As DAWOT he found the future of the Australian naval aviation in doubt, even some senior Australian naval officers thought it should go, but Gledhill decided not. Working with his supportive and enthusiastic minister, the future prime minister (1968-1971), John Gorton, Gledhill drew up a plan to fund the refit and extend the life of the carrier HMAS Melbourne and to replace its British aircraft with American types. He was so successful that in 1963 HMAS Melbourne marked her 20,000th deck landing, and she remained in service until 1982.
Later he became Naval Officer in Charge, Northern Australia and later still he commanded the training establishment HMAS Penguin. In 1968 he returned to New Zealand, as the Defence Adviser in the Australian High Commission, and he retired to live at Avalon, northern Sydney where he enjoyed sailing in the harbour, and worked as a consultant to Lamoore Yacht Sales.
He married Third Officer Margaret Armstrong, who he met when she was Captain’s Secretary at the naval air station at Grimsetter, Orkney, in 1944; she survives him with their two daughters.
Post Obituary Note:
Ian Cameron in “Wings of the Morning” records the aircrew taking part in the attack on TIRPITZ to include: Sub Lt (A) J A Gledhill RNVR -pilot; Sub Lt J McCormick RNVR – observer; Leading Airman N A F Poole – air-gunner.