The Association has learned of the death of Cdr Thomas Victor Giles Binney OBE RN. He passed away on 15 August 2013 after a long illness and is survived by his wife Diana.
From References
Commanding Officer 702 Squadron September 1957 – 11 August 1958
The Squadron reformed at Lee-on-Solent on 30 September 1957 from the Junior Officers Air Course Flight of 781 Squadron. Consisting of Sea Balliols, Sea Vampire T.22s and a Sea Prince T.1, it moved to Ford, where it disbanded on 11 August 1958 having been absorbed into 727 Squadron.
Commanding Officer 804 Squadron March 1960 – September 1961
Having previously disbanded in September 1959, the squadron reformed at Lossiemouth on 1 March 1960, equipped with six Scimitar F.1s it embarked in HMS Hermes in July. The winter of 1960/61 was spent in the Far East, then the ship returned home and the squadron disbanded at Lossiemouth on 15 September 1961.
London Gazette 3 October 1952 For service in Korea – Fourth List
Lt Thomas Victor Giles BINNEY Mention in Dispatches
London Gazette 14 June 1975 – Birthday Honours
Cdr Thomas Victor Giles BINNEY OBE
There will be a Thanksgiving Service at St Bartholomew’s Church, Rogate at 2.30 on Thursday 5th September.
Peter Hore’s obituary from Daily Telegraph
Commander Giles Binney, the naval aviator who has died aged 89, survived enemy and friendly fire, and being shot down while flying as a passenger.
Between April and September 1951 during the Korean War Binney flew Fairey Fireflies with 812 Naval Air Squadron from the fleet carrier Glory. There were, he noted, three main dangers: decklandings at sea; the enemy; and friendly fire.
Binney made 100 decklandings without problem. However on June 28, 1951 he was bounced by an American Thunderjet and a single hole appeared in his port wing. Binney never understood how anyone could mistake his Firefly, painted in broad black and white recognition stripes, for a Chinese or Korean Yak fighter, and angrily followed his attacker back to the US airbase at Sunwon, south of Seoul. There Binney found his attacker in the midst of claiming that he had shot down a Yak, and he roundly disabused him.
Then on July 1, 1951 Binney committed a cardinal sin. After strafing a railway bridge he was, in his own words, “so pleased with the results” that he returned for a second go. This time there was a burst of anti-aircraft fire from the alerted enemy. A bullet penetrated the cockpit floor and passed through his boot, tearing open his flying suit, piercing the map he was holding, and bursting against the gunsight. Though his goggles were sprayed with molten lead he was otherwise unharmed, and made a safe landing.
On 59 flying days on nine patrols off Korea in 1951 Glory made 2,762 aircraft launches, and her aircraft flew 7,231 hours. Binney was mentioned-in-despatches.
Thomas Victor Giles Binney was born January 21, 1926 in Poona, India the son of Lt Col Victor Binney of the Bombay Sappers and Miners who won the DSO while fighting in Mesopotamia in 1917. Thomas was educated at Wellington and learned to sail with ‘Ted’ Fegen (later Captain E S Fegen VC) in the Norfolk Broads.
Binney joined the Royal Naval College at its wartime home, Eaton Hall, Cheshire in 1944, and spent some months in MTB 616 before boarding the troopship Athlone Castle to join the battlecruiser Renown at Durban.
After five years as a teenager in wartime Britain he found his spell in South Africa “sheer magic.” On VJ-day he was a midshipman in the cruiser Belfast, one of the first Allied warships to enter Formosa and Shanghai.
Returning to England in 1946 Binney was keen to specialise in gunnery but after a single familiarisation flight in a Tiger Moth, he determined to become a naval aviator, attending the Naval Elementary Flying Training School at Syerston, Nottinghamshire.
Binney flew his first solo after the unusually short time of 6 hours 25 minutes. However his career nearly ended prematurely on September 28, 1949, when while he was flying in a 24-strong formation, the engine of his Firefly blew up. The aircraft shook violently, then plummeted downwards, narrowly missing all the other aircraft in the formation.
After Korea, Binney qualified as an Air Warfare Instructor (AWI) and throughout the 1950s flew intensively in a wide variety of aircraft, including jets. In 1956 he was given command of 804 NAS flying Scimitars from the carrier Hermes. Subsequently Binney was naval attaché in Ethiopia (1964-66) and naval attaché Lisbon (1972-1975).
Binney was shot down after he had finished his own active flying career. On May 11, 1974, while on a fact-finding tour of Mozambique with other Lisbon-based attachés, he was a passenger in a Dakota when at it was hit by a ground-to-air missile at 10,000ft. Binney had the sang-froid to note the precise nature of the damage and to admire the pilot’s airmanship as he landed on a jungle airstrip. The tour was continued in a replacement aircraft.
Binney was appointed OBE in 1976.
Giles Binney married, in 1952, Diana David, daughter of the station commander at Syerston. She survives him with their three sons and a daughter.
Giles Binney, born January 21 1926, died August 13, 2013
Lester May remembers:
Giles was the Fleet Air Drafting Commander (at HMS Daedalus, Lee-on-Solent) in 1970 (perhaps 1969-71) and had flown Avengers just after the war’s end and the Sea Fury during the Korean War. Later our naval attaché in Lisbon, possibly the same role in Ethiopia, and his last years in uniform were as a retired officer (RO) at the RCDS in Belgrave Square in the mid-late 1980s. His seniority as a Commander (X) (P) was 31 Dec 1961 and I presume he was in his late eighties. Giles was a frequent letter writer to both The Times and The Daily Telegraph and his short, pithy contributions were frequently published.
Ken Lambert writes
‘Giles as he was known to all of the 14th Carrier Air Group aboard HMS Glory was a Pilot with 812 NAS flying the Firefly 5. His aircraft code was 202/R and on the way to the Far East in 1951, I was the Pilot’s Mate of that aircraft until we re-organized before commencing operations in the Korean War, April 1951, so the statement that he flew the Sea Fury in Korea is incorrect. His observer was Aircrewman 1 George Mortimer and his Pilot’s mate was Leading Airman Alf Bosley. On one trip Giles’ aircraft was hit by flack and he suffered a slight injury when a bullet or piece of shrapnel entered the cockpit through the floor and up through his boot causing scarring of his leg.
I met up again with Giles in 1998 when we both attended the Service of Thanks Giving for the life of Commander J.K. Arbuthnot OBE. RN who had been my pilot during the first Korean Tour by the 14th CAG. Giles became a member of the 14th CAG Association after that and attended the 50th Anniversary of that first tour held at the FAA Museum in June 2001 where he was accompanied by Mrs Arbuthnot. There he once again met up with both his former observer and Pilot’s Mate.’