The Association has learned of the death of Lt Cdr Thomas ‘Tommy’ Cartmel Stephen Leece RN on 25 February 2020 aged 93.
Funeral Details
The funeral will take place at 1230 on Friday 13 March 2020 at Moray Crematorium, Broadley, Buckie, AB56 5HQ.
From Records *
Trained as pilot with Fleet Air Arm in GB and Canada, 1943-1947
Pilot with 804 Sqdn, aboard HMS Theseus in Far East and in GB, 1947-1948
Observer with 809 Sqdn, 1949-1950
Pilot with 807 Sqdn, aboard HMS Theseus during Korean War, 1950-1951
Served with 898, 807 and 801 Sqdns, in Mediterranean, 1951-1953
Instructor with Fleet Air Arm at RAF Benson, 1954-1955
Served with 810 Sqdn, aboard HMS Albion in Far East, 1955-1957
Served with 738 Sqdn, 1957-1958
Pilot with 700 X Flight, 1957-1958
Served aboard HMS Tyne in GB coastal waters, 1958
Pilot with 807 Sqdn, 1958-1960
Commanding Officer 803 Sqdn, aboard HMS Victorious in Atlantic, Persian Gulf and Far East, 1961-1963
Air Department at Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, 1963-1964
Served aboard HMS Victorious in Far East, 1964-1965
* Source: IWM Sound Archive
From References **
Whilst flying Fairey Firefly MB574 of 792 Squadron Culdrose on 22 February 1949, the pilot lost control, Observer Lt T C S Leece bailed out, control of aircraft regained.
Whilst flying Hawker Sea Fury of 807 Squadron on 10 April 1951, aircraft hit by friendly fire from two US Marine Corsairs over Korea. Fire started in starboard wing but went out, only just made it back to HMS Theseus.
** Fleet Air Arm Fixed-Wing Aircraft since 1946 by Ray Sturtivant with Mick Burrow & Lee Howard
Extract from With the Carriers in Korea The Sea and Air War in SE Asia, 1950 – 1953 by John R P Lansdown
Taken from Lieutenant Leece’s combat report, filed after the flight:
‘Whilst flying No 2 to Lieutenant Lavender we were investigating enemy activity in a valley, map reference CU6002, when I saw two Corsair fighters which I reported to my No 1. We were turning to starboard at 4,000feet and saw the two Corsairs dive into the valley and drop one bomb each.
‘On recovering from the dive they must have sighted us because they started to climb in our direction. We continued a gentle Rate One turn to starboard until the Corsairs were astern and closing, when my leader ordered “Break”. I opened the throttle fully and commenced a steep starboard climbing turn, but almost immediately there was a loud bang from the engine, so I throttled back and eased the turn as I did not realise I was being fired at.
‘By this time the leading Corsair, which still had one bomb under his starboard wing, was dead astern of me and he opened fire. I saw many tracers flashing over my port wing and I turned violently to starboard breaking down. The Corsairs did not attempt to follow and, as the aircraft was vibrating and the starboard wing tank was on fire, I left the area and returned to the ship.
‘I believe the Corsairs thought they had shot me down as they subsequently claimed “one La-9 destroyed”. When they saw me break down, on fire, they concentrated on Charlie Lavender who kept going round in a very tight turn with the Corsairs firing at him. Charlie was obviously worried about me, plus his own, difficult, situation, but he eventually managed to out-turn his attackers and escaped to chase after me.
‘For my part, as I started for home, my first thought was to bale out, as I could see the starboard wing was bright red and smoke was pouring out of the back end. However, the fire suddenly went out (I learned later that the bottom of the wing tank had burned through and the remaining fuel had just dropped out), and as the engine continued to give power and the aircraft was flyable I continued back to Theseus. Charlie eventually caught up as I was flying slowly, and after a visual inspection and a slow flying check I made a normal landing. There were 21 bullet holes in the aircraft and no right wing tank (internal, not drop). The bullets had severed some of the flying controls. There was no trim but the rest worked.’
Extract taken from Goldfish Club Ditching Form
The ditching happened during Operational Flying School Part 2 (741 Squadron, RNAS St Merryn). On 16 September 1946 approximately 10 miles NE of Lundy Island the Firefly (number unknown) suffered engine failure and ditched. Tommy was in the water for around 2 hours before being sighted in his dinghy by one of the searching aircraft and eventually being picked up by Sea Otter from RNAS St Merryn.
“This was the first and only time I ever wore an IRVIN Jacket in flight. After entering the water, the jacket absorbed a great deal of water and although I did not realise it, while I was in the dinghy, when the Sea Otter taxied up I hardly had the strength to reach up and climb on board (due to the weight of the jacket). The two Sea Otter crewmen eventually managed to pull me on board and I promptly puked up on their feet.”
Tommy Leece by kind permission of The Times:
That Thomas Leece lived to be 93 is remarkable. In his time as a Royal Navy test pilot he twice had to eject from his aircraft while over the sea, winning membership of the “goldfish club”. During one night-time flight his engines failed, forcing him to parachute into a forest and dangle in a tree until morning. His engines failed him again when, for fun, he challenged a friend to an air race to Nice on the condition the loser would buy lunch. Hearing the engines cut out over the Alps, he struggled with frozen hands to glide the aircraft to the south coast, came in to land at Nice airport without permission and almost collided with a commercial jet.
A third engine failure occurred just as he was taking off from an aircraft carrier. Observers on the deck watched the aircraft drop out of sight, and feared that Leece was about to be sucked into the ship’s engines. Yet the next second his jet rose vertically into view, soaring skyward. The Houdini of the Fleet Air Arm had escaped again.
Twice he was on the receiving end of American friendly fire, once being mistaken for a pheasant, the other time for a Soviet fighter aircraft during a reconnaissance mission in the Korean War. Leece was flying second to Lieutenant Charlie Lavender when he spotted the two American Corsairs bombing a target. Once they had released their bombs, they began to climb towards Leece and Lavender, who were turning away in a leisurely manner when they realised the Americans were heading directly for them.
“I opened the throttle fully and commenced a steep starboard climbing turn,” Leece recalled. “But almost immediately there was a loud bang from the engine. By this time, the leading aircraft was dead astern of me and he opened fire. I saw many tracers flashing over my port wing and I turned violently to starboard, breaking down.”
The Corsairs did not pursue him, and Lavender had also managed to evade them, but Leece’s starboard wing tank was on fire. If he bailed out into the Korean forest his chance of rescue would be minimal, but he could see no other option. Just then, however, the fire went out. The wing tank had burnt through and the remaining fuel had dropped out. His engine was still running, so, Lavender having caught up, they returned to HMS Theseus, smarting at the stupidity of the Americans. His long experience of taking calculated risks only intensified his dislike of dangerous fools. After such an incident, many men would return to a cockpit only in stress dreams, but Leece had many years ahead of him courting jeopardy in the skies.
He was born in Liverpool in 1926, the son of Florence and Cyril, a shipping clerk, and won a scholarship to Quarry Bank High School, later known as the alma mater of John Lennon. When the Second World War started he was evacuated to Wrexham, but with unfortunate timing he was sent back to Liverpool just as the Luftwaffe began its bombing campaign of the city. The Liverpool Blitz left him with a keen interest in engineering; he modified his family’s air raid shelter, digging it deeper and covering the top with earth. His parents were thankful for the effort when a nearby explosion sent a rock hurtling towards the shelter, which would have smashed its roof, had it not landed plumply on the covering earth. It was the first of his many near squeaks.
Leece wanted to read forestry at university, but changed his mind when, as a member of the cadets, he was given the chance to go up in a Whitley bomber. He knew then that he wanted to fly. Posted to Canada for his flight training, he sailed to New York on the Queen Mary. He was bitten by bed bugs all the way, such that by the time the ship docked the doctor thought he had chicken pox, so quarantined the ship, making young Leece the least popular man on board.
Winning his wings after the end of the war, he returned to the UK, where, during a Valentine’s Day dance at an airfield in Northern Ireland, he met his wife-to-be, Deidre Semple. They did not see each other again until the following year, by which time she was engaged to somebody else. They ran away together, scandalising her parents, and married in Cumbria in 1949.
Posted to fight in the Korean War, he flew reconnaissance missions, spotting targets for offshore bombardment. He then served with three squadrons in the Mediterranean, became an instructor for the Fleet Air Arm at RAF Benson, then joined 810 Squadron onboard HMS Albion in the Far East. Returning once more to Britain, he transferred to 738 Squadron, where his thirst for adrenaline was slaked by aerobatics. He and two friends, Alan Leahy and Colin Caspard, set up the Red Devils, the Royal Navy’s display team, at the Farnborough Airshow in 1957. Modifying their jets’ fuel injection system, they became the first team to trail smoke.
Having participated in the testing of the Scimitar supersonic jet, in 1965 he left the navy to spend more time with his young daughter, Rosie. Up until then, when anybody asked her where her father was, she would point to the tape player, because he would send her recordings of his voice. He was an energetic father, an enthusiastic climber of trees and an inventive teller of bedtime stories. The family spent a year in Kirkuk, where he flew commercially for the Iraq Petroleum company, but the Six-Day War forced them to evacuate. They then spent ten years in Sierra Leone, where he flew for British Caledonian. Rosie would go on to work in university development offices.
When British Airways took over British Caledonian they offered Leece early retirement, which he gladly took, though not in pursuit of a quieter life. Soon he was in Mozambique, paid to train pilots by Save the Children. Many of the runways in the country were just strips cut out of the bush, liable to be invaded by guerrillas.
He eventually settled for the more sedate pleasures of gardening and tending the vineyard of his West Sussex home. He was an ebullient fellow, who, when telling the Imperial War Museum’s archivist of his aerobatic high jinks, accompanied his tales with swooshing and booming sound effects.
He also had an anarchic sense of fun, which was on display the day that he and Deidre went to visit some friends at RNAS Lossiemouth. He was convinced he could remember which house was theirs, so confidently walked in, and found some freshly baked buns in the kitchen. The note he left on the dining table, which turned out not to belong to his friends, read “Licked all the buns, see you later. Tommy.” His family plan to put that on his gravestone.
Lieutenant-Commander Thomas Leece, Royal Navy pilot, was born on August 23, 1926. He died of pneumonia on February 25, 2020, aged 93