The Association has learned of the death of PO(A) Gordon S. Passmore MBE aged 94 on 10 February 2018 after a short illness.
Daughter Emma writes:
He was a proud member of The Fleet Air Arm, after becoming a TAG in WW2 and whilst he had over 60 years of uniformed service, becoming a member of the Honarable Artillery Company after National Service, his camaraderie for the Navy and the TAGS stayed with him all his life. He still continued to meet up with the TAGS in Lee on Solent every May.
If you or any of your members would like to attend the funeral you will be very welcome.
The funeral is on Friday 9 March at 12 noon at St Anne’s Church, 182 St Ann’s Hill, SW18 2RS
With a reception afterwards at the Civic Suite, Wandsworth High Street, SW18 2PU
We have asked for no flowers but if anyone would like to make a donation, the R.N.L.I. is Gordon’s nominated charity.
He was a great supporter of the R.N.L.I especially as he was a proud member of the Goldfish Club – Gordon was awarded membership by escaping death by the use of his emergency dinghy on the 6th June 1945 in the Pacific.
If you would like to make an online donation please follow the link:
https://gordon-passmore.muchloved.com/
From Records
813 NAS (Swordfish) HMS Campania 1943 – 44
841 NAS (Barracudas) 1944
828 NAS (Avengers) HMS Implacable 1945
© Peter Hore
892 words
Gordon Passmore, who has died aged 94, was one of the last survivors of a unique cadre men in the Fleet Air Arm, the Telegraphist Air Gunners or TAGs, who manned the radios and the rearguns of naval aircraft.
Passmore served over the Western Desert, the Mediterranean, and the Arctic, Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. At first he flew in the Fairey Swordfish, an open-cockpit, biplane affectionately known as the Stringbag: on his last flight in this type of aircraft, it crashed over the starboard side of the escort carrier Campania and landed upside down over a gun emplacement with Gordon dangling from his harness. In 1944 he was trained to fly in Barracuda and Avenger divebombers in the fleet carrier HMS Implacable during attacks on shipping off the Norwegian coast, then later in the East Indies Fleet and the British Pacific Fleet.
His flying was not without other incidents.
On April 12, 1945 his pilot suffered detached retinas when pulling out of a dive over China Bay, Ceylon and lost control of the aircraft. Ordered to bale out, instead Passmore and another aircrewman conned the pilot, who was flying blind, and they made a bumpy but safe landing, with the aircraft undamaged. Passmore received the Commander in Chief’s Commendation.
On June 6, 1945, Passmore took part in night attack on Japanese fleet anchorage at Towi Island, and was shot down by anti-aircraft fire after completing a bombing run. The aircraft flew into the sea, but luckily all three aircrew were picked up by the British destroyer, Teazer, after several hours in the water.
On August 5, 1945 the best six Avenger aircrews in Implacable were briefed on a daring torpedo attack on a heavy Japanese cruiser, moored inside Kure harbour. It was a mission that they thought that they would not survive, but as they sat in their planes waiting for a dawn take-off, they heard that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima on their mission was cancelled.
Passsmore flew over 230 sorties and was awarded the Atlantic Star, Burma Star, Pacific Star, Italy Star. In 2013 he was presented with the newly-instituted Arctic Star medal by Prime Minister David Cameron, and in 2015 the French Government awarded him the Legion d’honneur.
Gordon Seymour Passmore was born in Brighton, the eldest of five children, and spent the first eight years of his life in Normandy where his parents had settled after the First World War. On return to England, the family settled atUpper Beeding at the foot of the South Downs where Gordon spent an uncomplicated, bucolic boyhood. He joined the Scouts and was thrilled to be selected for the Sussex Contingent that went up to London for the coronation of King George VI. At 16, he joined the Local Defence Volunteers to patrol the byways with a forage cap, armband, a .303 rifle and five rounds of ammunition strapped to his bicycle, before joining the Civil Service in London, where he took his turn at fire-watching duties on the roof of Portland House overlooking St James’s Park. In 1941 he was transferred to the Department of Tank Design at Egham where he catalogued the defects and damage to tanks and armoured vehicles in France and North Africa, but on the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, he was accepted by the Fleet Air Arm.
Postwar Passmore continued to fly as a reservist until he was 36, and then remustered as a gunner in the Honourable Artillery Company. In 1967 he joined the HAC’s Company of Pikemen and Musketeers who act as the ceremonial bodyguard for the Lord Mayor of the City of London and when he retired from the HAC, aged 83, he had completed 65 years of continuous uniformed service.
In 1947 he joined estate department of the old Metropolitan Water Board, then one of the largest land owners in Greater London, where he remained until 1965, 1965-1982 he was a surveyor in the Camden valuer’s department, and then for twelve years he was a consultant surveyor.
Passmore joined the Putney Branch of the Young Conservatives, more for the social life than the politics, but soon found himself branch chairman. After two local election defeats in 1959 he was co-opted onto the education committee of London County Council, and for the next 36 years he was a governor of Wandsworth Technical College.
In 1960 he won a by-election, becoming alderman of Putney Ward (a post which was later abolished), and in 1974 he was elected as councillor for Northcote Ward and was re-elected for that ward every election until he stood down in 2006. At various tiems he sat on all of the council’s committees and was the chairman of the planning committee for 10 years, and chief whip twice. He was also appointed to the London Planning Advisory Committee, was a General Commissioner of Income Tax, a member of the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Committee, and president of the London Valuation Panel. He was elected Mayor of Wandsworth in 1970 and 1989 and in 2007 he was made Honorary Freeman of the Borough.
Passmore was awarded the MBE in 1996 for services to local government.
He married Shirley Pritchard in 1955, she died last year, and he is survived by their son and two daughters: three young children predeceased him.