Tony Eldridge obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/23/tony-eldrigde

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Tony Eldridge, who has died aged 91, was the last British survivor of an obscure but highly dangerous naval stratagem in the second world war, the role of “charioteer”, which entailed riding on an adapted torpedo to attack enemy ships underwater by attaching charges to their hulls. Eldridge played his part as a charioteer during a raid on the harbour at Phuket in Thailand, then occupied by the Japanese. The submarine HMS Trenchant sailed from Trincomalee in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) at the end of October 1944 with two chariots in containers attached to her deck. His part in the operation, which was the last of its kind in the war, earned him the Distinguished Service Cross.

The idea of sending frogmen into battle mounted on a torpedo was patented by a British naval officer in 1909 but was deemed too unsafe by the Admiralty for use in the first world war. Yet the Italian navy thought otherwise and sent a manned torpedo into the Austrian harbour of Pola (now Pula, Croatia), sinking an Austrian dreadnought shortly before the end of the war in 1918.

The Italians were the first to try it again in the second world war, launching courageous raids in Alexandria in 1942, where they crippled two British battleships. Some Italian frogmen were captured and the information gained from them prompted the Royal Navy to set up an “experimental submarine flotilla” at Portsmouth to train frogmen.

The first British chariot raid was in October 1942, against the German battleship Tirpitz in Norwegian waters. But the two vehicles were lost when their towropes broke in a storm. In April 1943 the chariot mark II was introduced, with considerable improvements. The top speed was increased from under three to 4.5 knots, the range rose to 30 miles and the detachable charge increased from 600 to 1,100lb. The two-man crews now sat back to back for better control.

Sub-lieutenant Eldridge, the Phuket raid leader, was in command of HM Chariot Tiny, accompanied by petty officer Sidney Woollacott. The other chariot, Slasher, carried petty officer WS Smith and able seaman Brown. Their targets were two Italian liners, SS Sumatra and SS Volpi, that had been commandeered by the Japanese.

Arriving off Phuket late on 27 October, the Trenchant launched the chariots at 10pm, so that they reached the harbour in the early hours of the next day. The water was warm and calm, and Eldridge and Woollacott were in position under the hull of the Sumatra soon after midnight. The plan was to detach the charge and attach it by magnets to the hull of the 4,859-ton liner, but it was so heavily encrusted with barnacles that the magnets failed. The frogmen therefore attached clamps to the bilge-keel and tied the warhead in place with rope, setting the timer for six hours ahead. The two men shook hands underwater and remounted.

Both chariots managed to escape after what was later hailed as a textbook operation. They returned to the Trenchant, whose commander ordered that the chariots should be abandoned so that he could better evade a Japanese patrol-boat. The frogmen were able to watch their target explode through the periscope at 6.30am.

Eldridge was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and attended the Skinners’ school in the town. He joined the Royal Naval Reserve in 1942 aged 18 and gained a commission from the ranks, rising to full lieutenant. After the Phuket raid, he continued with the chariots on such dangerous tasks as clearing harbours of wartime mines until he was demobilised in 1946.

He then worked in farming before joining the electronics group ICL, which transferred him to South Africa in 1954, and from there to Southern Rhodesia in 1960. After it declared UDI in 1965, he joined the local police reserve, where he spent 18 years, earning a meritorious service medal in the guerrilla war that led to to the emergence of independent Zimbabwe in 1980. He returned to South Africa in 1984 and to Britain 20 years later.

He married Dorothy Perkins in 1950. She and three of their four children survive him, along with 13 grandchildren.

•Anthony William Charles Eldridge, wartime naval officer, born 16 July 1923; died 13 April 2015