Dashing wartime fighter pilot who was shot down, wounded, captured and almost shot as a spy — but still made good his escape
Shot down by a force of Messerschmitts on day one of Operation Husky, the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, Tony Snell embarked on a series of extraordinary adventures, being severely wounded, and by turns captured and escaping several times before finally reaching the safety of neutral Switzerland from where he was eventually liberated via the advancing American forces in 1944. The story of his remarkable journey to eventual freedom is related in detail in the citation for his Distinguished Service Order, gazetted in July 1946, one of the longest DSO citations on record.
After the war Snell’s life was scarcely less adventurous, a buccaneering affair of travelling, singing and acting, yacht chartering, and restaurant and hotel ownership which took him from England to Spain, the Galapagos Islands, New York, New Hampshire and the British Virgin Islands, his final port of call in a globetrotting family life shared with his wife, Jackie, and their children.
Born in Tunbridge Wells in 1922 and educated at Cheltenham College, Anthony Noel Snell joined the RAF in November 1940 and, after pilot training in the US, was posted to 242 Squadron of Spitfires. With 242 he saw much intense air fighting in the Anglo-American “Torch” landings in North Africa in November that year, as Axis bombers strove to attack Allied shipping, airfields and ground units.
As Allied ground and air forces gradually gained the upper hand 242’s role changed to that of ground attack until the Axis surrender in Tunisia in May 1943. Then, over Sicily, on July 10, 1943, Snell’s Spitfire was hit by cannon fire from a number of Messerschitt 109s as he patrolled above a beachhead where Allied landings had taken place, and he came down to a forced landing in enemy-held territory.
He managed to bluff the first enemy troops he encountered — a group of Italians — into thinking he was Vichy French. He was not so lucky when he ran into some Germans who rolled a grenade at him along the ground and threw more after him as he fled from them. He was subsequently captured by another party of Germans who decided to execute him as a spy.
When they ordered him to kneel down he realised that he was about to be shot in cold blood, and he sprang up and ran off as they opened fire. Although he was severely wounded in the shoulder he managed, remarkably, to evade this group, too, hiding among boulders as they searched for him. Though faint and weak from his wounds he attempted to reach Allied lines but was at length captured again, this time proving his identity to the satisfaction of his captors, who likewise at first took him for a spy since they had found him close to one of their airfields.
Held first at Catania and then at Lucca in Tuscany, where he was transferred by sea, he determined to escape when told that he was to be sent to a PoW camp in Germany. As their train passed through Mantua he and an American officer leapt from it, and for the next week the pair travelled southwards, helped by friendly partisans, reaching Modena where they were sheltered by partisans for several months. Though his wounds were by no means healed it was decided that Snell and his companion should make the attempt to reach the Swiss frontier.
After a risky train journey north, accompanied by friendly Italians, they were introduced to two Alpine guides who eventually brought them to the Swiss frontier after an arduous climb. In Switzerland they were interned until the autumn of 1944 when the American advance from the South of France reached the Swiss border. On his return to Britain Snell was awarded the DSO for his escape exploit.
He remained in the RAF for a year after the end of the war, flying Meteor jet fighters in Germany, before leaving in August 1946.
For the next 20 years he made a living as a singer and songwriter, touring a one-man show round Africa with his wife who wrote some of his material. In the mid-1960s they bought a catamaran and operated day charters from Ibiza. Through contacts made there they next moved to the British Virgin Islands to run a charter operation there.
It did not work out and they subsequently bought a restaurant, the Last Resort, on one of the islands, Jost van Dyke. When the restaurant burnt down they re-established it on another island, Tortola, where it is still run by one of his children. Other ventures during the next few years included an apartment hotel in New Hampshire, and investment properties in Sussex. From their Virgin Islands home Snell and his wife travelled widely in Central and South America during their years together.
Jackie died in 2001 and Snell is survived by their son and daughter.
Flight Lieutenant Tony Snell, DSO, wartime fighter pilot, was born on March 19, 1922. He died on August 4, 2013, aged 91
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>Chin Peng
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Chin Peng, foreground, looks back at the village of Baling before returning to the jungle at the end of peace talks in 1955
Communist guerrilla behind the longrunning terrorist campaign to end colonial rule in Malaya
In the Second World War Chin Peng fought alongside the British against the Japanese , providing vital food and supply lines through the jungles of Malaya. O nly a few years later he was masterminding a communist insurrection to drive the British from his native land.
A doctrinaire Marxist and hardline opponent of colonial rule, he remained in the jungle with a few hundred devoted followers long after an end was declared to the Malayan Emergency (as it was known by the British; the communists preferred to think of it as the Anti-British National Liberation War). Even after colonialism had given way to political independence and Commonwealth membership, he continued to believe that some change in the political and economic situation in South-East Asia might yet create conditions favourable to a communist takeover. Those hopes faded as the affluence of the region steadily increased. Chin Peng finally conceded defeat in 1989.
Giving his year of birth as 1924, Chin Peng was born Ong Boon Hua in the west coast state of Perak, the son of an immigrant from China’s Fujian province who had set himself up as a bicycle dealer. He proved an outstanding student, learning English at a Methodist-run tutorial school. He joined the Perak branch of the Malayan communist party at 17 and quickly became both state branch secretary and an important ally of the national party leader, Lai Teck.
After the Japanese conquest of Malaya and the fall of Singapore in February 1942 Chin Peng joined the central standing committee of the Malayan Peoples’ Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA). He became a leading light in the guerilla group in Perak. It was in this role that he met Major Freddie Spencer Chapman in March 1942. Chapman was serving with one of the British stay-behind parties, working clandestinely to disrupt Japanese operations after the invasion. As the supplies left hidden for the stay-behind parties began to run out, Chin Peng’s group set up food and supply lines for their support. Chapman later arranged for Chin Peng to meet Lieutenant-Colonel John Davis, the stay-behind parties’ leader.
In January 1944, Chin Peng and a representative of guerilla headquarters reached agreement with Davis. They would co-operate with the Allies in return for arms, supplies and training — but strictly for the purpose of defeating the Japanese. No postwar commitment was given. Chin Peng became the main link between the guerillas and the Special Operation Executive (SOE) agents sent into Malaya to prepare the way for liberation. As it turned out, Japan surrendered before the main Allied force arrived. Chin Peng was appointed OBE for his services. It was subsequently withdrawn.
The MPAJA gave up some of the arms which had been supplied to it by the Allies during the war, but most were retained and buried in the jungle. When the communist leader Lai Teck fell from favour amid accusations of disloyalty — finally absconding with the bulk of the party’s funds in 1947 — Chin Peng took over the leadership. He had no doubt that violence was justified to establish a Marxist state. In the ensuing months, communist-inspired strikes caused severe losses in the tin mining industry, while isolated rubber plantations were attacked and their managers killed.
During spring 1948 Chin Peng declared that a war against the British administration had begun. Some 5,000 former guerillas from the MPAJA re-entered the jungle, with regiments of a new Malayan National Liberation Army being formed in every state. A civilian support organisation, the Min Yuen, would provide food, supplies and funds.
These initiatives were an attempt to re-invigorate a party whose political impact had been limited, not least by the lack of education of the majority of its membership. Within a few years, Chin Peng would have to concede that his campaign of terror had been no less limited in its effect. It had failed to intimidate the colonial administration. It had not won wholesale support from the Chinese population, and it had little backing among the majority Malay population or the Indians. Nevertheless, Chin Peng and his associates posed a serious challenge to security throughout Malaya for at least a decade. Two divisions of Commonwealth troops and some 50,000 police were needed to contain the threat.
A turning point came on October 6, 1951, when the British High Commissioner — Sir Henry Gurney — was ambushed and killed on his way to a quiet weekend at the resort of Frazer’s Hill. Gurney was succeeded as Governor by General Sir Gerald Templer, who also acted as director of operations. He continued a policy advocated by his predecessor in the latter role, Sir Harold Briggs. The Briggs Plan involved the enforced removal of thousands of Chinese rubber tappers from their squalid camps on the jungle edge and their relocation in protected “new villages”, where they were safe from communist terrorist intimidation. There were some attempts to smuggle supplies to the terrorists from the new villages but, in the main, the plan was an outstanding success.
Chin Peng saw what a setback this was. When his followers began to accept terms for surrender, publicised by an intensive leaflet campaign in 1955, he requested talks with the Chief Ministers of Malaya and Singapore, Tunku Abdul Rahman and Mr David Marshall, with a view to ending the conflict. The talks were held at Baling, a village close to the Thai border, amid tight security. Chin Peng’s personal safety was guaranteed. His wartime SOE colleague Colonel John Davis met him at a designated jungle clearing — with the greeting “Long time, no see” — and took him to Baling for the discussions.
The talks failed because the aims of the parties were fundamentally irreconcilable. Chin Peng offered to disband his army in return for legitimisation of the Malayan communist party, so that it could resume the political struggle it had abandoned in 1948. The Tunku and Marshall insisted on the party’s dissolution. Chin Peng returned to the jungle, promising to continue the armed struggle. By November 1959, however, all but a handful of his guerillas had either surrendered or been killed, and the Emergency was formally declared over the following year.
Chin Peng refused to surrender. With a price on his head — ranging from $250,000 in the early 1960s to a mere $13,000 by 1970 — he returned to hiding. There were reports of doctrinal splits in the rump of his jungle-based party in 1974. For a time he was thought to be in China. Generally, however, little was heard of him until November 1989, when he was finally willing to sign an accord to end his Marxist struggle and sign a peace agreement with the Malaysian government. On December 2, 1989, he signed a memorandum stating that his 1,100-strong jungle-based army would be disbanded. The party itself would not be wound up, and some 400 of his followers would be seeking rehabilitation and return to their former homes in Malaysia. He, however, was denied the right to return and instead lived in seclusion in Thailand where he wrote his memoirs.
A late appearance on the public stage came in London in 1998, when the Observer journalist Neal Ascherson, who had served in the Malayan Emergency, invited him to England to speak. “I have great experience of struggle,” Chin Peng admitted ruefully “but I have no experience of how to build socialism.”
Wong Man Wa, alias Chin Peng, leader of the Malayan Communist Party 1947-89, was born in 1922. He died on September 16, 2013, aged 90
RAF navigator who flew in the Berlin Airlift and planned the air campaign in the Falklands conflict
Though he could hardly have guessed it at the time, the military career of John Curtiss took a turn for the better when he was passed over for pilot training. Not easily deflated, and set on a long- term future with the RAF, he perfected his skills as a backseat flyer, opting for the navigation route to high command. He would be the first RAF navigator to reach the rank of Air Marshal. Starting with bombing raids over Germany, his 40 years’ service culminated in planning the air campaign during the Falklands conflict. The great challenge there — successfully met — was to organise a massive, complex mid-air refuelling operation, allowing bombing raids to be launched over unprecedented range.
Born in 1924, John Bagot Curtiss was of Antipodean background, his mother a New Zealander, his father an Australian engineer who brought his wife over to England in 1914 when he joined the Royal Flying Corps. Living comfortably on income from business interests in New Zealand, the family stayed on after the war. Curtiss opted for the services at an early age. His first choice was the Navy but having failed to get into Dartmouth (he was let down by his weakness in Latin, in those days judged to be a prerequisite for commanding a battleship) he went to Radley where he thrived on a games culture.
His schooling was interrupted in 1939 when it was decided that the family should return to New Zealand. The likelihood of another war was a particular worry for Curtiss senior, by now a chronic asthmatic who would not survive the gas attacks that were widely anticipated. The move was not popular with his eldest son who followed the news from Europe with intense eagerness, wanting to be part of the action.
It was not until 1942 that his wish was answered. Because he was not yet 18, his entry into the RAF had to be via a brief return to Radley and a university short course. Predictably, most of his time at Worcester College was spent with the Oxford University Air Squadron. When serious training began in April 1943, Curtiss took easily to flying, enjoying nothing more than Tiger Moth aerobatics, the excitement enhanced by the open cockpit.
His disappointment at failing to join the pilot elite was soon forgotten in his enthusiasm for navigation. Shortly after the D-Day landings, Curtiss joined 578 Squadron for daylight attacks on retreating German forces and on V1 and V2 Flying Bomb sites in northern France and Holland. The hazards were not all enemy-inspired. The stacking of planes as they jockeyed for position on the bombing run held the risk of flying under another aircraft just as its bomb doors opened. Curtiss long remembered when his Halifax was hit by a 1,000 lb bomb. It came in through the top of the fuselage and went out through the bottom, leaving a large hole and a powerful draught.
His closest brush with disaster was on a routine training flight. A fire spread to the fuel tanks on the port wing. The order came to bale out. On his descent Curtiss watched his aircraft falling towards the ground, trailing fire and smoke. He and the wireless operator were the only survivors. After a cursory medical, Curtiss returned to flying and it was nine years before he discovered that in landing awkwardly in a field he had cracked his spine.
The war over, Curtiss was transferred to Transport Command to ferry troops back from India and Singapore. In June 1946 he married Peggy Bowie, a teenage sweetheart he had met en route to New Zealand and had not seen again for more than five years. With a permanent commission, Curtiss was moved to Abingdon where his next mission was to be part of the Berlin Airlift.
In that incredible Anglo-American initiative, from June 1948 to May 1949, a Soviet blockade of the former German capital was defeated by the air delivery of 2.3 million tons of essential supplies. At the height of operations some 1,400 aircraft a day, close on one a minute, were landing and taking off in West Berlin. Based near Hanover, Curtiss was soon flying four or five trips a day, 50 minutes each way with 30 minutes on the ground for unloading.
After the winding down of the Airlift, flying jobs were hard to come by. Curtiss found himself running a succession of training programmes that were not to his liking. A transfer to Fighter Command put him back on course for staff college and promotion to squadron leader. Determined to stay in the front line of the RAF and to compete for high rank at a time when pilots held nearly all the top jobs, Curtiss was soon to take command of operations at RAF Wittering where aircraft were equipped with Blue Steel missiles targeted against the Soviet Union. In 1966 he was appointed Station Commander. Two years later, promoted to Group Captain, he was transferred to Brüggen in Germany, one of the RAF’s premier operational stations while the Cold War was at its height. Further promotions took him to Air Vice Marshal and to the Ministry of Defence as the RAF’s Director-General for Organisation. Subsequently he was commandant of the RAF Staff College before landing a three-star job leading No 18 Group, the old Coastal Command. A knighthood followed.
And there his career might have ended had it not been for the Falklands conflict. Curtiss was part of the five-man command team led by Admiral John Fieldhouse. As the Task Force set out for the South Atlantic, an airbase was established on Ascension Island, off the coast of Africa. Since this still left 4,000 miles to cover to reach the Falklands, aircraft had to be adapted to midair refuelling, which was achieved by what Curtiss described as a “Heath Robinson piece of engineering”. It nonetheless served its purpose, which was to launch the longest-distance bombing raids ever attempted. As a result the runway at Port Stanley was put out of action and the Task Force experienced fewer Argentine air attacks than anticipated.
Retirement did not leave Curtiss inactive for long. In 1986 he was appointed chief executive of the Society of British Aerospace Companies, a job which entailed planning the Farnborough Air Show. It was as chairman of governors at Canford School, however, that he recorded the unlikeliest triumph of his later life. From the days when it was a private mansion, Canford contained what were thought to be copies of two ancient Assyrian friezes. As it turned out, one of them was an original. Taking it upon himself to reject offers of up to £1 million, Curtiss persuaded his colleagues to agree to a Christie’s auction. The frieze sold for £7.7 million, a sum that allowed for scholarships and bursaries, educational activities in India and Africa, a new sports centre and a new theatre.
Links with the RAF were maintained with a variety of professional and charitable associations. At 83, with two artificial hips, Curtiss supported a charity appeal by performing a sky dive, his second experience in parachuting in 65 years. Keen to have another go he was, as he put it, “grounded” by his family.
Curtiss was appointed CB in 1979 and KCB in 1981. He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.
He is survived by his wife, Peggy, three sons and one daughter.
Air Marshal Sir John Curtiss was born on December 6, 1924. He died on September 14, 2013, aged 88
>Wing Commander Kenneth Wallis
>Ëåòàë íà áîìáàðäèðîâùèêå â âîéíó, à ïîñëå âîéíû ñíèìàëñÿ â ôèëüìàõ î Äæåéìñå Áîíäå (ïèëîòèðîâàë àâòîæèð ñîáñòâåííîé êîíñòðóêöèè)
Wallis seated in the autogyro that he piloted when he doubled for Sean Connery as James Bond in You Only Live Twice
Intrepid pilot and autogyro engineer who doubled for James Bond and was still flying in his nineties
In an extraordinary engineering and flying career which began when he built a motorcycle at the age of 11 in 1927 and which ultimately led to him founding his own company, Wallis Autogyros, in the 1960s, Ken Wallis had been variously a wartime RAF bomber pilot, Cold War reconnaissance pilot with the USAF, powerboat racer and, at the age of 86, the oldest pilot to set a world flight record.
In between he had doubled for Sean Connery as James Bond, flying his own autogyro design for the 1967 film You Only Live Twice, in a scene in which 007 shoots down single-handed a force of helicopters sent by the arch villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld to eliminate him. Though Wallis enjoyed making the film, he had one regret: “I had to shave off my moustache, which has not been the same since.”
Kenneth Horatio Wallis was born at Ely, Cambridgeshire, in 1916. The story of the Wallis family’s involvement in flight had begun before that, in 1910 when his father and uncle built and flew their own Wallbro Monoplane after witnessing the Wright Brothers’ first flight in France two years previously. The passion for speed was in his blood, as was an aptitude for mechanics, nurtured by his father’s motorcycle business. After building his first motorbike he went on during his teens to build and race powerboats, something he did for the next 40 years, notching up his last win, in the 56-mile Missouri Marathon, in 1957.
The RAF naturally appealed to him as a career, when he left The King’s School, Ely. His first attempt to join the Service was thwarted at the medical examination by a defect in his right eye. Nothing deterred, he paid for his own flying lessons and obtained his private pilot’s licence. At his second attempt, after war had broken out, he had evolved a strategy for passing the test, sneaking a look at the bottom line of letters with his good eye, memorising them, and regurgitating them when it came to the turn of his bad eye. “I passed with ‘Above Average Eyesight’,” he recalled wryly.
He was at first assigned to an Army Co-operation Squadron flying the high-wing, short takeoff and landing Lysander, but in 1941 was transferred to Bomber Command and flew Wellingtons in bombing raids over occupied Europe. There were some close scrapes, as when he ran out of fuel when his squadron tried to find its way home in fog as it returned from a raid, aborted by poor visibility, on Frankfurt. He ordered his crew to bale out and after seeing them safely through the hatch, followed himself. They all survived, but several other crews who had flown on the raid perished that night, losing their bearings and crashing as they ran out of fuel.
In between ops Wallis was fecund with inventions which ranged from an electric slot-car race track, which he installed in a Nissen hut as a recreation for the airmen at his base (a forerunner of the massively successful Scalextric), to attempting to devise the best cannon shell to destroy the jet engines of German Me262 fighters and Arado 234 bombers which began to be seen in the skies over Europe as the war entered its final year.
He remained in the RAF after the war, working on modifications to the bombing-up routine of the Canberra, Britain’s first jet bomber, when it came into service, and tackling such perennial irritations as the failure of the standard 25lb practice bomb to explode when it ought to.
In 1956 he went to the US where he was loaned to Strategic Air Command and flew the giant Convair RB36 high- altitude bomber, with its six propellers and four jet engines, on reconnaissance sorties over the Soviet Arctic, above the effective operating ceiling of Russian ground radars.
While in the US he saw a demonstration of the unpowered Bensen B7 rotor kite. Convinced that he could develop a powered version, he bought a couple of McCulloch lawnmower engines and had them sent back to the UK for experimentation. They were to form the basis for his work on autogyros, an aircraft whose overhead rotor is not powered like that of a helicopter but rotates as the aircraft is driven forward by a normally horizontal engine, thereby developing lift.
Returning to Britain he was put in charge of tactical weapons at the Aeroplane and Armament Experimental Establishment at Boscombe Down, Wiltshire, where he was involved in weapons testing on the new Mach2 English Electric P1 fighter, which entered service as the Lightning. With the cancellation of such advanced aircraft programmes as the TSR2 strike and reconnaissance plane, he became disillusioned with the direction in which British aviation was moving and the loss of expertise it was suffering.
In 1964 he left the RAF to concentrate on his autogyro work, founding Wallis Autogyros with his cousin Geoffrey, who supervised production at their Cambridge factory.
He never achieved production for a mass market, something he always regretted, but his autogyros found themselves performing all sorts of tasks, ranging from participation in movies to vehicles for aerial photography such as a 1970 mission to search Loch Ness for its fabled monster. “I spent two days in the air with a camera, but nothing,” he later commented. Then in 1975 the police asked him if he could help in the search for Lord Lucan, who had disappeared after his children’s nanny had been bludgeoned to death the previous November. “They thought he might have committed suicide in Newhaven, so I drove down there with the autogyro on a trailer and had a good look, but he wasn’t there.”
Meanwhile the ever competitive Wallis set himself to breaking records in his beloved autogyros of which he kept around 20 at his home. He piloted an autogyro throughout the British Isles. He soared in one to a height of 18,976ft, and repeatedly assailed the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale speed record for autogyros, most recently on November 16, 2002, when he raised it to 129.1mph. He was then 86.
In 1973 Wallis and his cousin decided to re-create a flying replica of his father’s and uncle’s Wallbro Monoplane. He gave the aircraft its maiden flight in 1978, and it is now in the Norfolk and Suffolk Aviation Museum at Flixton, on the Suffolk-Norfolk border near Bungay.
Wallis retained his energy and his irrepressible enthusiasm for everything to do with flying and autogyros in particular, and was still piloting them well into his nineties. Visitors to his Georgian manor in Norfolk would be treated to his trademark “no hands” gesture as he flew over their heads in one or other of his creations. It was always his dream to break his own record some day, but new Civil Aviation Authority regulations about the safe top speed of such autogyros as his always seemed likely to prevent that.
His wife Peggy predeceased him. They had three children.
Wing Commander Kenneth Wallis, MBE, engineer and aviator, was born on April 26, 1916. He died on September 1, 2013, aged 97
Loden, second from right, as a 27-year old captain, with fellow members of the Parachute Regiment decorated for their service in Aden during 1967; the citation for Loden’s Military Cross praised his “personal bravery” and “fine example”
Parachute Regiment officer who won an MC in the Aden Emergency and commanded a company in Londonderry on Bloody Sunday
Colonel Ted Loden, who was shot and fatally wounded by burglars fleeing from his son’s house in Nairobi at the weekend, had been involved as a company commander in the events of “Bloody Sunday” in Londonderry in 1972, in which 13 people were killed when British soldiers, faced with escalating rioting, fired more than 100 rounds into crowds. The subsequent inquiry by Lord Saville of Newdigate found that all of those shot were unarmed, and that the killings were “unjustified and unjustifiable”. It accepted, however, that Loden was not personally at fault that day.
Loden had earlier won the Military Cross for repeated acts of personal bravery and outstanding leadership in the violent conflict which marked the years leading up to independence in South Arabia and Aden.
Commissioned into the Parachute Regiment in 1960, Edward Charles Loden served with the 1st Battalion (1 PARA) in South Arabia during the rebellion of the Radfan tribes of the Western Aden Protectorate (WAP) in 1964. Attempts by the civil authorities to restrict the tribes’ “taxation” of traffic using the Dhala road to Yemen and other lawlessness provoked a violent response that took two large-scale operations to bring under control.
The battalion returned to Arabia in 1967. By then the defection of the desert tribes had led to British withdrawal from the WAP and a terrorist siege of the port city of Aden, while the British Government sought to identify a responsible local authority which might be fit to accede to office. A general strike of port and other workers on June 1, 1967, was accompanied by a series of attacks on the Sheikh ’Othman sector of the defensive perimeter, which was manned by 1PARA.
By early afternoon some of the battalion’s exposed positions were running critically short of ammunition and water. Loden who, as battalion intelligence officer was familiar with covered routes to all the observation points, led an armoured convoy to replenish each post despite persistent terrorist small arms and mortar fire.
Later Loden guided a patrol of his battalion and another of the King’s Own Royal Border Regiment to a house in Sheikh ’Othman district which was being used by the terrorist National Liberation Front (NLF) as a headquarters and prison for members of a rival terrorist group. This led to the acquisition of useful intelligence.
Soon afterwards, on June 20, when units of the South Arabian Army and police opened fire on British troops in the mistaken belief that they were themselves under attack, Loden led a patrol to recover the wounded and dead of 60 Squadron Royal Corps of Transport who were still under fire. His gallant and unselfish conduct on these three occasions was recognised with the award of the Military Cross. Announcing his decoration, the London Gazette recorded that Loden had shown “exceptional coolness, courage and devotion to duty” and had demonstrated “personal bravery of the highest order” in risking his life to get more ammunition and recovering the wounded and dead while under fire. He had “set a fine example and was an inspiration to all”.
In January 1972, while Loden was commanding Support Company, 1 PARA was moved at short notice from Belfast, where it was positioned as the local brigade’s reserve, to Londonderry to assist in the control of a civil rights march in the city. Sent into the Bogside district to arrest youths who had broken away from the march intent on violence against the security forces, Loden’s company opened fire, killing 13 civilians and wounding 13 others.
The report by Lord Saville on the events of Bloody Sunday, published in June 2010, accepted Loden’s evidence that it was not for him to control or stop his soldiers’ firing; events on the ground moved extremely fast, and his platoon and section commanders were able to see what was happening where he could not. “At the time the casualties were being sustained,” the Saville report concluded, “Major Loden neither realised nor should he have realised that his soldiers were or might be firing at people who were not posing or about to pose a threat.” The report criticised Loden’s commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Derek Wilford, for sending Loden’s company into an unfamiliar and dangerous area where they might come under attack by republican paramilitaries.
Loden’s military career was not impeded by the events in Londonderry. After attending the Staff College, Camberley, he served as chief of staff of the 44th Parachute Brigade of the Territorial Army and subsequently commanded 4th Battalion the Parachute Regiment in that Brigade.
On promotion to colonel in 1988 he was sent to Tel Aviv as the Defence Attaché to the British Embassy. Consistently regarded as an important post, it proved particularly so in his case, as it meant he was in Israel at the time of the Gulf War of 1990-91. The leadership of the American-led coalition operating under United Nations mandate was particularly sensitive to any Iraqi retaliation against Israel. Although Iraqi Scud missiles were launched against Tel Aviv and Haifa, there was only a small number of casualties.
On completion of his assignment to Tel Aviv, Loden, aged 52, left the Army to go into business, but he retired in 1999 to devote more time to sailing. On an occasion when he was crossing the Channel alone under engine power, a fishing net fouled his propeller. Rather than radioing for help, he stripped and swam under the hull to disentangle the net himself. He also piloted a bright yellow microlight aircraft and was often to be seen flying it above the village of Broxhill, near Fordingbridge, in Hampshire where he lived with his family.
In more recent years he displayed great fortitude while suffering from throat cancer, remarking that “P Company” — the selection process for Parachute Regiment acceptance — had taught him never to be beaten.
He is survived by his wife, Jilly, née Gladstone, and two sons, one of whom followed him into the Parachute Regiment.
Colonel E. C. Loden, MC, soldier, was born on July 9, 1940. He died on September 7, 2013, aged 73
Japanese industrialist whose innovations revolutionised modern car production
Eiji Toyoda was a key figure in the mid-century revolution in carmaking. His influence on modern industry was huge, as the production techniques he introduced at Toyota were followed by many other manufacturers around the world.
As president of the Toyota Motor Corporation from 1967 to 1981 and chairman until 1994, Toyoda helped to introduce a production process designed to keep waste to a minimum. The aim was a continual improvement in quality on the assembly line. The new techniques enabled the Japanese carmaker to price its vehicles so competitively that much of the global car industry was forced to follow suit. Toyota would grow into the world’s largest carmaker, while Toyoda became something of a manufacturing guru whose efficient production techniques spawned bestselling books and manuals. At Toyota, as a mark of the enormous esteem in which he was held, Toyoda retained the title “ultimate adviser” until his death.
Toyoda was involved with the company from the beginning. He was both the cousin and the close confidant of Kiichiro Toyoda, who in 1937 founded the automobile division of what was then a textile company.
It was Eiji who, in the early 1950s, was dispatched to study the industrial techniques of the United States on a visit to Ford’s huge River Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan. He was appalled at the quantity of materials being wasted at the plant, which made 8,000 cars a day. He vowed to develop mass production techniques that would not repeat the same mistakes.
Over time, Toyoda worked with the loom engineer Taiichi Ohno to develop the “Toyota way”. This included the “Kanban” system of labelling parts on assembly lines that would later evolve into barcodes. Another key innovation was “just in time delivery”, which avoided the oversupply of materials. Toyoda and Ohno also developed the “Kaizen” system of constant monitoring and improvement, relying on intelligent, well-trained and proactive assembly line workers to cut production and labour costs and boost quality. “One of the features of the Japanese workers is that they use their brains as well as their hands,” he said. “Our workers provide 1.5 million suggestions a year, and 95 per cent of them are put to practical use.” Toyoda started to implement these ideas at Toyota’s Motomachi plant, completed in 1959, which made 5,000 vehicles a month.
His first attempt to break the US market in 1957 had been a failure. The Toyota Crown was not powerful enough for US highways. Derided for its lack of horsepower, it often broke down on steep gradients. His breakthrough was the Toyota Corolla, launched in 1966. The small car had a robust 1-litre engine, automatic transmission, air conditioning — and it was cheap. US carmakers were slow to see the potential of a small fuel-efficient car for the baby-boomer generation. Unhindered by much in the way of competition, sales of the Corolla were further boosted after the oil crisis of 1973 led to permanently higher petrol prices. By 1974 it was the world’s best-selling car.
Eiji Toyoda was born in Nagoya in 1913 into a family of textile merchants. He studied mechanical engineering at Tokyo Imperial University from 1933 to 1936 and started working for the carmaker in the town of Koromo, which was later renamed Toyota City (the company was named Toyota because Toyoda means “fertile rice paddy” and it was thought better to avoid the association with farming).
Toyoda rose to prominence as managing director from 1950. That same year his cousin Kiichiro had been forced to resign after a strike over unpaid wages; Toyota was close to bankruptcy in the early postwar years as warravaged Japan tried to pick itself up.
Breaking into the US market was the biggest challenge. Lingering US prejudice against buying Japanese was one obstacle — during the war Toyota had suspended carmaking to make trucks for the Japanese military effort. Another was Toyoda’s manner, which did not always go down well with his more flamboyant US counterparts. Formal and rather stiff in bearing, and notably taciturn, he was the personification of the restrained, correct Japanese businessman.
Despite these handicaps, he was eventually so successful that the US introduced tariffs on car imports to protect its beleagured car manufacturers. Toyoda responded by moving production to the US and in 1984 opened a factory in Fremont, California in a joint venture with General Motors. A similar approach was taken in other markets. Toyota’s first UK factory was opened in Burnaston, Derbyshire in 1989.
Toyoda remained as chairman until 1994. For years he championed Toyota’s entry into the luxury car market in an attempt to undercut BMW and Mercedes. He finally got his wish in 1989 with the successful launch of the Lexus marque. Despite his advancing years, he remained a dynamic presence; he pushed hard for the development of the Prius hybrid gas-electric vehicle in 1997.
His standards were always exacting and no doubt he would have been critical of the company in 2010, when more than 2 million Toyotas had to be recalled because of faulty components.
His success in building one of Japan’s most successful industrial conglomerates brought him many official honours.
His wife predeceased him. He is survived by three sons, who are all Toyota executives.
Eiji Toyoda, Japanese industrialist, was born on September 12, 1913. He died on September 17, 2013, aged 100
