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The son of a doctor,
David Stanley Tibbits was born at Warwick on April 11 1911, educated
at Dartmouth in the St Vincent term and went to sea aged 16. After
serving in the battleship Queen Elizabeth, flagship of the
Mediterranean Fleet, Tibbits became one of the youngest officers to
specialise in navigation. As the junior member of his course he
expected the dullest appointment until a colleague fell sick, and he
was given a pierhead jump to the minesweeping sloop Scarborough
on the American and West Indies Station.
Luck continued to
play a part in Tibbits's career, and two days after the sloop arrived
at Bermuda he met his future wife. As war loomed, he served in a
minesweeping flotilla during the Abyssinian crisis, in the minesweeper
Halcyon during the Spanish Civil War, and was navigator
of the 1st Submarine Flotilla at Malta.
At the start of the
war, Tibbits was in the heavy cruiser York, with which he saw
nearly every campaign of 1939 to 1941 until she was wrecked in Suda
Bay, Crete. He tried to save York, when she was badly damaged
by Italian explosive "suicide" motorboats, then beached her; but there
she became a sitting duck for German air attacks.
Eventually Tibbits
was evacuated in the light cruiser Orion, in which he was
subjected to heavy bombing. He returned home via the Cape as a
passenger in the liner Otranto to join the cruiser
Devonshire.
On November 22 1941,
Devonshire found Atlantis, a disguised German raider
which had sunk 22 merchant ships of some 150,000 tons. Tibbits
identified the enemy from a picture in the American magazine Life
and navigated Devonshire as she destroyed the raider. This
involved launching her reconnaissance aircraft for early
identification, manoeuvring outside the enemy's gun range, signalling
for confirmation of false identity and setting her on fire with just
four salvos from her 8 in guns.
Atlantis
had been supplying U-boats which were still in the area, so her
survivors were left in their lifeboats. Next Tibbits planned Operation
Ironclad, the invasion of Madagascar. This required a difficult entry
at night by a large fleet into Courrier Bay, which Tibbits achieved
undetected and unopposed; he was awarded the DSC.
In 1944, Tibbits
worked in the stables in Southwick House, outside Portsmouth, on the
plans for the D-Day landings. This was followed by appointment to the
battleship Anson, destined for the British Pacific Fleet and
the relief of Hong Kong.
Source: Daily
Telegraph Obituaries - Captain Sir David Tibbits 2.6.2003 |
