Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham commanded the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean through its hardest years and became First Sea Lord. Born in Dublin in 1883 to a Scottish professor of anatomy, he entered the navy at fifteen, served in the Boer War with a naval brigade ashore, and commanded destroyers at the Dardanelles and in the Baltic, winning three Distinguished Service Orders. He took the Mediterranean Fleet in 1939. On the night of 11 November 1940 he launched twenty-one Swordfish biplanes from the carrier Illustrious against the Italian battle fleet at anchor in Taranto, disabling three battleships in shallow water with modified torpedoes. It was the first strike by carrier aircraft against a fleet in harbour, halved Italian battleship strength in a night, and was studied closely by the Japanese naval staff before Pearl Harbor. At Cape Matapan in March 1941 he used radar-equipped ships to engage at night, which the Italians could not do, and sank three heavy cruisers and two destroyers without losing a ship. The evacuation of Crete in May 1941 cost him heavily under German air attack, and when his staff urged him to stop he replied that it takes three years to build a ship and three hundred to build a tradition, and that the army would not be abandoned. He directed the naval side of the landings in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, and received the surrender of the Italian fleet at Malta in September 1943, signalling that it now lay under the guns of the fortress. He was First Sea Lord from 1943 to 1946 and died in 1963. He was known throughout the fleet as ABC.

• Lived: 1883 CE – 1963 CE
• Nationality: English
• Roles: admiral, naval_commander