John Hervey
John Hervey
Rear-Admiral John Hervey, who has died aged 88, survived an underwater collision with a Soviet submarine and proved his diplomacy during the Falklands War.Hervey was commanding the nuclear-powered submarine Warspite when, in the early hours, one night in October 1968, she was creeping submerged across the floor of the Barents Sea, close behind a Soviet Echo-class submarine.In a Cold War game described by one expert as like two knights in armour fighting each other in a darkened room, where one could only hear the other by the occasional clink of armour, Hervey was tracking his foe by listening passively on Warspite’s sonars.
HMS Warspite leaving the shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness 
HMS Warspite leaving the shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness  CREDIT: REX
Quite unexpectedly, Hervey’s quarry shut down one of its propellers: the effect was to slow the Soviet boat and to make it even quieter. Hervey was deprived of range information when suddenly there was “an awful bang, crushing and scraping”, alarm bells rang and red lights flashed while Warspite rolled on to her starboard side and passed under the Soviet boat.As she bobbed upright again she once more struck the Soviet boat and was flung back on to her side. Men who had been sitting at the controls found themselves almost on their backs.In a few seconds Hervey’s first lieutenant, who found himself standing on the control panel at which normally he would have sat, started the procedure for surfacing in an emergency and, as Warspite broke surface, his engineer officer prevented the nuclear reactor from shutting down automatically and calmly set about restoring to their normal function various systems which had “tripped out”.

On the surface, in the dark, Hervey discovered that the conning tower was skewed sideways and a large part had been chewed off by the Soviet’s propeller.

Much later a Soviet source admitted that the collision had made a hole in the outer casing of the Echo-class boat through which “a three-ton truck” could easily have been driven.The Soviet had also surfaced and for a few minutes both boats eyed each other at point-blank range, until Hervey turned stern on and under a silvery Arctic moon made off into the mist. Having overheard on the radio that the Soviet boat was not in danger, he ordered Warspite to dive.
John Hervey
John Hervey

Hervey then set course for Scotland, where he was met by the frigate Pellew and escorted into a quiet loch for cosmetic repairs, before going to Barrow for permanent reconstruction.

The story was given out that Hervey had collided with an iceberg, though a dockyard  matey remarked, when he saw the Soviet paint which had stuck to Warspite’s fin: “It’s amazing how paint comes off a lump of ice.”When David Owen, then the Navy minister, heard about the event, he dismissed it as “boys will be boys”, but asked the Navy to be more circumspect in future. Hervey received a letter expressing the Admiralty’s “severe displeasure”, but he took Warspite on her next patrol in the far North. He was appointed OBE in 1970 and CB in 1982.Of Huguenot descent, John Bethell Hervey was born at Hampstead on May 14 1928; he was the son of Commander MWB Hervey, who saw action as a midshipman in the Dardanelles campaign in 1915 and in the battleship Colossus at Jutland in 1916.Young Hervey was educated at Marlborough and then Dartmouth College when it was at its temporary wartime home at Eaton Hall, Cheshire. Hervey went to sea in 1946 and his first command was the minelayer Miner VI, but he chose to specialise in submarines. He became one of the most experienced submariners of his generation, and one of the last to learn his trade from the battle-hardened veterans of the Second World War.

He served in the diesel-powered submarines Acheron (1950-51), Aurochs (1951-52), Tradewind (1952-53), Sea Devil (1953-56) and Aeneas (1956-57); he commanded Ambush (1959-62) and Oracle (1962-64).In the rank of commander Hervey commanded the 6th Submarine Squadron based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, before spending a happy year in command of the destroyer Cavalier, and then training to become a nuclear submariner in order to command Britain’s third nuclear-powered boat, Warspite (1968-69).After Warspite he was operations officer to the Flag Officer Submarines. In 1971-73 he enjoyed his one desk job in the Ministry of Defence, and was promoted to captain before commanding the 2nd Submarine Squadron at Devonport (1973-5) and the guided missile destroyer Kent (1975-76).Between 1976 and 1980 he was deputy chief of Allied Staff at its Nato headquarters at Northwood, in the rank of commodore.Promoted to rear-admiral, from 1980 to 1982 he was Chief of the British Naval staff in Washington at the start of the Falklands War, when his ability, eloquence and sense of humour contributed greatly to the success of his dealings with the Pentagon, including with the Secretary for the US Navy, John Lehman, and senior officers of the USN. He was particularly effective in obtaining American support and supplies for British forces in the South Atlantic.After retiring from the Navy, Hervey became a consultant in the defence industry, and his book Submarines (1984), in Brassey’s Sea Power series, is regarded as a bible for submariners.He revived the friends of the RN Submarine Museum in Gosport, and led the campaign to save HMS Cavalier as a museum ship. In 1998 he prepared and successfully presented the case for saving Cavalier to the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee then chaired by Gerald Kaufman, and got funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund.Cavalier is now an important tourist attraction in the Chatham Historic Dockyard, alongside the submarine Ocelot, in which his son Jon served. Hervey also supported the Friends of Crescent Garden, a Georgian garden in Alverstoke, Gosport, frequented by Jane Austen’s brother, Captain Charles Austen RN.Known for his endless supply of amusing stories, and his gentle, modest, unselfish nature, he was a gentleman who gave generously to charities.
In 1950 Hervey married Audrey “Liz” Mote, who predeceased him in 2015; he is survived by their two sons and a daughter.

 Rear-Admiral John B Hervey, born May 14 1928, died May 26 2016