🏠

HORSLEY, Beresford Peter Torrington (3456)

Birth

  • Born on March 26, 1921 in Hartlepool, Durham, England

Death

  • Died on December 20, 2001 in Salisbury, Wiltshire Co., England

Marriages

Children

Notes

  • Occupation: Royal Air Force Pilot/ Air Marshall
  • Obituary: AIR MARSHAL SIR PETER HORSLEY, who has died aged 80, began as a deck boy on a cargo boat to Malaya before a successful career in the RAF and on the staff of the Queen and Prince Philip. Despite the apparent respectability of his air force career - which he ended as Deputy C-in-C, Strike Command - and his service at court - first as equerry to Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh, then, after George VI's death, as equerry to the new Queen and finally, to Prince Philip - Horsley's rise was far from conventional. Beresford Peter Torrington Horsley was born on March 26 1921, the youngest of seven children. His father, the head of a prosperous West Hartlepool family business, had lost much of his fortune in the 1922 crash and shot himself. Peter's mother also died when he was a child. It was, he later recalled, "a miserable start". He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and Wellington College. Horsley felt himself at odds with the system there, and shortly after his 18th birthday, abandoned his position as a prefect (the actor Christopher Lee was one of his fags), "sold" his room at auction and obtained an interview with Alfred Holt, a Blue Funnel director. Holt, whose children had been at prep school with Horsley, was sympathetic, and employed him as deck boy in TSS (Twin Screw Ship) Cyclops, bound for the Far East. When it docked at the Malayan island of Penang, Horsley heard that war had been declared and immediately obtained a transfer to Menelaus, another Blue Funnel vessel, which was homeward bound. Menelaus was provided with a Japanese gun dating from 1917 and Horsley sailed home as gun trainer and deck boy. Under war regulations he was now a member of the Merchant Navy and officially unable to join the RAF, an ambition he had long cherished. He deserted. After biding his time in the Home Guard, Horsley's gamble paid off when he was called to the Aircrew Reception Centre at Uxbridge, Middlesex. On his arrival there, however, Horsley was dismayed to be informed that only the air gunner category was available. He accepted it and then lobbied his family's solicitor, by then an Air Ministry staff officer, to pull strings, so that he could be re-mustered as pilot under training. Horsley did so well that after receiving his wings he was commissioned and posted immediately to the flying school at RAF Cranwell as an instructor. Horsley, to his chagrin, was posted to a flying training school at Penfold, Alberta. Finally, in 1943, he was sent to a de Havilland Mosquito conversion unit at Greenwood, Nova Scotia. There Horsley fell in love with Phyllis Phinney, a Canadian psychology student at Acadia University, and also teamed up with Frank "Bambi" Gunn, who became his operational navigator. Towards the end of that year, Horsley, accompanied by Bambi, crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary. Horsley joined No 21, a Mosquito night intruder squadron, based at Hunsdon, Hertfordshire, as part of Group Captain Pickard's No 140 Wing. Most of Horsley's operations were flown at night against airfields and night fighters. "This type of intrusion involved groping our way across Europe at low level using whatever navigational clues were available," he recalled. "Once the bombs were gone, Mosquitoes were coned in searchlights and sprayed with exploding shells and tracer. The aircraft, bucking with freedom from its load, would be thrown into an escape route, throttles fully open, jinking and weaving as close to the ground as one dared." Horsley noted that attacks on V-1 flying bomb sites required flying just above the crest of the waves to the French coast and as low as 50 ft above the target. Tight discipline was essential to avoid being blown up by the bombs of the aircraft in front. All the while Horsley flew with Bambi Gunn. On D-Day, June 6 1944, and for some time afterwards the pair flew two or three cross-Channel sorties each night. They relied on benzedrine to stay awake, and resorted to naval rum to get some sleep. Horsley was eventually shot down by anti-aircraft fire and his plane began to fall, burning, into the sea off Cherbourg. Horsley yelled to his navigator: "Bale out Bambi, bale out!" before pushing himself out and, after scrabbling for the D-ring of his parachute, finally floating towards the sea. "The shock of the cold water and the first choking mouthful of sea water woke me to the stark reality of the situation," said Horsley. He managed to inflate his "Mae West" and it brought him to the surface, where, after a frightening struggle to free himself from the parachute, he was able to inflate his minuscule rubber dinghy. It floated upside down and, after a Herculean effort, Horsley climbed across its base. At daybreak Horsley managed to right the dinghy and sit in a pool of sea water and blood from a flak wound he had sustained. After three days, during which a storm capsized the dinghy, he was picked up by an Air Sea Rescue high speed launch. As Horsley began to recover he was convinced he had hovered between this world and the next. He also believed that he had received messages from two officers he knew to be dead and from Bambi who, as he learned later, had died. These experiences engendered a future interest in the supernatural. As he recuperated at a naval sick quarters, Horsley was tormented by the memory of waves breaking over him. One night Bambi appeared in his dreams, his face lit by flames, and said: "I forgot my parachute, Peter." Horsley was soon moved to the RAF rehabilitation centre at Loughborough, where he recalled fondly a Belgian nurse who countered an horrific shivering attack by undressing, joining him in bed and warming him with her body. As his health improved Horsley fell in with a rowdy gang of aircrew with whom, returning from a pub crawl, he splashed naked in a fountain. He was expelled, and then attempted to return to No 140 Wing. When this was thwarted, he dodged a request to attend a medical board and obtained the consolation of a posting to 2nd Tactical Air Force's communications squadron in France. After returning home in 1947, Horsley joined No 23 Training Group where he was posted to the Central Flying School. After accepting a permanent commission, Horsley was posted in 1948 as adjutant at the Oxford University Air Squadron. In July 1949, he was promoted squadron leader and appointed equerry to Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Following King George VI's death on February 6 1952 he became equerry to the Queen and, from 1953 until 1956, equerry to the Duke of Edinburgh. At first, Horsley was expected to carry out normal RAF duties as commander of No 29, a Meteor IX jet night fighter squadron at Tangmere in Sussex, in tandem with Palace duties. In 1953 the problem was resolved when Horsley was invited to join Prince Philip's staff full time. In this period Horsley also pushed forward arrangements for Prince Philip to learn to fly. He also became interested in Unidentified Flying Objects and began a prolonged investigation into the more credible reports of sightings. Horsley concluded that whereas the majority could be eliminated by natural occurrences, there were some RAF and British Overseas Airways sightings which defied explanation. Although his service career had been interrupted by seven years at court, in the late 1950s and early 1960s Horsley became a senior instructor at the RAF Flying College, Manby, Lincs, and commanded the fighter station at RAF Wattisham, Suffolk. Posted from Suffolk to Cyprus as group captain responsible for Near East Air Force (NEAF) operations, Horsley received command there of the Cold War bomber base at RAF Akrotiri. Upon his return home he attended the Imperial Defence College and moved on to the Joint Warfare Establishment at Old Sarum, Wilts, before becoming assistant chief of air staff (operations) in the rank of air vice-marshal. Horsley found this first experience of - as he put it - "Whitehall's bureaucracy and political jungle" a shock. Even so, he coped with issues which included the overthrow of the Libyan king and seizure of the RAF airfield at El Adem, a revolt in Jordan, the Soviet invasion of Hungary and Spain's closure of the Gibraltar border. From 1971, Horsley was commander of No 1 Group's nuclear deterrent bomber force. After two years he became Deputy C-in-C, Strike Command, where he remained until retirement in 1975. Horsley, who had a lifelong interest in stamp collecting, was then appointed chairman of Robson Lowe, the stamp auction house. For a time he also realised a childhood dream by serving as managing director of Stanley Gibbons, the philately business. Other directorships included ML Holdings, a defence related company, National Printing Ink, Osprey Aviation and Horsley Holdings. Horsley's business commitments inevitably involved travel. In 1986 he was driving to a meeting at Plymouth, Devon, when on a straight dual carriageway his BMW swung, hit the central reservation, crossed into the opposite carriageway and collided with an approaching car whose occupant was killed. As he began to recover from serious injuries, Horsley sought to discover how the accident occurred. His inquiries suggested to him that the SAS or some other secret agency was keen to hush up the affair, particularly concerning the Army major who had died in the other car. Horsley later became convinced that his car had been followed by a Volvo from which it had been controlled by radio and made to crash. He thought it possible that the accident had been contrived by assassins hired to avenge the death of four sons of a Gulf sheikh, who had died at the hands of British troops in a South Yemen ambush. Horsley came to believe that assassins might have entered the BMW after the accident and removed the radio equipment they had installed. Certainly, when the police examined the car, they found nothing amiss. A fluent and readable writer, Horsley published an autobiography, Sounds From Another Room (1997), which recounted his experiences of planes, princes and the paranormal. In retirement, Horsley enjoyed country life in Hampshire, golf, fishing, the pub and village activities. Horsley was appointed KCB in 1974. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre in 1944 and AFC in 1945, and appointed CBE in 1964 and LVO in 1956. Horsley married, first, Phyllis Phinney, by whom he had a son and a daughter. After the marriage was dissolved in 1976 he married Ann MacKinnon (nee Crwys-Williams). The funeral service takes place at All Saints Church, Houghton, Stockbridge, Hampshire, on Friday December 28, 2001, at 12 noon.
  • Historical Information: Sir Beresford Peter Torrington Horsley KCB, CBE, LVO, AFC (26 March 1921 - 20 December 2001) was a senior Royal Air Force commander. Horsley was the youngest of seven children of a West Hartlepool merchant, who shot himself in 1922 after the collapse of the family business. He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford, and Wellington College. In 1939, he became a deck boy on the TSS Cyclops, a Blue Funnel steamer sailing to Malaya. He transferred to the homeward-bound TSS Menelaus when the Second World War was declared, but then deserted ship. As a member of the Merchant Navy Horsley would not have been able to join the RAF, which was his ambition. Horsley served briefly in the Home Guard before joining the RAF, initially as an air gunner, as this was the only vacancy then available. However, he managed to get a transfer to pilot training, and was soon himself an instructor at RAF Cranwell. He was transferred to the Flying Training School at Penfold, Alberta in 1942, and then to the Mosquito Conversion Unit at Greenwood, Nova Scotia, 1943-1944. He then joined 21 Squadron of 140 Wing, RAF Hunsdon, flying Mosquitoes on night fighter intruder missions over Nazi Germany. After D-Day he was shot down over the English Channel near Cherbourg and was picked up by an Air-Sea Rescue launch after three days. His navigator was killed, and he spent time in hospital and the RAF rehabilitation centre at Loughborough. Horsley then was attached to the communications squadron of the 2nd Tactical Air Force in France, and was personal pilot to Major-General Sir Miles Graham during the Normandy invasion. He returned to the United Kingdom in 1947 and joined the staff of the Central Flying School, 23 Training Group. He received a permanent commission and was appointed adjutant to the Oxford University Air Squadron in 1948. He joined the Royal Household in July 1949, as a Squadron Leader, as Equerry to Her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh. He was also concurrently Officer Commanding 29 Squadron, RAF Tangmere, Sussex, flying Meteor IX fighters. In 1952 he became a Wing Commander and Equerry to Her Majesty The Queen, and in 1953 he became full-time as Equerry to the Duke of Edinburgh, relinquishing the second appointment in command of his squadron. He remained the Duke's Equerry until 1956. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was successively senior instructor at the RAF Flying College, Manby, Lincolnshire; Commanding Officer, fighter station RAF Wattisham, Suffolk; and in Cyprus as Group Captain Near East Air Force (NEAF) operations. Horsley attended the Imperial Defence College, and was then appointed to the Joint Warfare Establishment, Old Sarum, Wiltshire. He became an Air Vice Marshal and was made Assistant Chief of Air Staff (Operations), then Commanding Officer 1 Group 1971'961973. His last post in the RAF was as Deputy Commander-in-Chief Strike Command 1973'961975. Sir Peter wrote an autobiography, Sounds From Another Room (1997), which described his interest in UFOs, which began when Equerry to His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh, and a close encounter with an "alien" in London in 1954. Horsley received the French Croix de Guerre in 1944, and the Air Force Cross in 1945. He was made a LVO in 1956, and a CBE in 1964. In 1974 he was knighted and made a KCB. He died in 2001.

Images